I am late with this news. I missed the email informing me. Too many emails. It happened at the end of April. But it’s important because the Disrupters have targeted Nashville as one of their prime targets for privatization.
So it’s big news that the Metro Nashville school board turned down five applications for new charter schools.
At a time of fiscal austerity, the board recognized that it can’t afford to maintain two separate school systems.
The Metro Nashville Public Schools board denied five charter school applications Tuesday as the school district braces for the possibility of deep budget cuts and little new money for next year.
In addition to pointing to the need for fiscal belt-tightening, board members raised concerns that none of the applications before them fully met the district’s expectations for charter schools.
“Our budgetary future is uncertain,” said Amy Frogge, the board’s vice chair and a longtime charter school critic. “We have to prioritize where those funds go. We can chose to open charter seats or we can chose to pay our teachers and our staff members and really that’s what it comes down to.”
The mayor of Nashville has asked the board to find $100 million in budget cuts.
Critics say charter schools, which receive public money but are operated independently, pull students, money and resources away from zoned schools. Proponents have said they allow choices for parents and alleviate needs at some schools.
Nashville now is projected to spend $139 million on the city’s 28 charter schools, which enroll nearly 13,000 students.
Bill Lee, the governor of Tennessee, is a DeVos acolyte. He plans to create a new charter commission with the power to overturn local decisions. You can bet that every member he appoints will be a charter zealot.
Nashville doesn’t need any new charter schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Bill Lee, the governor of Tennessee, is a DeVos acolyte. He plans to create a new charter commission with the power to overturn local decisions.”
If so, this is Lee’s operating principle: If we cannot slime our way past reason and true good, . . . use force. CBK
This post illustrates the importance of local control over local tax dollars. When that capacity is removed as in the case Pennsylvania and some other states, local taxpayers are at the mercy of corrupt politicians that work for the charter lobby. Reckless charter authorizing laws can push local communities into precarious financial positions. What good is more schools if none of them can be adequately funded? More schools cannot be funded for the same dollar as one decent system.
“More schools cannot be funded for the same dollar as one decent system.”
Oh, ed reformers know that by now. After all, they’ve been lockstep promoting charters and vouchers for 20 years now.
The way it works is they lobby for more and more charters and vouchers and THEN come back for additional funding for charters and vouchers.
They’re fully aware three systems costs more- they just choose not to tell the public during their political campaigns. It’s all “free!”, except it isn’t.
“The way it works is they lobby for more and more charters and vouchers and THEN come back for additional funding for charters and vouchers.”
In the meantime, apparently many are involved in all sorts of self-dealing schemes; for instance, renting classroom space to themselves, but also from themselves; that is, when the charter school rents space from the same people or corporation who operate the charter chain. CBK
YES: there is big, big money being spent in the lease/rent charter school game
Since 2010 The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has 16 grants to the Tennessee Department of Education by way of the “Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education” for which the Collaborative on Reforming Education has provided operating support in addition to specific initiatives. The votes of Tennessee should kick out the B&MGF and dismantle the ” Collaborative on Reforming Education.” Tennessee is not a colony of the Gates Foundation and should stop acting like one. The B&MGF loves and supports charter schools.
The way biased billionaires meddle in the policies of the fed, state and municipal education policy is exactly like colonialism. It is a way for the wealthy to weaponize their wealth in order to impose their pet projects on schools. The big pet project is generally privatization which only benefits the wealthy.
BELOW is a video of a Perry Mason Moment involving Governor Lee and Betsy DeVos.
Chalk one up for Chalkbeat and its reporter, Marta B. Aldrich, in the following video, as her question leads to a possibly classic moment of corporate ed. reform dumbfoundedness.
It’s a cell phone video shot by someone named “Lauren,” then posted on Twitter, of Betsy and TN Governor Bill Lee touring a Tennessee charter school.
As Dr. Ravitch has pointed out in the past, Betsy, in the first part of the video, just outright lies about Florida’s performance years after a voucher program was instituted, and after a program of mass characterization of schools in Florida took place. Academic achievement in the Sunshine State — as it did in Devos’ home state of Michigan — dropped like a rock as a result, and the state’s public schools and taxpayers lost hundreds of millions of dollars to charter and voucher scams.
Chalkbeat reporter Aldrich then follows up a description of TN’s proposed new law creating a system of a state authorizer of charter schools, and which will also allow unaccountable private schools the be funded by a new voucher program. Even if voucher funding of private schools in that district — as well as the opening of a new charter school(s) — is opposed by the local school district board, and population, the local population and elected school board cannot stop it.
Like it or not, if this passes, that district has to accept and fund that charter school. That will be the law. Peter Greene coined the term “throat jamming” once, as in … even if the local community is fiercely, 100% opposed to vouchers or charters, school privatizers just “jam it down their throats” anyway.
(at around 15:00 )
Again, here’s Chalkbeat’s Marta W. Aldrich then asking that $60,000 Question:
“This is Marta at Chalkbeat. Isn’t that really contrary to the idea of ‘local control’ when it comes to education?”
Both Betsy and Guv Lee look momentarily stunned, with only the sound of clicking cameras heard.
Bus–ted.
In Betsy case, she ducks the question because she would have to answer honestly, “Why yes. It sure does gut local control, and I sure love that”, as it most certainly does remove the “local control” that Betsy & Gov. Lee otherwise and irrationally tout
However, Gov. Lee can’t say that, because he is all about hiding or obfuscating that aspect of school privatization through charter schools and vouchers.
Rather than answer it, Devos breaks the awkward silence and then dumps it in TN Governor Bill Lee’s lap, who then blathers incoherently, using Betsy’s talking point (SEE her 60 Minutes interview for one such example) about we need to focus on “students, and not systems.”
Lee then blathers incoherently before ending his stumbling reply by referencing another idiotic Devos talking point (also used during the 60 Minutes interview), and claims that taking money from existing, struggling public schools and giving it to newly opened charters and voucher-funded private schools — schools that, unlike those public schools, can cherry-pick its student body — will “ultimately strengthen the public schools in those districts as well” after public schools have been gutted of their funding to pay for the vouchers and charters.
This asinine talking point has been justly and regularly ridiculed countless times.
Late night talk show host Stephen Colbert memorably said, “This is a policy called .. ‘Stupid.’ ” in one of his sarcastic monologues attacking Devos’ policy of promoting charters and vouchers — expressed by Devos on 60 Minutes and elsewhere — while taking money from existing public schools to fund vouchers and charters.
“Don’t ya see?
“If we take medicine away from sick people, and give it to healthy people, this will incentivize those now-deprived sick people to get well on their own, with less medicine. Ya see how that works?”
Here’s the full back-and-forth: (with ellipses for every pause that Governor Lee makes)
(again, it’s at around 15:00 )
MARTA : “This is Marta at Chalkbeat. Isn’t that really contrary to the idea of ‘local control’ when it comes to education?”
(Deer-in-headlights expressions. CLICKING CAMERAS. Betsy ends the awkwardness.)
BETSY: “Governor, do you want to … to comment on that?”
GOV. LEE: (fumbling) “What the … what the … what goal is … is to … provide a plan … that … allows access to children … and this is about … children … annnnd … not about … systems … and the goal is to provide … children .. in all systems … that have … these … low-performing schools … five of which exist in this state … and will allow children to access a higher quality education … which will ultimately strengthen the public schools in those districts as well.”
(again, it’s at around 15:00 )
Not just Nashville. The country does not need ANY publicly funded private sector charter schools.
Watch Gov. Lee try to do an end run around the Metro Nashville board to OK these Charters.