Tennesseans need an education focused news service like the Tennessee Firefly more than ever

In 2003 I joined what would soon become a growing number of people moving to Middle Tennessee.  At the time I had just accepted a reporter position with Nashville Fox affiliate WZTV and I was excited to cover state and local government from my new state’s capitol.

Back then I had plenty of company in the halls of Legislative Plaza. During session you’d frequently run across news reporters from all four Nashville television news teams along with reporters from the Tennessean, the Nashville City Paper, multiple radio stations, and out of town media.

There was a healthy competition in those days to break important government stories and the real winners of that competition were our readers and viewers who had a larger window into the decisions their elected leaders were making.

That isn’t the case anymore.

The layoffs impacting newspapers across the country have hit Tennessee hard and perhaps equally damaging is the exodus of experienced government reporters from Nashville’s television stations. Many left news for higher paying jobs in other states or in public relations.

I became one of them in 2017 when I left a two-decade long career in news to serve as the press secretary for the Tennessee Department of Human Services.

The reporters that remain are undermanned and often lacking in experience. These changes have drastically reduced the quality and quantity of government reporting in Tennessee, and this is especially troubling for the subject of education.

Tennesseans simply aren’t getting the same quality of information about education as they once did, and they aren’t as informed as they could be. A recent poll by education group SCORE is a good example of this.  More than half of those polled in the survey either didn’t know what charter schools are or didn’t know they are public schools.

This is exactly why we launched the Tennessee Firefly.

Parents not only deserve to know how legislation making its way through the Tennessee General Assembly will impact their schools, they also deserve to know more about the decisions their local school board is making.

This year, school boards across the state voted down 15 new start charter schools.  Half of those were proposed in counties that currently don’t have a single charter school.

These decisions should have been widely covered but media in Tennessee largely focused only on the controversial applications connected to Michigan based Hillsdale College.

In September the newly formed Tennessee Public Charter School Commission will begin hearing the appeals from many of these proposed charter schools.  I expect to see the charter school applicants affiliated with Hillsdale covered extensively, as they should, but who will cover the appeals by the Tennessee Nature Academy, KIPP, and Oxton Academy?  These are proposed schools that could offer needed high-quality choice for their communities and parents shouldn’t be left in the dark about them.

Thankfully the Tennessee Firefly is here to turn on the light.

The Tennessee Firefly is a project of and supported by Tennesseans for Student Success.