Fayette County Tennessee has one high school to serve a population that’s expected to grow substantially when Ford Motor Company brings 5,800 new jobs to the nearby Blue Oval City.
Mecca Jackson says her proposed public charter school, the Academy of the Arts, will provide a needed school choice option to these families who will eventually call the county home and may not want to send their children to Fayette-Ware High School.
“School choice, there is none on the public-school sector on the high school level,” said Jackson. “There is not school choice unless parents and families have the financial resources to send their children to private schools or stay home and home school them.”
The Academy of the Arts would serve approximately 90 ninth grade students in the 2023/2024 school year and grow to a full high school of more than 400 students by year four. The proposed school’s goal is to educate high school students through the performing arts while providing academic and entrepreneurial skills.
This would include offering students the opportunity to major in Music, Visual Art, Dance, Fashion Design, or Film/Video/Drama while attending high school.
Jackson says the arts curriculum would help improve test scores Fayette County, especially with students of color.
“Regardless of all the dynamic things that are happening in schools there is still a significant population of students who are not learning,” said Jackson. “Fayette-Ware in comparison also is underperforming in comparison to the state of Tennessee as well as to the county.”
School board members with Fayette County Public Schools voted down the Academy of the Arts’ application last August and leaders of the proposed school appealed to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission hoping to have that decision overturned.
The commission held a public hearing Thursday on the appeal where the district laid out several concerns that led the school board to reject the Academy of the Arts’ application to open what would be the county’s first public charter school.
School board attorney Tom Minor said one of the most problematic aspects of the application is that the proposed school hasn’t received approval from federal district court that it meets student and faculty diversity requirements. Minor says this is needed because Fayette County Public Schools is operating under a federal desegregation consent order.
“It has failed to address its required compliance with board’s pending federal desegregation consent order and has failed to provide a detailed analysis of whether the operation of the school will serve to negatively impact the board’s court ordered obligation to remove all vestiges of discrimination from the district,” said Minor.
The charter commission also heard concerns from multiple residents in Fayette County including a town mayor and multiple school principals.
“The curriculum is not where it should be to meet the needs of our students,” said Oakland Mayor Mike Brown. “There is a need for fine arts. There is a need for CTE (Career Technical Education) but I’m not sure the curriculum I’m seeing here today will meet the needs of our students.”
“As a principal I haven’t spoken to a student in my building who’s been invited to a focus group, nor a parent, and that concerns me,” said principal Stephanie Blade.
Not all of the public speakers opposed the Academy of the Arts’ appeal. Former teacher and grandparent Paul Williams told commissioners he could see the proposed school being a real benefit to a few of his 16 grandchildren.
“One of my major concerns is that these grandchildren, which are second through seniors in college will have a program that best meets their needs,” said Williams. “I have two of those 16 that I believe would benefit greatly from the Academy of the Arts Charter High School.”
The Tennessee Public Charter School Commission will decide the Academy of the Arts’ appeal at a meeting October 18.
