Monday’s vote in favor of legislation to support economically disadvantaged students came with a misleading attack by a State Representative whose city would be among those benefitting the most.
The bill makes several changes to laws governing public charter schools, including allowing an enrollment preference for students who are economically disadvantaged.
“We are grateful to the legislators who are working to ensure access to high quality public charter schools for the students who need them most,” said the Tennessee Charter School Center following the vote.
That change could have an especially important impact in Nashville where public charter schools have shown success improving scores for economically disadvantaged students, but Nashville Representative Bo Mitchell opted to oppose it with misleading charter enrollment information.
“The reason we got this bill is nobody is going. You know they’ve got, in Davidson County they’ve got about five thousand empty seats right now so that’s just dollars they’re not making off our children, so we’ve got to put butts in seats,” said Representative Bo Mitchell. “If they’re so great, why are we jumping through all these hurdles to have kids have to travel so far to get to em.”
Representative Mitchell didn’t say where he got his 5,000 empty seats number, but advocates at multiple organizations that serve public charter schools tell the Tennessee Firefly it isn’t an accurate number.
Representative Mitchell’s comments also ignore the recent success public charter schools have had in the school cluster that’s a part of his own 50th House district.
Although Mitchell’s district doesn’t currently have a single public charter school, it does include part of the Hunters Lane school cluster that has two public charter schools. State data shows both Smithson Craighead Academy and Republic High School are noticeably outperforming their traditional public-school peers in the cluster.
Smithson Craighead Academy had a higher percentage of students meeting expectations in math than any of the seven elementary schools in the Hunters Lane cluster. Only one of those cluster schools scored a higher percentage in science and only two schools scored higher in math.
Students at Republic High School had higher percentages meeting expectations in every subject compared to Hunters Lane High.
Roughly 30 percent of the student population at both public charter schools qualifies as economically disadvantaged and it looks likely the schools will have more freedom to increase that percentage in the future.
Following Representative Mitchell’s comments, the House voted 70 to 20 to approve the legislation. It passed the Senate last month but still needs a procedural vote before going to Governor Bill Lee’s desk.
