Members of the Maury County Public Schools Board of Education narrowly voted down a much talked about application by American Classical Education (ACE) to open the county’s first public charter school.
On a 6 to 5 vote Thursday evening, members rejected ACE’s amended application following an emotional speech by board member Marlina Ervin (District 6).
“Personally, I don’t feel like they meet the model for all students. I have evaluated it thoroughly,” said Ervin. “I feel like they are setting themselves up to get rid of whomever they want for the pettiest of things if the model is not met. That bothers me.”
Thursday’s vote follows a similar close decision by board members against ACE’s initial application last April. Under state law, denied charter applications can submit an amended application.
The vote in Maury County has attracted a lot of attention and supporters and opponents both spoke at Thursday’s meeting.
Former public school teacher Shelly Daily was among the supporters. She told board members ACE’s classical education model is needed.
“My eyes were opened wide when I was able to get involved with a classical education. I thought, like many of us think, our education is really great, not until you find out when you go to a classical school you find out there are a lot of holes and then I was filling in my own gaps with my education,” said Daily.
Columbia resident Chad Howell was among those speaking against the application. Howell said he had concerns about how well ACE’s transportation and meal plans would serve students with special needs.
“If you’re talking about taking children who need opportunities, and this is for them. You’re not providing transportation, a way for them to get there and you’re not providing lunches, I could go on and on about some of the various possible problems I see with this,” said Howell.
Following the vote, ACE released a statement criticizing the decision along with the review process that Maury County Public Schools did on the amended application.
“Instead of standing with students, parents and teachers, the school board stood with self-interested opponents of public school choice and union activists who oppose any and all school choice. This decision is all the more frustrating because the Maury charter review committee plagiarized other non-publicly available reviews from other school districts. The board should have done such important work in light of the needs of Maury families – instead, they copied others,” said ACE board member and former state senator Dolores Gresham.
ACE first gained attention last year when Governor Bill Lee expressed support for the organization in his state of the state address, but the group faced criticism following public outcry over American Classical Education’s connections to Michigan based Hillsdale College and controversial statements Hillsdale President Larry Arnn made about teachers on video.
ACE later distanced itself from Hillsdale, but school boards denied all three of the group’s applications for new public charter schools last year. ACE opted to withdraw all three appeals from the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission last fall.
This year ACE has seen mixed results in Tennessee. School board members with Rutherford County Schools voted to approve the organization’s application in April while boards of education in Robertson, Montgomery, and Madison County all denied applications.
The organization has submitted an appeal to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission for its application in Madison County. ACE says it’s still evaluation whether to do the same with the denied application in Maury County.
