When the founders of Nashville Classical proposed the new public charter school in 2013, acquiring facilities was a huge challenge.
School leaders had to meet with future parents in church basements and parks.
“Our school almost never opened,” said Founder and Executive Director Charlie Friedman. “The school was really built on sort of their hopes and our promises.”
Friedman says those promises only came to fruition through the help of a supportive mayor who enabled the public charter school to establish in an unoccupied four room former Head Start building. The school later utilized a similar opportunity with the vacant Bailey Middle School building to expand to serve even more students in East Nashville.
“The only reason why we were able to expand and grow to grades K-8 is because of courageous work of local elected officials,” said Friedman. “Our school was outgrowing our building, we had about 37 students in some classrooms, and we never would have been able to serve grades K-8, but there happened to be a school building that was going to be empty in our neighborhood and we were able to have an opportunity to lease that building.”
That opportunity has allowed Nashville Classical to thrive and this year leaders expanded to open a sister school in West Nashville.
Friedman says Nashville Classical has invested more than $1 million in improvements for the East Nashville building and continues to pay $600 thousand a year in rent. He worries the next generation of public charter school leaders may not be as lucky finding unused facilities, support from leaders, or funding to open.
“When you’re a new school you don’t have access to capital. You don’t have access to a facility and the reality is that the people who are coming behind me, the next generation of charter school leaders, you know they’re more likely to be people of color. They’re more likely to be women and they deserve the same opportunities that I had,” said Friedman.
Addressing that charter facility gap is among the priorities the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) announced it plans to advocate for in 2024. Tennessee SCORE unveiled its annual State of Education in Tennessee report Tuesday morning and made the case that charter facilities are one key area Tennessee needs to address to ensure school support meets student needs.
SCORE is recommending state lawmakers pass legislation to close the charter facility gap by investing at least $22 million each year into the charter facilities fund, provide an additional $10 million to create a revolving loan fund for charters, and update state law to establish clear definitions for underutilized school district facilities for public charter schools to have priority access to.
“Public charter schools in Tennessee need sustainable funding to support upfront and ongoing facility costs as well as improved access to existing publicly funded facilities that are underutilized or vacant,” said SCORE President and CEO David Mansouri.
Tennessee SCORE is also making a number of recommendations to help ensure students at all public schools are on the path to careers after graduation.
The organization says Tennessee needs to improve how it uses data to help students choose the right path to a future job and to know what skills are valued by employers.
“We can not leave students to navigate these complex paths without clear guidance and support,” said Mansouri. “In today’s education landscape, students have a menu of over one million unique degree and credential opportunities and not all of these opportunities will have the same return on investment. So it’s critical for students to have a complete picture of the earning potential of those degrees and credentials.”
Tennessee SCORE is also recommending the state improve the early postsecondary opportunities it provides high school students, incentivize quality apprenticeship programs, and expand the Tennessee Promise to allow students who use the scholarship to earn an associate degree, the ability to keep the assistance for their first semester of pursuing a bachelor’s degree.
The Tennessee Promise is a last-dollar scholarship that covers the remaining cost of tuition and fees at community and technical colleges.
“Tennessee must expand its vision for education so that each student has the opportunity to succeed in school and be prepared for a career that enables economic independence,” said Mansouri.
Friedman says public charter schools like his are a good example of the importance of providing those opportunities to succeed.
Nashville Classical is one of the top performing elementary and middle schools in Tennessee but he says the state could lose out on future success stories, if it doesn’t invest in facilities and students.
“There’s some commonsense changes that can happen that can make sure that schools like ours and the next generation of public charter schools have opportunities that our students deserve because the reality is that the kids who attend our schools are more likely to be black or Hispanic. In a city like Nashville, they’re more likely to be economically disadvantaged and at the end of the day they’re oftentimes getting less than they should and less than they deserve because of this funding mismatch,” said Friedman.
