Legislation to enable public charter schools to serve more economically disadvantaged and at-risk students faces key votes

Public charter schools haven’t received a lot of attention from the Tennessee General Assembly this year but that’s about to change in a big way.House Bill 1086/Senate Bill 0980 faces key votes in the full Senate Monday and in the House Education Administration Committee on Wednesday.Charter schools are public schools operated by independent, non-profit governing bodies. They provide a free school choice option for families and the legislation will provide charters with the ability to give preference to students who are economically disadvantaged, homeless, migrants, in foster care, runaways, eligible for free and reduce lunches, and/or children of employees.“Not required to give preference to those groups but it would be permissible for the charter school to give preferences to them,” said bill sponsor Murfreesboro Representative Charlie Baum at a subcommittee hearing on the bill earlier this month.

Expanding School Choice

The legislation would also expand school choice to students who don’t live in one of the five counties where public charter schools will be operating in next school year, by allowing out-of-district students to enroll.Representative Baum says some counties allow this currently but not all of them, including Rutherford County where he lives.“Crossing LEA lines is already permissible.  This bill would make that clear but with a cap,” said Baum.Under Baum’s legislation, public charter schools would only be able to enroll out-of-district students if they have vacancies that aren’t able to be filled by in-district students. Schools would also be limited to a student body of no more than 25% out-of-district.That part of the bill received considerable discussion in the Senate Education Committee earlier this month.The bill passed unanimously on a bi-partisan vote, but there were questions about whether taxpayers in a county that accepted out-of-county students would have to bear any costs.“Would Rutherford County taxpayers in any way, have to pay anything to educate the children from out of county,” asked Senator Dawn White.Bill sponsor Chattanooga Senator Todd Gardenhire assured her they wouldn’t because the legislation allows school districts to charge a tuition fee to out-of-district students to cover any dollars that wouldn’t follow the student from one county to another.The legislation also requires the review of all existing schools in operation of a charter organization to be considered when that organization applies to open a new public charter school.Supporters say this will add accountability and ensure that only the highest quality public schools are allowed to serve Tennessee students.