Senate passes legislation allowing public charter schools the ability to prioritize serving at-risk students

Tennessee State Senators gave their support Monday evening to legislation designed to help provide at-risk students with more accessibility to public charter schools.House Bill 1086/Senate Bill 0980 passed the full senate on a 26 to 5 vote.The legislation gives public charter schools the option of providing preference to students who are economically disadvantaged, homeless, migrants, in foster care, runaways, eligible for free and reduce lunches, and/or children of employees. Public charter schools have shown success improving the academic performance of at-risk students in recent state testing.The bill also makes changes to other state laws governing public charter schools, including allowing out-of-district students to enroll in charters if there are vacancies that can’t be filled by in-district students. Schools would be limited to a student body of no more than 25% out-of-district.  Currently there are no limits for school districts that allow out-of-district enrollment.Chattanooga Senator Todd Gardenhire is co-sponsor of the legislation, and he says the bill should address some concerns public charter school opponents have.“This kind of clarifies some things, as I said, one of their concerns is out of county students could come in and flood the charter school. This actually puts limits on it to ease the indigestion of that Educational Industrial Complex that doesn’t like charter schools,” said Chattanooga Senator Todd Gardenhire.Gardenhire’s legislation split Democratic support with Memphis Senator London Lamar supporting it and the four other Democratic Senators present opposing.  Memphis Senator Raumesh Akbari supported the legislation in committee but was not present to vote Monday.Nashville Senator Jeff Yarbro was among the five Democrats voting against the bill. He says it needs further tweaking, including changes to a seemingly routine section that allows public charter schools the ability to request student emails, addresses, and telephone numbers from the district.Supporters say the section was added to align with federal guidelines, but Senator Yarbro speculated, without evidence, that it might be used for more.“What I think we experienced at times is having parents who are enrolled in a school, you known, getting texts or email communications sort of urging them to apply to another school and I just want to make sure that’s not what our goal is,” said Nashville Senator Jeff Yarbro.Senator Gardenhire responded by saying public charter schools might request the information for the same reason other schools do, including cases of emergency and bad weather.The legislation faces another vote Wednesday in the House Education Administration Committee.