Alumni celebrate the 20th anniversary of Tennessee's first public charter school

Twenty years ago, Chelsea Bailey was a rising seventh-grader in Memphis who had no idea what a public charter school was.That changed when the founder of the Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering (MASE) visited her church and encouraged Bailey’s mother to transfer her to the new school.  That decision not only made Bailey a part of the MASE’s inaugural class, but also the first class of students anywhere in Tennessee to attend a public charter school.“I was supposed to go to Raleigh- Egypt Middle School and my mother was not having it,” said Bailey. “All I heard was we were getting laptops, and I was sold right then.”Bailey says she pretty quickly changed her mind once school started.MASE was a lot different from from the zoned school she had attended.  The new school required a uniform that she hated, and it didn’t have a football team, band, a gym or much else in the way of extracurricular activities.Perhaps even more jolting though was the school’s schedule. The public charter school held classes from 8 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. during the week and even held classes on Saturday.“I hated it, you know all my friends are doing sleep overs and summer parties,” said Bailey.  “Hated it and didn’t understand it or appreciate it probably until I was in my late 20s.”What Bailey received in return for all that time in class, was a rigorous STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) based education.  She says it not only taught her things she wouldn’t have learned in her old school, MASE better prepared her for college.“When I graduated, I had more credits than I needed per the state of Tennessee to graduate because we took you know anything from Latin, to Spanish, to like a business class, all the histories, it was definitely different. When friends of mine were taking geometry, we were already on to calculus or trigonometry at that point.”Bailey’s story is not unique for Tennessee’s first public charter school.Jerriney Clinton was also an early student at the school, following her sister who enrolled at MASE first.Clinton says she also took a while to get used to all that class time and leaving her friends at her old school behind.“I didn’t want to go at all,” said Clinton. “I was pretty much just established you know.  I grew up and went to a neighborhood school so all my neighborhood friends, like we were just close. My best friend was there.”Clinton says the curriculum and extra class time weren’t the only adjustments she had to make.  She says the diversity of the school was also a big change, both with the economic background of her new classmates along with their culture and race.“Making friends who were Hispanic, and you know sometimes going over to my sister’s friend’s house and eating their food it was just different,” said Clinton. “I feel that really just broadened my horizon and it ultimately led us to go to a more diverse college.”Clinton says MASE ended up broadening her horizon in multiple ways.She acclimated to the different education model by the end of her first year and grew to enjoy the STEM curriculum so much she initially majored in mathematics when in college.Both Clinton and Bailey say MASE ended up doing much more than just preparing them for higher education.  The school also prepared them for life in ways they don’t believe a traditional public school would have.“I feel like networking and just knowing how to build my resume.  Those basic fundamentals that I feel like everybody should have learned in the school setting we learned at MASE, and it actually did help me in my adult life,” said Clinton.“I love MASE.  I do attribute MASE to a lot of who I am,” said Bailey.  “If we wanted basketball we had to fight, beg, barter in order for us to have basketball. If we wanted football, we had to do what we had to do to get football.  Do research and all that stuff that kind of help us now.”This year MASE is celebrating its twentieth anniversary as a much different school than the one Clinton and Bailey attended.The public charter school has grown with more students who are now competing in the same sports and extracurricular activities that their counterparts in traditional public schools are. Public charter schools themselves have also grown, with more than 100 operating in four Tennessee counties and more on the way next year.Bailey says she’s proud to see what MASE has become, and she now realizes she gained much more than a fantastic education there.  That class schedule she hated initially formed bonds that are still strong, twenty years later.“I jokingly say I had 83 best friends because 83 is how many graduated in 2009 and most of us, probably over 75 percent of us had known each other since the seventh-grade,” said Bailey. “We ate together, we moved classes together and we went to school, Monday through Friday, 8 to 5:30 and every Saturday from 8 to 1 so we spent a lot of time with each other.”