Thirteen months ago, Dr. Jean Little was waiting on pins and needles to find out whether the Jackson-Madison County School Board would approve her application to open the school district's first-ever public charter school.¶
Her wait would prove disappointing, at least at first.¶
Even though the district’s review team found that her application met state standards months earlier, members denied it. Just two members of the board voted to support the Jackson Museum School.¶
Little still felt her proposed charter school deserved a second chance, so she appealed to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission (TPCSC) the following fall, where members unanimously overturned the district’s decision.¶
Much has happened since that decision, and even more since the idea for the school came to Little.¶
“This journey started in (the) summer of 2024,” Little said. “Gosh, time flies.”¶
The Jackson Museum School opened its doors for its inaugural school year on August 3, but she says you wouldn’t see the full story by just walking into the school that day. It took months of preparation and hard work for Little’s vision to come to fruition.¶
Talking to the Tennessee Firefly, Little could not help but reflect on the journey to get the school up and running after two years of hard work and advocating for the families and students who believed in the school’s model.¶
The Road to the First Day of School
Jackson Museum School is a kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school that operates under a “museum model” that integrates immersive learning into the curriculum. It is the first charter school of its kind in Tennessee and will have its students go on weekly “expeditions” to local museums and other historical or cultural learning centers in future years. Right now, Little’s priority is just making sure the school operates under its model, but over the next few years, the focus will be on diving deeper into it.¶
“I have several teachers who have worked in magnet schools,” Lee said. “I have one teacher who came from a charter school in Chattanooga, so they have some different types of experience in that way… We were very intentional about the levels of teachers that we have. We only took on one brand new first-year teacher. The rest are all veteran teachers.”¶
For now, the school operates out of the New Life Christian Center, a non-denominational church. It is about three miles down the road from its future permanent home, an old YMCA building the school purchased with plans to fully renovate it before the 2027-2028 school year begins.¶
“It’s going to take all year long,” Little said.¶
But for now, Little is focused on the year ahead. This summer, Jackson Museum School hired its leadership team, which began training in April. The team consists of Dr. Little, Director of Academics Dr. Teresa Halbrook, Director of Operations Rachel Crisman, and Director of Special Populations Dr. Beverly Cannon.¶
Then came the “summer institute,” a two-week training session for the entire staff, not just the teachers. Little said its purpose was to teach them the foundational aspects of the museum school model.¶
“Everyone came to it so we could really start to be intentional about what this school was going to look like, feel like, (and) operate like,” Little said.¶
At the end of the program, while the staff was in the unboxing and settling-in phase, the teachers got together and gifted a children’s book titled “I Knew You Could Do It” that was signed by all of them to the four members of the leadership team.¶
“I’m a crier,” Little said. “Ugly crying has occurred… I’ll cry just thinking about it.”¶
Little became emotional on the first day of school too. She said it was seeing teachers greeting students in the car rider drop-off line, dancing with pom poms to music, and getting the kids excited for the day.¶
“Traffic flow was going really well, and every founder worries about drop-off and pick-up,” Little said. “We went outside and practiced it. We had teachers drive their cars through, and we practiced. It just felt so good. The first day went so smoothly, and it was so exciting. It was just hard not to just walk around crying.”¶
Opening day was all about trying to deliver on the promise of making the museum school model work. She said one of the most important parts of that is instilling a culture of learning and caring.¶
“We're layering that with (delivering) this innovative model that families say they want and doing it in a type of culture that's very positive and welcoming is really important to me,” Little said. “I just feel so very grateful. I feel grateful to the community for believing in us, and (to the many) families that have supported us, and I'm grateful to the state for allowing us to do this.”¶
