Jackson-Madison County School System drops lawsuit to block the county’s first public charter school
Jackson-Madison County School Board Chair HArvey Walden (center) speaking at Thursday’s meeting (Photo by Jackson-Madison County School System)
Members of the Jackson-Madison County School Board voted unanimously Thursday to withdraw a lawsuit they approved less than a year ago, in hopes of stopping the county’s first public charter school.
That lawsuit would have challenged a decision last year by the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission to approve American Classical Academy Madison. The commission’s decision overrode the school board’s earlier denial of the public charter school that has connections to Michigan based Hillsdale College through its charter operator American Classical Education (ACE).
Hillsdale President Larry Arnn ignited criticism in 2022 when a video surfaced of him saying, “The teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.”
Jackson-Madison County School Board was one of four in Tennessee to reject ACE’s application to open a charter school the following year. ACE ultimately appealed two of those denials to the charter commission, succeeding with American Classical Academy Jackson-Madison and failing with a nearly identical school application in Maury County.
Jackson-Madison County School Board members voted to pursue a lawsuit challenging the inconsistencies of the two decisions.
Following Thursday’s vote to reverse course, new Jackson-Madison County School Board Chair Harvey Walden said the district is focusing on improving education for the students it serves.
“Whatever happens, happens. We are going to get our school system moving so well that children would not want to leave our system, and parents are happy about the education they’re getting here, because there’s a lot of things out of our control,” said Walden.
American Classical Academy Madison is scheduled to open in 2025. It will join ACE’s other school that opened this year in Rutherford County.
