LEAD Cameron parents ask school board members in Nashville to “stop playing these political games”

Alison and Tremayne Haymer say their seventh-grade son Caleb has truly thrived during his time at LEAD Cameron Middle School.

Alison Haymer attended the school as a child along with other relatives and their children. She says it was a comfortable decision letting Caleb to follow in their footsteps when he entered middle school.

“He loves it here. He’s had so much growth as a person. The teachers have been wonderful. They’ve been just like a second family to us,” said Alison Haymer.

Exterior of LEAD Cameron Middle School (Photo by Sky Arnold)

The family says the staff at LEAD has been especially attentive to keeping them informed about Caleb’s education and interaction with other students, something that’s important as he’s a special education (SPED) student. 

Another benefit is that LEAD also operates LEAD Academy High School in the same building, providing students like Caleb with an opportunity to grow in one setting.

“Things that we thought that he wasn’t going to be able to do or able to experience, he’s done and experienced so it’s very important to continue that, so when he goes from the seventh to the eighth-grade or from the eighth-grade to ninth-grade on until graduation, he will sustain enough learning skills and life skills to lead an independent life,” said Tremayne Haymer. 

LEAD Public Schools has been operating LEAD Cameron in South Nashville since 2010, when Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) approved a unique agreement to hand over control of the school to LEAD following years of low performance as a district school.

The new LEAD Cameron was the first turnaround school in Tennessee, and by agreement, would essentially operate like a normal zoned school that elementary students attending Fall-Hamilton, Glenview, and John B. Whitsitt would feed into when they advanced to middle school. The arrangement differed from most other public charter schools in Nashville that have open enrollment policies. Charter schools are free public schools operated by an independent contract or “charter” with an authorizing agency like a school district or the state.

All of that changed last November when MNPS school board members approved a new rezoning plan for schools in the Antioch, Glencliff, and Hillsboro School Clusters that will essentially divert children from attending LEAD Cameron as they have been without applying first, like students at other charter schools. 

LEAD filed a lawsuit challenging the rezoning as a violation of its charter with the district, but Chancery Court won’t hear the suit until February 14. That’s a week after the February 7 deadline for current LEAD Cameron families to submit their application to stay at the school.

The entire process has left a bad taste in the Haymer’s mouths. 

Alison Haymer says LEAD Cameron families weren’t provided enough information about the change by MNPS and she says the timing of the rezoning has left some parents in a bind because they don’t have a lot of time to apply to keep their children at LEAD.

“When I found out, I mean essentially, they had one more month in order to even have their children return to the school and I just didn’t think that was fair and I just didn’t think that was right,” said Alison Haymer.

The rezoning plan was seen by some charter supporters as simply the latest in a series of discriminatory decisions by MNPS and its board of education. The board has denied every application for a new charter school three years in a row and in 2023, denied a charter renewal request from Rocketship Nashville Northeast Elementary School despite the school being among northeast Nashville’s highest performing elementary schools.

Tremayne Haymer says the rezoning decision for LEAD Cameron felt like it was made with politics in mind, instead of students.

“It’s time to stop playing these political games. It’s not charter versus district anymore, it’s pretty much, what is in the best interest of our children,” said Tremayne Haymer. “Stop playing these games. Stop being political with everything and start thinking about our kids first.”