A Christian Nationalist Charter Network Gains Access to Tennessee Tax Dollars
Local school board approves charter application, state may grant four more
Over at The Education Report, I write about how a charter school network affiliated with private, Christian Hillsdale College is gaining access to Tennessee tax dollars in order to fund their extreme agenda.
This past week was Hillsdale Heist week in Tennessee. The extremist charter school network applied to open American Classical Academies in five Tennessee districts — Madison, Maury, Montgomery, Robertson, and Rutherford.
Four of the five districts (Madison, Maury, Montgomery, & Robertson) rejected the Hillsdale applications — though the Maury County vote was a narrow 6–5 rejection.
Meanwhile, Rutherford County, which had rejected a Hilldale application last year, voted 5–2 in favor of Hillsdale this year.
The difference?
After the 2022 elections — the first where candidates for School Board ran with party affiliations — a group of conservative Republicans aligned with State Senator Dawn White and other advocates of school privatization now control the School Board. Not only has White, a former teacher, consistently supported efforts to use public money to fund…
