New State Commission Pushes Charters on Nashville

2 min readOct 12, 2021

Gov. Bill Lee won approval of a “ super charter commission “ back in 2019. Now, that commission is imposing an unwanted charter school on Nashville.

The Commission voted today to overturn the decision by the MNPS School Board to reject the charter application from Nashville Classical, which already operates an elementary and middle school in East Nashville. The new school is proposed for West Nashville.

Nate Rau has a great explainer on the fight over Nashville Classical in the Tennessee Lookout.

Nashville Classical, which has already been rejected once by the school board with a 7–1 vote, submitted its appeal last week.
But, the starting point for the local debate over Nashville Classical’s application is a new state law that says the Nashville school board’s decision is functionally irrelevant. If the appeal is rejected, as expected, the school can simply appeal to the new Republican-backed state charter school commission, which would likely grant its approval. Unless a political meteor strikes and creates some unforeseen circumstance, Nashville Classical will be open to enrolling kindergarten beginning next year.

This was written back in June. Now, here we are in mid-October, and Nashville Classical has gained the predicted approval from the Charter Commission.

This should come as no surprise given Gov. Lee’s strong penchant for privatization.

School Board member Abigail Tylor is speaking out on the decision, but the reality is this type of top-down privatization is exactly what Bill Lee wants and exactly why the super charter commission was started.

Terribly disappointing outcome. The commission ruled against both local control and community will. It’s disingenuous for them to claim this school is in the best interest of MNPS and district 9 when they don’t live here & they heard directly from community members against NC2. https://t.co/Crm61NYzJ7

- Abigail Tylor (@AbigailTylor) October 12, 2021