Members of the Nashville Public School System are scheduled to discuss a legal challenge to Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s Educational Savings Accounts Thursday morning.
The meeting is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Thursday at the Metro Nashville Public School headquarters at 2601 Bransford Ave.
According to The Nashville Post, Nashville Democratic Mayor John Cooper and his legal director Bob Cooper will announce the legal challenge.
The agenda sheet for Thursday’s meeting says little else, meaning no other items are likely up for discussion.
The Post reported last April that a legal challenge from Davidson and Shelby counties was likely. The website went on to report that school officials in both counties considered ESA’s unconstitutional because “it is arbitrarily limited to only a portion of the state.”
As The Tennessee Star reported last year, public school officials in Tennessee who protest school vouchers insisted public schools are by far the best option for children, especially versus charter schools or private schools.
Also as reported, many of the school systems in Tennessee that came out to formally oppose school vouchers haven’t exactly done that great of a job preparing students for college.
This, according to statewide statistics members of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission reported last year.
As The Tennessee Star reported, representatives from some of these school systems said they have higher academic standards than charter schools.
About 67 percent of Madison County students who went off to college needed remedial math classes. Almost 45 percent of them need remedial reading, according to the figures.
Exactly 62.7 percent of students coming out of Metro Nashville Public Schools, meanwhile, had to take a remedial math course. About 47 percent of those students needed a remedial reading class, according to statistics.
Also in Nashville, 90 percent of students at Maplewood Comprehensive High School who went off to college needed remedial math. About 76 percent needed remedial reading courses. Almost 92 percent of students at White’s Creek Comprehensive High School needed remedial math, and 78 percent of them needed remedial reading. For Stratford Comprehensive High School, 88 percent needed remedial math courses. More than 73 percent of the students needed remedial reading.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “John Cooper” by John Cooper. Photo “Bill Lee” by Bill Lee.
Guess he does not have the guts to stand up to the educrats and teachers union. Just another in a long line of losers elected as mayor of Nashville.
We should allow parents to chose and reward schools that are successful, regardless if they are public or charter. The unions and Metro Nashville Public Schools are worried about losing their monopoly on parents who can’t afford private school.
This liberal can,t even balance the budget or offer better traffic solutions but he sure can tell hard working parents how to educated their kid, I will worry about my child’s education. PS did you know there no correlation between increase teachers pay and a child education,.