The Tennessee Public Charter School Commission voted Friday to approve appeals from Music City Academy and The Gate School, overturning Metro Nashville Public Schools’ (MNPS) decisions to deny both proposed charter schools.
The votes came during the commission’s quarterly meeting in Nashville, where members considered appeals from four proposed charter schools: Music City Academy, Nashville School of Excellence, Empowerment Academy Nashville, and The Gate School.
While the commission overturned MNPS’ denials of Music City Academy and The Gate School, members voted to uphold the district’s decisions to reject Nashville School of Excellence and Empowerment Academy Nashville.
Music City Academy, proposed by former Tennessee Titans wide receiver and longtime educator Dr. Kevin Dyson, plans to open a tuition-free public charter high school that combines academic achievement with athletics and student wellness.
The school is expected to open in fall 2027, initially serving ninth-grade students before expanding one grade level each year.
During Friday’s meeting, Sherekica Roby-Grant, MNPS’ executive director of charter schools, urged commissioners to reject the executive director’s recommendation to approve the appeal and uphold the local school board’s denial.
Grant said the application still showed deficiencies in facilities, operational readiness, and the ability to execute the school’s athletics-centered model.
She also claimed approval would divert funding from existing district schools, with MNPS projecting a transfer of about $1.67 million in the academy’s first year and more than $6.6 million at full enrollment.
Dyson, addressing commissioners before the vote, thanked the commission’s staff and review committee for examining the application and acknowledged areas where the school still had work to do.
“We don’t shy away from that,” Dyson said. “In fact, I believe acknowledging our gaps and having a plan to address them is in part responsible leadership.”
In a January interview with The Tennessee Star’s CEO and editor-in-chief, Michael Patrick Leahy, Dyson explained that he wanted to use sports to engage students and prepare them for opportunities beyond high school.
“Sports teach us all, it transcends color barriers, economic barriers, racial barriers,” Dyson said. “When it comes to our sports and teams, there’s always something bigger than yourself, and that’s the intentionality of the school: its team over self.”
Dyson said the academy would emphasize the whole student through movement-based instruction, social-emotional learning and culturally relevant teaching strategies.
“We want students to leave our school not simply with a diploma but with the direction and with the confidence to pursue possibilities that they may not even know exist,” he told commissioners Friday.
Watch the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission’s October 9 meeting:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
