Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Brian Haas of Del Ray Education in the studio to describe the process for bringing a public charter school to the state of Tennessee, and the role of the local school boards.
Leahy: Right now, in the studio, our friend Brian Haas who is a big supporter of public charter schools, works with a company called Del Rey Education, which operates Founders Classical Schools. Do I have that right, Brian?
Haas: It’s actually ResponsiveEd that operates the schools. We provide the local sort of governance.
Leahy:Â Local governance. And there are about, what, 21 Founders Classical schools around the country?
Haas: Yes. In Texas and Arkansas.
Leahy: They have a very good track record, performance.
Haas: Oh, excellent.
Leahy: How long have they been doing it?
Haas: For 11 years now.
Leahy: There are two charter schools here under Founders Classical, one in Sumner County and one in Williamson County.
Haas: Under application.
Leahy: And explain to us the process here in Tennessee by which a public charter school gets approved.
Haas: So we put together – the governing body for the charter school is required to be a nonprofit organization. And so we formed Del Rey Education, and Del Rey Education then goes and applies to the local school district.
The school district reviews the application and, based on a kind of ambiguous, in my opinion, rubric provided by the state makes a decision on whether or not to approve the charter.
The rubric is based on three sections: academics – proposed academics and curriculum; governance – organizations behind the school that are supporting the school from both a governance standpoint and operational standpoint; and then financials. Once the local district, if they approve you, you’re fine, if …
Leahy: So the process in the state is, the first step is you go to your local school board. Now, it seems to me a little bit odd that you go to an entity with which you’re going to be competing to get approval. Does that seem odd to you?
Haas: It would in a sense be like if I wanted to open up a little mom-and-pop retail store, and had to go to Walmart …
Leahy: Pretty much.
Haas: … to apply to operate.
Leahy: I would think that Walmart would say, oh no, we don’t want any competition. And I haven’t looked at the past 10 years, but it seems to me every time I read something in the paper, there’s a public charter school application gone to a local school board, and almost always it’s denied. Has that been your experience here in Tennessee?
Haas: Yes. This is our first go-round here in Tennessee, but certainly, we’re watching a lot of other charter school applications that have been submitted simultaneously with ours that are also being denied.
Leahy: Founders Classical-Brentwood is the one here in Williamson County.
Haas: Yes.
Leahy: And then the one called Founders Classical-Hendersonville. You’ve gone before both boards of education. When did you go to Williamson County Schools for approval here of your application?
Haas: Both applications were submitted on February 1st of this year.
Leahy: When did the local school boards vote on it?
Haas: They have 90 days to review and vote on it. And I’m going to say Williamson’s was in May, end of April, May, sometime around there.
Leahy: And they said no.
Haas: Yes.
Leahy: It was unanimous.
Haas: No, actually, there was one abstention saying that he wasn’t familiar enough with the Founders Classical Academy brand and with its history.
Leahy: But you didn’t have any vote in favor of it?
Haas: No.
Leahy: How can that be? What were the reasons for that?
Haas: There’s a little bit of a conflict that’s created with this methodology of approval. The application is reviewed by a set of committee members. The district creates a review committee who are basically employees of the district.
They review the application and make a recommendation to the actual school board, and then the school board votes on it. In some cases, some of the members, and certainly all the members have the option to review the application themselves and do some research on our appeal. On our first appeal to Williamson County, we actually invited individual board members to even come to Texas.
Leahy: To take a look at a Founders classical operation? Did they come?
Haas: No.
Leahy: They weren’t interested.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Image “Charter School” by Founders Academy Frisco.
