Live from Music Row Wednesday 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 Noble Education Initiative Founder and CEO Sherry Hage and President Richard Page to the newsmaker line to discuss their new Rutherford Collegiate Prep charter school and the inaction by the Rutherford County School Board to process the school’s application.
Leahy: We are joined on the newsmaker line right now by the executives with the Noble Education Initiative, Richard Page, and Sherry Hage. And they want to talk to us today about the Rutherford Collegiate Prep. Did I get those pronunciations correct?
Page: You did? Good morning. This is Richard.
Hage: Good morning!
Leahy: Good morning, Richard. Good morning, Sherry. You’ve been on several times before. We love what you’re doing. Tell us first about the Noble Education Initiative, what you’ve been doing to date. And then tell us about the new Rutherford Collegiate Prep School.
Hage: This is Sherry. Good morning. We have a lot going on this school year Noble Education initiative. We opened a new charter school here in Nashville, and we worked with our board to rethink the forward board. A brand new K-8 charter.
We actually opened K-5 back in August, serving about 330 families on the south side of Nashville. And we have gotten amazing feedback about what’s going on at the school. It’s a very personalized learning model for each student.
We do have what’s called a community learning model where the students have multiple teachers that support them throughout the day. And the parent feedback has just been how much they appreciate the differentiation that focuses on each individual child.
We’ve created a really calming educational environment. We allow for flexible seating in the classroom so students have a really different experience for their education. So that’s just a little bit about what’s been going on this school year.
Leahy: What’s the name of that charter school?
Hage: That school is called Nashville Collegiate Prep.
Leahy: Nashville Collegiate Prep. And by the way, I like the idea of a calming educational experience in this crazy two years or so since COVID has invaded our life. So calming educational experiences, parents hear that and say, I think I want some of that yet.
Hage: The parents have really been supportive. They really were looking for something different for their children. In fact, we did receive a K-8 charter, but we were only going to open K-4 because of the way our building was going to work out this first year.
But we had so many fifth-grade parents come and ask us to please open that fifth-grade class. We actually went ahead and were able to go ahead and open this year K5 simply because we had so much demand from the parents.
Leahy: Well, that’s a very good sign. Now tell us there’s something new on the horizon called Rutherford Collegiate Prep. Tell us about that.
Hage: I’m going to kick that over to Richard and let him talk a little bit about what’s going on.
Page: Yeah. Thank you. So on the heels of the successful school in Nashville, NEI works with another foundation called Rethink Forward. That is the not-for-profit foundation that holds the charter.
They also have the vision to grow and have multiple schools in the region. So we came forward and submitted an application in Rutherford County in February to also open up a K8 charter school that would be the first-ever school of choice in that community.
So we followed the process according to the law of submitting an application in February and have been going through the process. Unfortunately, the school board had never received a charter application before and didn’t really follow the process.
In fact, the law requires that they have to vote up or down in 90 days, and they didn’t even do that. So we had to go through a bit of an exercise with them just to exercise their requirements to have a school or vote up or down.
Ultimately, they did in October and denied the application, at which time now we have appealed to the Tennessee Public Charter Schools Commission and that appeal is right now on the clock for them to decide whether they agree with Rutherford or agree that this is a school of choice that belongs in the community.
Leahy:Â You said something very important here, and I want to explore it. Why on earth would the Rutherford County Board of Education turn down an application for a charter school in Rutherford County?
Page: Well, it’s a great question. Unfortunately, we didn’t have an opportunity to interact with them. They didn’t call us in for an interview, ask any questions or attempt to clarify or understand our proposals. So we had a difficult time.
Leahy: Aren’t they required to hear you out?
Page: There are standards in the law that dictate what a school district is supposed to do.
Leahy: They didn’t follow any of those standards I guess, is what you’re saying.
Page: That’s right.
Leahy: But why not? What communication did you have? There’s a school director there, I imagine, as well.
Page:Â There is a template document of a charter school application that is laid out in deep specificity. It was probably a 500-page document that we prepared that lays out all the details according to a template that is provided by the Department of Education that we submitted according to the law on February first.
And from there, they’re supposed to review it, and they created a committee and reviewed it, et cetera. As I said, they never actually called us in, which is very uncommon, to have an interview, ask more questions, get to meet the board, et cetera. They just acted. They originally didn’t act at all. The Department of Education intervened and sent them a letter saying, you really need to act.
Leahy: This is shocking to me. I didn’t know anything about this. We are going to investigate this and we’ll follow up this story about the school board in Rutherford County that turned down your charter application for Rutherford Collegiate Prep. Richard and Sherry, thanks so much for joining us.
For more information, there will be a parental informational meeting on Thursday, December 2nd at 6 pm to be held at the Hilton Garden Inn in Smyrna, Tennessee. To learn more about the Rutherford Collegiate Prep school visit them on the web at www.rutherfordcollegiate.org.
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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.Â
