Live from Music Row Thursday 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 State Representative Mark White (R- District 83) to the newsmaker line to explain the importance of the Basic Education Program and his interests in changing some of the recent critical race theory legislation.
Leahy: We are joined on the newsmaker line now by our very good friend, State Representative Mark White. Welcome to The Tennessee Star Report, Representative White.
Whtie: Thank you. Good morning. Good to be with you.
Leahy: You are the chairman of the Education Administration Committee, also a former science teacher in Memphis. Is that right?
White: Yes. Starting my career as a teacher, a science teacher, that was my focus. And I taught 7th grade mainly and loved it.
Leahy: Big story now and a big issue being that is under consideration from what we can tell in this session of the Tennessee General Assembly, there is a push to change the Basic Education Program. If you would tell our listeners what is the Basic Education Program and why is that important?
White:Â The Basic Education Program is how we in Tennessee fund education. And so it was developed back in 1992. Before that, we had another system. And the reason it was developed in ’92 is because 70 school districts, small school districts in Tennessee sued the state and said funding is not equitable.
And the Tennessee Supreme Court says that’s correct. And so at that time, they had to get busy and come up with a better formula.
It’s been 30 years since that now, and we need to improve on it once again. And so I’m just excited that Governor Lee and the administration are focused enough on education that they want to take a good, hard look at this.
Leahy: Is there a bill yet introduced on that or what’s going to happen, and what will the elements of that change be?
White: Our bill filing deadlines, we started three weeks ago. Bill filing deadline is next Wednesday. This bill will come from the administration, and so it should be ready to file. But probably we will be working on the language of it probably throughout the session.
There are a lot of moving parts, as everybody knows. We have our local match, and so a lot of people are concerned about that. We’ve got a lot of things to work out. But next Wednesday we should know more.
And then the governor will have the State of the State this coming Monday night, and he may reveal some more things. But right now it’s still a work in progress because they’ve had 18 subcommittees throughout the state focusing on specific areas with input. It’s been a lot of public input from across the state and we got to pull all that together.
Simon: This is Roger Simon here representative. I’m sure you’re very aware there’s been a lot of upset by the public. We saw it in Virginia and so forth by woke nonsense like Critical Race Theory infiltrating the educational system and probably making our children brain dead. Is there going to be any way of addressing this kind of thing in the new proposal?
White: We addressed that, as you know, during a special session or last year. We addressed that. That is one thing the Tennessee General Assembly is focused on is that CRT is something that we believe is detrimental to our children. I taught science as well as history.
No one is saying teach the truth about history, the good and the bad and all the facts about our history. We have a wonderful country, and in the past, we’ve made a lot of mistakes because we’re all human.
But as we move forward in this country, we don’t need to continue to say because you’re of a certain race or belief that you are inherently guilty by the nature of your birth. That doesn’t do anyone any good.
One of my favorite books is Desmond Tutu No Future Without Forgiveness. And so we will watch that. We’ve already dealt with that. We may have to come back and tweak it a little bit, but we have dealt with that, and that is not welcomed here in Tennessee.
Leahy: Let me push back on that a little bit Representative White. When you say you’ve dealt with that, you did pass a bill that outlawed the teaching of 14, in essence, tenets of Critical Race Theory.
One flaw a lot of people point to in that bill is that the adjudication of whether or not a school district has violated that law. The adjudication is handled by Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn.
And in a recent decision, Moms for Liberty opposed the teaching inclusion of some curriculum in Williamson County that they said promoted Critical Race Theory.
Her decision at that time was, well, it’s not being taught yet, so we’re going to wait. A lot of people saw that as a bad decision by the commissioner.
Do you share that view and is there a need, in your view, to improve the law and give somebody else the right to make that first choice?
White: That’s a good point. And that’s one of the things that somebody as we go through this session, we may have to work on a few things.
Anytime you work on laws and pass things, as always, you have to come back and tweak things because things you may have not seen at the time and how things work out. So, yes, I think we will continue to look at that and see how that is moving forward.
Simon: So you would support that tweaking?
White: Yes.
Leahy: Okay, very interesting. Let’s follow up. This is a bit of a curveball. Are you ready?
White: I’ll take it. I’ll give it my best. (Chuckles)
Leahy: We’ve talked about this before, but I ask this question of every member of the Tennessee General Assembly who comes on the program because I think it’s an important question.
School performances have been weak over time, over the past couple of years. My personal theory is a lot of that has to do with the fact that the state of Tennessee and every other state accepts a significant amount of money, about 10 percent of all education funding from the federal government.
But with that money comes strings. Will you consider introducing a bill this session in the Tennessee General Assembly that tells the federal government to keep their money? We don’t need it because we don’t want your strings attached.
White: I understand exactly what you’re saying with the federal government. And so as far as whether or not I would introduce a bill, we all have 15. I’m already filled up this year so I wouldn’t be able to.
We get a lot of federal money from health and from education in every department and a lot of times pushing back would do more harm than good. But I know what you’re saying and we have that conversation all the time.
And the best answer I can give you right now is if it gets to the point we need to push back that far and not take any federal money, then so be it.
In Tennessee we are blessed, everybody is wanting to move to Tennessee right now because we are free state, lowest taxes and a lot of things that we’re doing right.
We’ve got people moving from all over the country, so we’re growing as a state. Taxes are coming in and we’re going to have the freedom to make better choices like that.
Leahy: Yesterday in studio here, State Representative Bruce Griffey said he’ll consider introducing a bill that tells the federal government that the state of Tennessee is going to refuse their education money. If he introduces that bill, will you publicly support it?
White: What I will do is go to him today and talk and get the language of what that is and get all the details and facts and what he’s actually saying. And we’ll have that conversation.
Leahy: He was a little bit more, I gave him an out. I was a little more equivocal on it. He said he would consider.
White: Right.
Leahy: So you see what I’m doing here, right?
Simon: People would consider everything. I could ask you an even tougher question. Would you consider abolishing the Federal Department of Education? I know that’s not in your purview.
White: I am the type of personality where I like to dig down and understand everything because a lot of times I could be going down the wrong path myself. I study things a lot and listen and talk to everybody so I know what I’m doing as I move forward.
But you all bring up some excellent points because there is a lot of things. Our education system, our children are suffering right now because there are so many elements in society that are affecting their education. We need to focus on, reading, writing, and arithmetic. But there’s a lot of outside influences we need to watch.
Leahy: State Representative Mark White from Memphis, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, come in studio during the session, if you would, please.
White: Okay. Give me the invitation. I’ll be there.
Leahy: All right.
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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
Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn needs to have her service terminated and Hire someone less Liberal. Period.
Several high-ranking military officers also SUPPORT Critical Race Theory.
Rep White states in talking about putting Penny Schwinn in control of what constitutes a violation of the law intended to stop CRT indoctrination:
“Anytime you work on laws and pass things, as always, you have to come back and tweak things because things you may have not seen at the time and how things work out.
Are the reps that really stupid? This was a trainwreck from the git-go. What a copout.