News
It looks like lawyers at the blue-chip law firm Bass, Berry & Sims won’t have to take legal action against the Metro school system after all because the schools’ leadership has backed off a demand to force a group of 5th and 6th grade students at the KIPP Academy charter school in East Nashville to return to their zoned schools—fully two months into their school year.
The KIPP students began their school year in June—the charter school has a longer school year, longer hours and requires parents to sign contracts agreeing to make sure their children complete homework—at which point the schools these kids were zoned for were listed on the state’s “failing” schools list. As a matter of state law, students zoned for such underperforming schools are allowed to attend charters.
Metro schools director Pedro Garcia & Co. notified KIPP last week that because Bailey, Gra-Mar and JFK came off that list after the latest round of failing schools was released—well into the KIPP school year—students who would normally attend those schools must be yanked out of the charter school, whose focus is rigorous instruction, discipline and emphasis on teamwork and college preparation. Initially, the school system identified 17 students who must leave by a deadline of tomorrow. That number was revised to 14, then to 11 and finally to 9.
“What they’re doing is just mean-spirited,” local businessman Townes Duncan, who is on the KIPP school board, said of the school system demand.
“We’re going to do whatever it takes to keep the promises that we made to our kids, which is, first, we’re preparing them for college,” KIPP principal Randy Dowell, who, along with his staff and students, most of whom are black and poor, were chosen as the Scene’s 2005 Nashvillians of the Year, said this morning. “Second, we’re going to do whatever it takes for the [state] law to be upheld.”
Dowell says that since the school system alerted KIPP last Wednesday that it wanted the students removed, efforts to meet or simply speak with Garcia about the matter have been unsuccessful. Finally, last night, with a final request to speak with him rebuffed, Dowell sent Garcia a four-page letter by fax and email.
Among other points, Dowell says that the reclassification of the zoned schools from failing to compliant “may be sufficient to prevent students that now attend these zoned schools from enrolling in a public charter school, this reclassification has no retroactive effect under Tennessee law.”
A recent report issued by the state Board of Education,
cited in Dowell’s letter, affirms the principal’s interpretation of the law.
And, this afternoon, Garcia tells the Scene
that the state board is echoing such a posture to Metro lawyers. As a result,
the schools director says, he will call off the demand. Garcia called Dowell earlier this afternoon to
communicate that.
“Based on that interpretation, we’ll follow that,” Garcia says. “We were following our attorney’s interpretation.”
Among other things, Dowell’s letter to Garcia stated, “I wanted to convey to you from one educator to another the harm that these students would suffer if they were involuntarily removed from KIPP and forced to attend a different school…. These students have already formed bonds with their administrators, teachers and fellow students. They have already made great progress in their academic studies and are already on the path to college. Involuntarily placing these students in new classes at new schools seven weeks into the MNPS school year is not in their best interest…. If MNPS continues to maintain that these students are ineligible for enrollment in KIPP, we will have no other choice but to act in the best interests of these students.”
At its core, this conflict—headed off at the last minute—illustrates a frustrating reality: that the Metro school administration, and at least a few members of the school board, resent charter schools and only grudgingly approved them in Nashville. There’s a kind of antagonism, rooted in a sort of territorial instinct, that pervades the relationship between public school educators and reform educators.
This despite the fact that there is probably no school in Nashville more accomplished at closing the performance gap between black students and white, rich and poor. While a majority of KIPP students entered the school last year, its first, behind, TCAP stores released in August show that 90 percent of KIPP students were proficient or advanced in math, and 87 percent were proficient or advanced in reading.
Dowell plans to meet with parents tonight to discuss the situation. He’s glad he has good news to deliver.