My favorite thing in Tennessee politics this year has been watching the Hillsdale College grift plainly reveal itself as a giant con over and over as it still chugs along. I was looking through past posts of mine and delighting all over again. Way back in February, I talked about how Hillsdale College wants to run/not run charter schools in Tennessee by taking/not taking government money to do so. In July, when Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn insulted Tennessee teachers in front of Gov. Bill Lee, I wrote about how Arnn has a habit of making Lee look weak, and followed it up with a hearty laugh at Arnn trying to pretend like words have secret meanings only he knows.
Since then, these efforts to open a bunch of charter schools headed up by a lying grifter and his sentient-Spam sidekick have been going ... well, not great. School boards aren’t thrilled with them. And now, when Hillsdale is appealing school boards’ decisions to not approve the “classical education” charters, the shenanigans have reached a delightfully hilarious crescendo.
Our own Kelsey Beyeler reported from the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission hearing in Rutherford County last week, as did Sam Stockard from Tennessee Lookout. Rutherford County Schools declined to approve one of these charters, even though the meeting appeared to have been stacked so that only pro-charter parents could testify. They rigged the hearing! And they still came out looking like doofuses, because it’s not clear who will be running the schools.
Stockard reports:
Questions were raised in the hearing, as well, about the American Classical board of directors, whose membership changed dramatically from out-of-state people at the start to a board with mostly Tennessee representatives, including former state Sen. Dolores Gresham.
I mean, sure, it’s better to have a board of directors made up of people from the place affected by the school, but this is sleight-of-hand. They sold themselves to Tennessee with one board of directors and now have different board. I’m trying to imagine any other scenario where this would be OK. You couldn’t buy a house and have a completely different person show up to sign all the final paperwork. For that matter, you wouldn’t start the mortgage process with Bank A only to be surprised to learn that the check to the seller is coming from Bank B. In both those scenarios, it seems deeply sketchy. Or it's like if you were going on a low-orbit space flight, and as you were lifting off, they told you that the astronaut who normally piloted these flights had been replaced by Elon Musk. Sure, Musk has a lot of interest in space. Do you trust him with your wellbeing?
OK, but surely someone is going to run these schools, right? Like, there’s some plan for staffing? If they got approval for a charter school, they know who’s going to be running it, right? Right? Tennessee — look me in the face and tell me they know who will be running these schools.
Or let’s hear what NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams learned up in Clarksville at another meeting about these schools this week. At the meeting, the head of American Classical Education Inc., Joel Schellhammer, introduced Phil Schwank as the person who would be principal of ACE in Clarksville. Williams had some questions:
We continued, "You've introduced Mr. Schwank in three different places as being the principal. How is that going to work?"
"I think we clarified today that he's the principal for here. He's a principal of ACE," Schellhammer said.
Schwank had been introduced in Rutherford County as "our principal."
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Schellhammer, "Didn't you introduce him in Rutherford County, as well?"
"As a principal of ACE, yes," the CEO answered.
Schwank told NewsChannel 5, "I was introduced as a principal of ACE."
"So is that being honest with the commission?" we asked.
"Absolutely, because I am a principal of ACE."
We continued, "But you would not be the principal in Rutherford County or Madison County?"
"Well, it could be," Schwank said. "But I mean, we obviously don't know what the decisions of the commission are."
This is so hilarious. They have hauled out this Schwank dude at multiple different sites and introduced him in such a way as to insinuate that he will be the principal of that site. And their argument is that it wasn’t really lying to anyone, because he’s going to be “a” principal of one of their schools somewhere.
If a kid did this kind of bullshit (“Mom, you said I couldn’t have a cookie this close to dinner. So, I ate five. 'A' is one. I didn’t eat just one. I didn’t disobey you."), she would be grounded for a week. Hillsdale’s American Classical Education people do it and they have the support of a pastor!
Here’s the thing: If one of your selling points for these charter schools is that kids can’t get the honest truth in public school without having some kind of agenda pushed down their throats, and then the charter school people get caught repeatedly not being honest and not being prepared — presumably because they expected to just be able to shove things through with the governor's support, no matter what — well, that seems really bad. It seems like something charter school proponents should be wary of.
Think of it this way: A person comes to you and says, “I think the tap water is poison and I want to hire this company to come in and provide us all with bottled water,” and the bottled water company gets caught repeatedly appearing to be either letting arsenic into their water or putting it in there. Wouldn’t you wonder why the person so concerned about poisoned water is so willing to overlook the continual arsenic scandals at their preferred water vendor?
You might think it’s because they’re not sincere about their concerns. But in the school choice debate, I think it’s utterly clear that these parents are deeply sincere. So let’s assume your friend with the poisoned water concerns is also deeply sincere. Obviously, we can respect their fear of drinking out of the tap. That’s fair. They may have spotted some valid problems. We may need to look into our tap water. But here’s the question: Assuming your friend is sincere in their beliefs, and assuming that there may be some problem with the water coming out of their tap that needs to be investigated, would you aid your friend in drinking the water that comes from the plant with repeated arsenic scandals? Would you agree with her that everyone needs to have access to the water from the plant with arsenic scandals?
I can support your wanting more school choice. But I can’t support your choice to hitch your wagon to these obvious grifters. And I don’t want my tax dollars going toward giving these grifters access to you in order to take advantage of you.
But man, there’s something deeply, deeply funny in watching these folks just repeatedly act with such disdain for the people of Tennessee and seeing the governor and some of these families just lap it up. As much as I hate to see people getting taken for a ride, when they’re so clearly ignoring every single red flag in order to jump on the train, all you can do is shake your head and enjoy the wreck.
