Now that President Trump has started the work of dismantling the Department of Education – or at least exorcising its worst demons – there is no longer any excuse for the states’ simply letting public schools rot.
Especially here in Tennessee. Tennessee has it all. Despite the illusion that Nashville is the “it” city, Tennessee was on the map long before the party-bus girls, the hapless Titans, and the ugly condos that the capital city has become known for. Since nearly the very beginning of the nation, Tennessee has forged a long tradition as a frontier state that attracts great people and inspires great things.
So how can we as 21st century Tennesseans sit here and let so many of our public schools suck? Suck so badly that we think the solution is to give taxpayer money to parents so they can spend it to send their kids somewhere, anywhere else?
Certainly there are times and places for private schools and home schooling – if for no other reason than to provide healthy competition for public schools. But public schools are the one community asset in which every single citizen has a stake. Shame on us if we do not take better care of our schools which should be the very jewels of every community, whether we are talking small towns out in the country or small towns like Bellevue within bigger cities like Nashville.
And everyone knows what the problem is with public schools, especially high schools, but rarely is it talked about: They are too damn big. Forced busing started the trend fifty years ago. The forced busing has been stopped but the mania for ever bigger, ever more comprehensive, ever more impersonal, inefficient, and unwelcoming monoliths has continued.
Tennessee can lead the way in reversing this trend, not just with charter schools but by reopening community schools like Pearl (not as a magnet school, but as North Nashville’s pride and joy once again), Cohn, West, East, North and so on, and scaling back the behemoths like Maplewood and McGavock and Hillsboro to serve just their immediate vicinity. The excess space at the big existing schools can be use for health clinics, food courts, workout gyms, day care centers, small-business incubators, you name it. The point is to scale back the scope of the schools so that each one will once again be the hallmark – and nerve center – of its community.
Don’t just throw the Feds and their 10% with strings attached out, but the state, too. Make home rule mean something in education, and start right here in Tennessee. The state can play a role in defining districts and setting standards, but each community’s school board should set all policy – from uniforms to unions, from tracking to testing, from cell phones to prayer, from personnel to pedagogy, from sex-ed to sports. And the schedule. How about Memorial Day to Labor Day so kids have a real summer vacation once again?
Even though the physical frontier has moved far to the west and fallen into the sea, Tennessee can still be THE frontier state that attracts great people and inspires great things. It starts with making our schools again the envy of the nation. And that will be accomplished, just as it was with each homestead in early Tennessee, by starting small.
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For a two-page PDF statement of where Way Out Charlotte Pike is coming from, please CLICK HERE.
john.arra@wayoutcharlottepike.com
