School board splits on charter school waiver
By Pete Gawda
The Thursday, February 5 meeting of the Knox County Board of Education was fairly routine, but the called meeting held before the regular meeting seemed to generate more interest. The purpose of the called meeting was to determine the board’s reaction to a possible Christian charter school. Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville had filed a letter of intent with the board to form a Christian charter school.
Tennessee law states that a charter school sponsor may not be “a private, religious, or church school.”
The called meeting centered on what Knox County Deputy Law Director Gary Dupler called “a narrow point of law.” Dupler said the contention is whether or not the school board could waive charter school requirements. Officials of the academy had filed a lawsuit against the school board. The lawsuit states in part, “state and local officials retain broad discretion to approve charter schools that do not meet all the state law requirements.”
Apparently, the board disagreed. They considered, but failed to pass a resolution requesting the Tennessee Commissioner of Education to consider a waiver.
Board member Rev. John Butler stated, “This board does not have authority to grant a waiver. Why are we doing this?”
Chair Kristi Kristy asserted, “We do not create state law.”
“We are not the right people to be doing this,” was the opinion of Lauren Morgan.
At first, the board voted on a motion to postpone the issue. That vote failed on a split vote. Anne Templeton, Patricia Fontenot-Ridley, Katherine Bike and Butler voted “yes.” Kristi, Morgan and Travis Wright voted “no.” Betsy Henderson and Steve Triplett abstained. With the nine-member board, it takes five affirmative votes for an issue to pass. Therefore, the motion failed.
The vote on the resolution to request the state to consider a waiver also failed on a split vote. Kristi, Morgan and Wright voted “yes.” Templeton, Bike and Fontenot-Ridley voted “no,” with Henderson, Triplett and Butler abstaining. Once again, the resolution failed for lack of five votes. Therefore, the board ended up taking no action.
During the public comment time prior to board discussion, Lance McCold urged board members to fulfill their oath of office and uphold the state constitution and “stay out of religion.”
In the regular board meeting, members recognized officials of the 18 Knox County schools that were recognized as Reward Schools by the state for the 2024-25 academic year. Schools are recognized as Reward Schools when they demonstrate high levels of performance and/or improvement by meeting objectives across performance indicators and student groups.
The board also heard a presentation about proposed improvements in the Powell school district. Predicted growth and traffic congestion will have to be dealt with soon. Studies indicate that building new schools or adding to existing schools is not the best solution. The studies took into account existing enrollment and capacities of current schools and projected future enrollment and determined that the best solution would be to change the boundaries of districts to equalize student population. It is anticipated that at their March meeting, the board will consider zoning changes.
