Dyer County Board of Education Rejects First Charter School

Members of the Dyer County Board of Education (Photo by Dyer County Schools)

Public charter schools were created to provide educators with the freedom and flexibility to innovate in their approach to educating children while still being accountable for advancing student achievement.

As part of that, many charters request waivers for flexibility on things like curriculum, staffing, or scheduling to support their specific school model. 

Tuesday night, Dyer County Board of Education Member Mike McClaughlin appeared to lack a full understanding of how these waivers work when voting down an application for what would be his county’s first charter school.

The proposed Trimble Academy included 16 waivers in its application to enable the school to implement an educational model that integrates outdoor education, character, and civic virtues with classical education. A Tennessee Firefly analysis of waivers in other school districts found that Trimble’s 16 requested waivers were not unusual, but McClaughlin questioned whether the number is cause for concern.

“Just the sheer volume of waivers,” said McClaughlin. “I think that the waivers might suggest that Trimble Academy’s lack of readiness to operate a school.”

McClaughlin was the only board member to speak Tuesday before unanimously voting down Trimble’s application.

Unusual Charter Review

Dyer County has never received a charter school application before, and the question of the number of waivers wasn’t the only area in which district leaders approached the process differently than other counties.

State law requires school districts to conduct a review of each charter application before voting on it. Every other school district in Tennessee provided applicants a copy of that review last year in advance of the vote, but members of the Trimble Forward Alliance were still waiting on a copy of the review of Trimble Academy on Wednesday afternoon.

That report is important as Trimble Forward Alliance is expected to submit an amended application for review this summer.

Districts also routinely have representatives from their review committee present the findings to the board before voting, and the votes are available for public viewing on Facebook or YouTube. Dyer County Schools chose to have its attorney, Chuck Cagle, present the findings, and the district did not record the meeting for public viewing. A lack of substantive discussion by board members of the committee’s findings and the proposed school’s potential impact for students was also unusual.

Trimble Academy Application

Supporters of Trimble Academy say the momentum to establish the public charter school started following last year’s decision to close Trimble Elementary. The small Dyer County community has had a school since the 1800s, and the decision to close the elementary school forced students to take long bus rides to larger schools in other parts of the County.

Speaking on the Tennessee Firefly’s On the Fly podcast, Margaret Prater said that within weeks of the decision to close the elementary school, residents began organizing the group, Trimble Forward Alliance, which she now leads, to explore options to provide the community with its own school again. She says that research ultimately led the group to apply to establish the county’s first public charter school.

“We need a school. We need a school for our families that don’t want their kids to, you know, have to ride the bus almost an hour and sometimes over an hour to get 8 to 10 miles down the road,” Prater said. “We need a school to be able to provide the small classes, the small feel of a school where everybody knows your name. So, it was devastating, it was devastating when the county announced that they were going to close our school.”

Trimble Academy is proposed to serve up to 374 students in grades K-8. It would be the state’s first rural public charter school and the second charter in West Tennessee outside of Memphis.