The East Tennessee Freedom School is getting ready to kick off its seventh summer of providing literacy and educational enrichment courses in East Knoxville. This year, Freedom Schools will operate in three East Knoxville elementary schools, feeding students two meals and a snack every day and giving them a safe, fun place to go and learn stuff.
At Monday night’s school board workshop, Freedom School Executive Director Denise Dean (a Harvard graduate) told school board members that preventing summer reading retention loss is one of the program’s major goals.
“Freedom School is one of the things that helps stem summer learning loss,” she said. “Kids leave in the spring, come back in the fall, and it’s like someone put a hole in their heads and stuff fell out. We do pre-and post-assessment. Eighty-seven percent of our children either maintain or improve their reading instructional level.”
She will be back today (05/04/23) when the board votes on the Freedom School’s 2023 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which is revenue-neutral and deals only with data sharing between KCS and Freedom School and allowing Freedom School kids to ride school buses already being provided for KCS summer school students.
The program is proven, effective, popular and cost-free. So, voting yes should be a no-brainer, right?
Maybe back in the days before the legislature made school board elections partisan, back when school board members frequently managed to work together without regard to party lines and cared more about kids than outside pressure groups.
But now that our state legislature made school board elections partisan? Everything’s a steel cage death match.
Steve Triplett
First-termer Steve Triplett is a Republican who manages a Chick-fil-A but used to be the principal of a Christian school until he got caught converting school funds to his personal use. He repaid the money and said he has been forgiven, which must be true since he won the District 7 Republican Primary and coasted to victory in the general election.
He said at the Monday workshop that he will oppose the MOU because of the Freedom School is a franchise of the Children’s Defense Fund, which “promotes an alternative agenda” that he does not support.
Susan Horn
District 5 board member Susan Horn, a Republican who represents far west Knox County, backed Triplett up by registering her disapproval of some of the books on the Freedom School summer reading list, saying that she’s gotten some emails from “community members” who are concerned about kids reading bad books like the 1619 Project.
(Call me cynical, but who the heck believes that any parent of any child actually zoned to attend Freedom School has contacted MAGA Republican Susan Horn, a close collaborator of ultra-rightwing state Rep. Jason Zachary and a member of the Moms for Liberty Facebook page?)
John Butler
District 1 school board member John Butler, a Democrat who represents families zoned for Freedom School, says approving this MOU “should be a no-brainer.” He’s not impressed with the Triplett and Horn complaints.
“We tell you what we need, and all of a sudden, we got to fight about it. The reason I’m passionate about this is I know the community needs it.
“When you need something on your side of town, you get it. When we need something, we don’t. I want to work with everybody but if you’re not going to work with me, dadgummit, what makes you think I want to work with you?
“If you really want to know about what Black folks feel … You want real talk? Real talk is, that book don’t really matter to us … it’s just a book. We’re living life right now and right now we’re saying all we want from you is to let us have data so we can make sure we’re meeting the kids’ needs better than we think we are. And number two, we just want to ride on a bus that’s already rolling.
“But you want to argue about a book.
“One of the most frustrating things is you try to work with somebody on some little bit of something, and they push back at you over something like this … The Knoxville Interdenominational Christian Ministry Alliance has supported this program for seven years. This is a proven program that our community needs, and I think it will be a shame if this board does not approve this contract that this community has come to count on and utilize.”
As a minister of an inner-city church and former NAACP president, Butler has put in years of long hours untangling hard problems in his community. This attack on the Freedom School by school board colleagues comes on the heels of Butler’s losing battle to keep a Chattanooga charter school for boys from opening in his district. Both Horn and Triplett supported the charter, mostly, they said, because they support parents’ rights, parental “choice.”
But what about the rights of parents of students served by Freedom Schools?
Whatever the vote on the MOU, Freedom School will be in session this summer, with or without data sharing and bus rides. It will just be a little harder on the children who need the most help.
Betty Bean writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.