Council Wants 'Conversation' on Controversial Cayce Homes Charter School

NASHVILLE, TN — MDHA officials are being asked to come to a special joint meeting of two key Metro Council committees to answer questions about the increasingly-controversial charter school planned for the $602 million redevelopment of the Cayce Homes public housing project.

The joint meeting of the Budget and Finance and Education committees is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 19. It was the brainchild of Budget and Finance chair John Cooper, who told The Tennessean he and Education chairman Ed Kindall planned to have several such joint meetings of which the Cayce meeting will be the first.

The charter school that's a $22 million component has emerged as a vexing palaver within the much-praised Envision Cayce project. The first signs of trouble came when the non-profit Martha O'Bryan Center's CEO seemingly assisted a political group to find campaign workers for four largely pro-charter school board candidates, all of whom were subsequently defeated. The Martha O'Bryan Center will be operating the charter.

But, as The Tennessean reported, the non-profit got the contract to operate the school without going through a bidding process with the Metropolitan Development and Housing Authority. Further, the school will be across the street from an existing charter, as KIPP takes over Kirkpatrick Elementary, which once again raises the question, frequently asked by charter critics, if there is a strategy to locating charter schools or if it happens willy-nilly.

And then there's the question of timing. Kirkpatrick Elementary has been among the state's lowest-performing elementary schools for years, yet once Envision Cayce — which will be a mixed-income project, rather than a low-income one — was approved, two charters, including one within an MDHA project, came in.

An MDHA spokesperson told The Tennessean authority officials look forward to the opportunity.

Image via Shutterstock