American Classical Academy announces location of first school in Tennessee
LA VERGNE, Tenn. (WKRN) – After more than a year of debate, a new charter school will open in Rutherford County this August.
American Classical Academy Rutherford announced their first school in Tennessee will be in La Vergne at 2 Ingram Blvd off I-24.
The location is currently home to the Ingram Entertainment offices.
PREVIOUS: American Classical Academy charter school applications up for vote Tuesday
“We’ve been looking for a building for over a year. We at first planned actually to build from ground up, but the cost of that became a negative,” ACA Head of School Phil Schwenk said. “This building is what I would call, ‘almost school ready.’ I mean, it’s not perfectly a school, but you could actually do school in it at this point.”
The ACA is associated with Hillsdale College of Michigan.
Last summer, the president of the conservative college was caught making negative comments about public school teachers.
Shortly after, Rutherford County denied ACA’s application, but later accepted it.
Schwenk said for their first year, they are hoping to enroll 340 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. He hopes they will then add a grade each year and eventually serve about 700 students grades K-12.
Rutherford County’s first charter school breaks ground
While Schwenk said parents are excited about the location near the interstate, the school will also be just blocks away from an Amazon warehouse; there are trucks regularly going up and down the street, but Schwenk said the traffic won’t be a concern.
“As far as the zoning and making sure that traffic, that’s part of the work that we’re doing to make sure that it coming in and out the building is safe. That’s part of the work that we do with the county,” he said.
Groups like the Tennessee Education Association (TEA) strongly oppose American Classical coming to Tennessee. TEA President Tanya Coats noted charter schools aren’t required to follow local school board of education policies and don’t need to hire licensed teachers.
“They are taking away funding in our school systems and not being held accountable to those funds,” she said. “Most of our charter schools, or charter schools that I know of, they could cherry pick their students.”
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Schwenk said while charter schools do get public school funding, he needs to work in partnership with Rutherford County Schools (RCS).
“Part of our work with RCS is to make sure that we’re in compliance…that we’re abiding by the laws of the state and the nation. That’s part of what we do,” he said.
According to Schwenk, about a quarter of their available spots for the 2024-25 school year are filled, but he believes more parents will sign up now that they have secured a location.
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