"Tennessee to Welcome 50 New Anti-Woke Public Charter Schools" Transcript:
David Bozell: Welcome to ForAmerica, fun-size your infotainment in short bits, because nobody has an attention span for anything anymore. And that's just okay.
Man, so we've got to celebrate success when it's right in front of us, right? Hillsdale College, everyone knows Hillsdale. Beautiful people out of Michigan, pro-constitution, pro-United States. They were longtime advertisers on Rush's show. Arguably, one of the most conservative colleges in the country and just all around good people.
Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee, man, he's sticking it to the Left. He has awarded $32 million to Hillsdale. He's inviting Hillsdale to start at least 50, five-zero, public charter schools in the state of Tennessee, which is just awesome. Now, they've got about 13 schools across...or I guess, like 24 schools across 13 states. That are all centered around their 1776 curriculum, which was developed as a counter to The New York Times' 1619 curriculum. And basically as a counter to all this CRT stuff. And it's great. But Bill Lee, Tennessee, man, I am jealous.
Every state has different charter school hoops that they got to jump through to get one started and built and permitted and all those things. I mean, just to give you a little bit of an example of the discrepancy, Florida has 680 different charter schools and Virginia has something like seven.
Now Virginia's charter school system, it's in the state constitution where you've got to get approved by the school board where you want to build the school. So imagine what the school board's going to do. Now that's in the Virginia state constitution. It's the kind of thing that Youngkin's trying to navigate really, as he came into office on a pro-parent, pro-family, anti-CRT agenda. A pro-America curriculum agenda. [He] wants charter schools, but he's got to navigate the Virginia state constitution and probably get an amendment to that constitution passed in order to get really up and running.
In lieu of that, you can do some things, vis-a-vis funding students, not systems, that kind of stuff. But certain states, it's easier to get a charter school up and running, and Tennessee has just gone for it. And this is a direct result, I think of DeSantis down in Florida, winning on a conservative agenda...in a purple state, no less. About to cruise to reelection and basically turning a purple state into a ruby red state down in Florida on a very strong conservative agenda. And other states and other governors who are probably sitting in a more redder...they're more red than Florida is, population wise, they're starting to ask why not us? Why can't we do some creative things?
Now, Tennessee is booming. Nashville is the fastest growing city in the country. And the politics have been sound in Tennessee for a number of cycles now. That was where Al Gore came from, just to give you a sense of how things have shifted in Tennessee, and that it used to be purple.
But here we are, they've announced a $30 plus million grant to invite Hillsdale to develop 50, five-zero, charter schools in Tennessee. That's awesome. I'm jealous.
I hope other states see this as a warning flare to compete, to do these types of things. And that's the beauty of the 50-state experiment. Federalism, baby, working. So good on Hillsdale, congrats to Hillsdale and congrats to Tennessee families. You're going to see the benefits of this for decades and generations to come. Congrats.