Nashville News Blog

​Finally, it's what we've been waiting for in this special session--a fight! And it looks like it could become a doozy complete with racial imputations and arguments about which political party cares the most about public schoolkids.

Republicans and Democrats are drawing lines in the sand over how many blacks should serve on the 15-member advisory panel that will develop the scheme for evaluating teachers and principals in this state. Senate Republicans say one's enough. House Democrats want as many as five minority members, a number they say reflects the diversity of the Tennessee population.

House Democratic caucus chairman Mike Turner just woke up reporters in the Legislative Plaza pressroom to give us a briefing. We were delighted to hear we finally have discovered something at least mildly entertaining to write about.

"What they envision is 14 white men and one minority," Turner said of Senate Republicans. "That's not acceptable. That's not negotiable."

Asked why he thinks Republicans oppose more minority representation, Turner said:

"That goes without saying. Let's just look at this. Democrats try to be fair to everyone. We appreciate everyone, and Republicans don't have the same interest in minorities. They're all white or mostly."

There's one other point of disagreement: The House wants educators to make up a majority of the advisory panel. In the Senate version of the bill, five members would be teachers or principals. Turner said:

"There's an element on the Republican aisle that's not as pro-public education as most of us up here are. They're more in the home school vein, more private school vein, more voucher vein, more charter school vein. They do not particularly appreciate what public school teachers do in this state. We don't want them to put a bunch of voucher advocates on this thing. That would be detrimental to public schools."