My Meeting With Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (Op-Ed)

Image Credit: Moms For Liberty – Williamson County

By Robin Steenman (Chapter Chair, Moms for Liberty – Williamson County, TN)

In February 2022, I received an invite through a representative’s office to meet with Governor Bill Lee.  “Great!” I thought, “maybe he’s finally coming around.”  I had given up trying to get an audience with him during the previous summer after our discoveries about the Wit & Wisdom curriculum; I had wanted to show him first-hand what was being taught in the elementary schools of his home county.  Six months later, perhaps he was ready to hear it.

I asked the governor’s office if I could bring someone with me.  The response was definitive: “No, just you.”  Then my appointment was moved from a top-of-the-hour time to a “10 mins til” the top-of-the-hour time, which clearly meant that I now only had ten minutes. 

“Ok fine,” I thought, “I only have ten minutes – make it count.”  Anyone who knows me also knows that I’m not very adept at small talk, especially when there are big elephants in the room to discuss.  I had a couple of days to think about how to politely and respectfully get right to the elephant in Williamson County in under ten minutes.  I decided that the easiest question that would address the most issues would be to simply ask about Penny Schwinn, his appointed Commissioner of Education.  I believed my logic in this was sound:  most parent concerns in Williamson County (and beyond) can be traced back to her.  So instead of asking about Wit & Wisdom, SEL, CRT, and so on (which I could never get through in only ten minutes), I resolved to ask about the one person pushing all those agendas into TN schools. 

The day arrived.  I managed to find a babysitter for my then 1-year-old and my son who was home sick from school.  I arrived at the Cordell Hull building to check in at the representative’s office before walking alone down the long, luminous subterranean hallway that connects it with the capital building.  Strangely, I noted that I didn’t feel like I was actually alone during that walk.  I felt God’s hand on my shoulder, telling me I could do this, and that there was a reason.  I felt very calm.

The anteroom of the governor’s office is quite large with dark hued woodwork, chandeliers, and historic murals painted on the walls.  After checking in, I took a seat along a side wall and waited only a few minutes before Governor Lee walked in from the hallway, shook my hand and directed me to follow him into his office.

What happened next was totally unexpected. 

Let’s just say I asked my chosen question about Penny Schwinn, and the roof promptly blew off the governor’s office, or perhaps the governor himself.  I can honestly say that I was very respectful and polite when I asked the question.  I was genuinely surprised that a politician, traditionally known for shaking hands and kissing babies, and the leader of our state couldn’t smile politely and just make nice, even if he didn’t like my question.  How could I be a threat to him?  What did it gain him to yell at me?  Would it not have been far more politically skillful to smile disingenuously, butter me up, thank me for my efforts and then send me on my way, even if he despised me through it all?  At the best, he would fool me into thinking he was my ally (and that probably would have worked, because I can be gullible).  At the least, I wouldn’t be writing any of this. 

But that’s not how it went down.

After the meeting, I knew very well that sharp memories dull over time, so I immediately sat down in the halls of the capital, opened my laptop, and threw down all the details while they were still fresh.  What follows is what I’ve called the “Debrief” and shared with only a few people over the past year.  I was tempted to add to it and create complete sentences, better syntax, punctuation, etc. for this blog.  But then…. You, the reader, wouldn’t be getting the raw data.  There is something to the raw form of things, without embellishment, and this is what I wrote at the capital while still in shock from my meeting with Governor Bill Lee….

DEBRIEF – 10 FEB 2022

I walked in with Gov Lee and was offered a seat in front of the fire place, facing window.  Joseph Williams [chief of staff] behind left shoulder.  John DeBerry joins a few minutes later, stays on opposite side of the room.

Lee starts off talking about exciting times for Republicans.  Mentions his membership in Republican Governors association, how he thinks we’ll pick up more Republican governors in mid-terms, Youngkin, etc.

I said, “That’s all very exciting, but even here in Tennessee, with a Republican super majority, there is still work to be done, especially in education.  Enough so that I as a mom have been called out of my ordinary life of total anonymity to deal with it.”

Then he starts talking about how education is one of his top priorities, ESA’s, school choice, etc. 

I replied that those are all wonderful things, and they are things that we parents appreciate, to include the *effort* towards ESAs and especially the Hillsdale charters (which he lit up when I mentioned) … but then I said “please understand that I am literally where the rubber meets the road, understanding what the average mom is thinking about in the school car line….  We have trouble reconciling those accomplishments with Penny Schwinn as your education commissioner.”

This is the moment that the meeting blew up.  His response was visceral and emotional.  He said that Penny Schwinn was a staunch conservative, that she had done more than anyone to advance school choice in Tennessee, that she had a stellar record in Texas and other states, that we are lucky to have her because so many other conservative governors were “clamoring” to get her. 

He accused me of forming my opinions about Penny Schwinn from social media, that I did not know where to direct my “ire” and I had misplaced focus on the state to fix local problems.  He was fairly condescending when he asked if I’d rather my issues be solved at the federal or local level. I said local. He then used that to say that if the LEA’s don’t like Wit and Wisdom, then they should not have adopted it, and its incumbent upon the parents to weigh in on the school board to fix it.  He also used this opportunity to plug his library bill, praising that it pushed authority back to the school boards and not for the state to decide books. (His library bill is completely ineffectual, btw).

He had very obviously lost his cool by this point.  His chief of staff chimed in, started giving me his resume, that he was a constitutional lawyer, started talking about how things were done 10 years ago and how it’s so much better now, implying that I should be thrilled with the current state of things.

At this point, I did not appreciate Williams taking away from my 10 minutes with the governor and steered it back to myself, saying, “Sir, I hear what you’re saying. But I have 4 points I’d like to make in response to what you said.  I also recognize that I will likely not get through these points in the time I have left, so I would appreciate the opportunity to continue this conversation at another time.”

At this point, Williams gave me his card and said to call him.  The governor said sure, but I am skeptical.  I give it a 20% chance of follow-on meeting.

I said, “look I’m not here to sensationalize, but to tell you what the average parent perceives and is thinking.  I represent 7 counties of Moms for Liberty.”  To which he made a noise of disdain and retorted “Out of 99.” I told him the facts about Penny Schwinn: that she is a democrat, worked for Diane Feinstein, attended Berkeley, left a path of destruction in Texas, responsible for toxic curriculum before TN children, hired Rachel Maves, and now has equity math on the table.

He retorted that she did not push the curriculum.  To which I said, ok, well, she fired the first round reviewers that failed it and had it re-reviewed and then it failed again.  It failed state standards twice and yet she waived it into 33 counties.  If the law had been followed, it wouldn’t be present in TN, kids would not be harmed and I could have my life back.  It is wholly unfair for Penny Schwinn to break the law and protocol to push a favored curriculum into the classroom and expect the parents to 1) discover it, 2) organize, 3) get their school board to overturn a curriculum that has already been paid for.  I pointed out that it is an English Language Arts curriculum with NO phonics component.  Instead, it’s a bargain basement curriculum and WCS paid $500K to have an ad-hoc phonics component printed.  That all goes back to none other than Penny Schwinn.

He started going down his list of merits, BEP plan, his library bill, that he is a true conservative, and that he is a “man of God,” and by this point he was very heated.  He knew he had lost his cool and said, “As you can see, I am very passionate about education.”

The meeting was over at 10:05 so that he could go swear in a Supreme Court Justice.

What’s funny is that afterward, apart from my blue “Moms for Liberty” t-shirt, I thought I was walking around the capital in total anonymity.  Not the case at all!  Apparently, word was spreading around the capital and the Cordell Hull building like wildfire:  the governor just yelled at the Moms for Liberty woman!  Reportedly, Speaker Sexton knew about it less than an hour after it happened.  How?  I don’t know.  Maybe people could hear Bill Lee yelling at me from the hallway?

After having some time to process the meeting, what I found most fascinating was:

1. The Governor’s attitude towards Penny Schwinn. As soon as I brought her up, it was like debating with a leftist:  all emotion and no reason.  Why so much emotion? 

2. The Governor’s attitude towards me. I am just a mom who represents other moms from his home county.  Why so much contempt? 

I wasn’t sure what to do with this information.  Do I sit on it, do I share it?  There was a local news outlet that wanted my story, and I was on the fence about that.  The day that we were to talk, I strangely lost my voice.  I figured that was God telling me, “Not today.”  And so I did nothing with my “Debrief” and went on with my life.  I figured that if it needed to be shared, the time would be apparent.

As Penny Schwinn announced her resignation this week, there has been a lot of talk about her new replacement: Lizette Gonzalez Reynolds. Parents want to know if she’s going to be an improvement over Commissioner Schwinn – will she be in our corner for once?  Gary Humble of Tennessee Stands made a video presentation and a cheat sheet with information about her background – both are worth viewing.

As for me, I am hopeful, but also skeptical.  Gov Lee could have chosen an incredible champion for kids, parents, and teachers (Dr. Beth Meyers anyone?), but instead he chose a non-teacher with deep connections to the Bush family and whose only “education in education” came from the Pahara Institute, which is a far-left institution easily tied to George Soros via the Aspen Institute.

When you pair this information with Gov Lee’s attitude towards Penny Schwinn and also to me, my skepticism level is running a little higher than my hope.  I hope to be proven wrong. 

In the meantime, I’m just going to leave this right here…

A word about the truth:  owing to the “just you” stipulation made by the governor’s office and because I wasn’t shrewd enough to put a recording device in my pocket (hindsight is 20/20), I don’t have anyone to corroborate my “debrief.”  Anyone could accuse me of lying.  But I am famously terrible at lying (never mind that it’s wrong), and most people know me as a truth-teller (at times, too much so).  I would also never publish a blog that breaks one of God’s Ten Commandments by bearing false witness against my neighbor (i.e., my governor).  It’s up to your discernment as to whether you think I’m telling the truth or not.

“That’s the iron law of the universe: true things prevail.”  – Tucker Carlson, April 2023

About the Author: Robin Steenman is the Chapter Chair for Moms for Liberty – Williamson County