Rural Republicans Are Fighting to Save Their Public Schools

Drive an hour south of Nashville into the rolling countryside of Marshall County, Tennessee—past horse farms, mobile homes, and McMansions—and you will arrive in Chapel Hill, population 1,796. It’s the birthplace of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who helped found the Ku Klux Klan. And it’s the home of Todd Warner, one of the most unlikely and important defenders of America’s besieged public schools.

Warner is the gregarious 53-year-old owner of PCS of TN, a 30-person company...