B School System on F Funding? Saber-Rattling

You have heard the saber rattling over the years about the Knox County School System being a B school system on F funding. During the administrations of Dwight Kessel (1980-1994) that may have been correct. During the administration of former Knox County Schools Business Manager Tommy Schumpert 1994-2002, that is true.

However, during the first two years of County Mayor Mike Ragsdale’s administration (2002-2004) more that $21.5 million in NEW dollars have been placed in the Knox County School System budget. $10.0 million in each year and $1.5 million in new dollars through consolidation of duplicated services.

This morning on Inside Tennessee 8/15/04 the saber rattling has returned once more.

I will examine in greater detail in future post the schools that are on the NCLB list. It appears that KCS are losing ground while receiving more funds.


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8 Responses

  1. joe citizen says:

    skeptisism abounds when talking about “funding” and “taxes” … a good-faith sales job should include —
    [1] Whats the total budget ? [2] Are we optimizing captital ? [3] Are we being creative (i.e. what are the barries to using school captial to generate revenue — outside of high-school football, etc…) [4] Is there waste ?

    Is every tax one step closer to socialism (European style) ? Is that a bad thing ? Eurpope is centuries ahead of us on the time-line … are we slowly evolving to their current systems(socialism) — repeating their history ? Again, is that a bad thing ?

  2. Cathy M. says:

    If Joe Citizen likes Europe so very much, if the system over there suits him better than it does here,then I invite him to go live there. Try France or Germany. I believe they would welcome you with open arms.

  3. joe citizen says:

    hey Cat … you missed my point … point is — I DON’T want to live in socialism. Therefore, I presume you are against a new tax — ‘the wheel tax’ ? — Being another tax, and one step closer to one of your favorite countries — Germany or France.

  4. Joe C. your first post did infer that you were advocating a John Hienz-Kerrey socialist type of taxation. It sounded like you were trying to be like Michael Baldwin. Go back and read your post. Cathy was correct in her thoughts, based on your words not hers. Thanks for clearing it up.

  5. joe citizen says:

    Thanks Brian. I was trying to invoke debate with the question marks ( ? ) Indeed, my words may imply anything. The punctuation is key. The question marks beg response — which Cat provided.
    Speaking of local taxes — I don’t see anything wrong with Lawson McGhee Library … I actually like Lawson, and it’s modern architecture — If they need more space, why not just build an extension, instead of building a whole new Taj’

  6. joe citizen says:

    reading my post again, everything there says I am a conservative, except for ” Is that a bad thing ? “, which was meant to provoke comment — it worked.

  7. Joe, I appreciate your participating and providing thought provoking statements. If you know me, I love a lively debate and I never take any comment personally. Please continue with more comments and make suggestions for more thought provoking issues for us to tackle.

  8. joe citizen says:

    Thanks much. Well, what about offshoring. Should any US organization be able to offshore as much as they want ? … where the end result is skeleton corps in the in the US … turning the US from a capitalist state into a capital-less state ?