This article in today’s print product of the Big Metal Shed on the Hill is a BS discussion.
First of all, why is the school district even thinking or considering being a redevelopment anchor to any portion of our community. They are considering taking our tax money to be a redevelopment anchor for a blighted area that everyone abandoned years ago. Second, last year the budget discussion, the Great School Partnership recruited some people to create the SOS (Save our Schools or something like that) they were joined by Big Metal Shed Editor Jack McElroy who used a lot of ink to push for millions and millions of dollars. Knox County Mayor and Commission came up with a more realistic budget. The school board and Superintendent accepted a slower pace at implementing what they wanted to implement. After the budget process and the new year started they ended up with a surplus allowing the district to receive the amount they nearly said they needed.
Let us now fast forward to before this years budget. The Knox Area Chamber has interviewed 900 people who say that they want to contribute more money in taxes for schools. While the Chamber, daily paper, Great Schools Partnership, the county council association of nothing to do during the day parents and the Save Our Schools or something like that are preparing for a ground war for more money. The out of touch school board is out looking at a piece of crap big box to spend our tax dollars to renovate and move their offices.
A majority of the school board said that the soon to be replaced Carter Elementary School was a great building for the Carter Elementary School children. So if it is good for the kids, surely the adults have no problem there, move several of central office administration there. Then go out to Old South Junior High (next door to Dogwood School and Sarah Simpson Technology and Training Center) and move some central office operation there. Take the old Rule High School and move some of the central office operation there. Then there is the old Cedar Bluff Intermediate School. Move part of central office operation there. Close the failing Austin East High School, move those students to Fulton, Central, South Doyle, West and move the remaining central office operation there.
Ok, problem solved and millions of tax payer dollars are saved. Now let’s start the bulldozer, level the old Standard Knitting Mills building. Sow some grass seed and waa laa, green space in downtown central district.
Find a poor house to move ’em into. After all, that’s where Knox County taxpayers will be living if Central Office and the BOE have their way with us.
Why does the Knox County Public School System have to place its office in some abandoned worn out part of Knoxville, within a short 10 minute drive of the most underperforming schools in our system. This makes absolutely no sense and why does the Knox County Public School System have to engage in such bad optics as putting it headquarters in a run down part of town?
If downtown is not suitable for the location of this organization, I’d suggest they get into the center of the Knox County population and student base, which is Cedar Bluff Road and take over one of those empty towers out there. Do most of our central office personnel live within a 15 minute drive of Magnolia Avenue or has the Office of Civil Rights returned to Knox County, after demanding that all of our Magnet Schools be placed inner city and we now obligated to put our central office in the inner city?
Good grief, nonsensical decisions like this are all the more reason to eliminate a school board in Knox County under our home rule charter and have County Commission hire a school superintendant who gives a rats rear end about the normal students in Knox County who want to go to school to learn and are motivated to better themselves.
Kids are without textbooks in our overcrowded West Knoxville schools and the system want to redevelop some blighted property in East Knoxville. Get real McIntyre, get real.
I can’t believe the KNS & the Chamber has started the push for a tax increase again. This bogus poll that was commissioned is very suspect. With a year that has seen the school board & Dr. McIntyre refuse to take responsibility for the security fiasco, they have really the guts to start demanding more money? If the iPad boondoggle is so essential to learning in this county, why was none of the surplus monies last year spent to begin the process. With a school board, superintendent and commissioners like Broyles & Hammond, I am very thankful for Mayor Burchett who I hope will once again present a budget that funds the schools without demanding more money from property owners. If they want a tax increase, then let it be a sales tax referendum, that has to be voted on, not a property tax increase that 6 people can decide to force on the rest of us.