Knox County School Board asked for a little more than $4 million and the County Mayor (who always needs a fight) said NO. Now the TN BEP is shorting the schools $3.0 million next year for a total decrease of $7.0 million. Burchett will try and blame the State, Governor Haslam and any body but himself.
Let’s review Burchett served 16 years in either the State House and/or Senate all 16 years the BEP has been the funding mechanism. Between the years 2000-2004, I served on the Knox County School Board, served as Vice Chairman of the board in 2003. I served as the East Director for the Tennessee School Board Association from 2002-2004. Every year Burchett asked to change the BEP. He didn’t do it. Now, delay, delay, delay and burying ones head in the sand gets the school kids screwed next year. Primarily because Burchett needs an enemy to beat upon, he has a willing Commission to use the kids as a political wedge issue and a School Board that sits complacently allowing the political wedge to be the weapon with which to beat the education of our children. Read Donila’s take here.
I am still confused why the County Mayor eats so many lunches in so many school cafeterias.
What a joke! As the child of an educator and a parent of children currently in elementary school is makes me sick to see out educators faces spit on by clowns like TB
BEP is state money, not county. If McIntyre truly cared about the teachers, instead of trying to score political points, which at this point is futile for him anyway, he would find the money in his own budget. He’s found it for other things. The teachers know who their friends are.
Shadow, yes it is state $$ and Burchett was in state government for 16 years and Mayor of the county for 4. He was asked by me and many others over 16 years to change the BEP Funding mechanism, he was lazy. Passing road kill bills and other nonsensical legislation.
The State of Tennessee $3 million is less than 1 percent of the total Knox County Public School System budget for 2014-2015, but you’d think that somebody just took a 15 percent cut in their salary (which a number of hard working tax paying citizens have done since 2008).
Most of the responsibility for this fiasco rests with Mike Edwards and the rest of the baffoonery over at the Chamber of Commerce which is charged with recruiting and relocating for profit business and industry to Knox County (not to Blount, Roane, Sevier, or Hamilton County for that matter). For profit businesses pay a Knox County property tax and their employees purchase homes and pay a property tax to Knox County. These not for profit hospitals, the physical plant for these big government employers, Knox County, Knox County Schools, the University of Tennessee, the FBI, TVA, the swanky federal courthouse there in downtown Knoxville pay zero, nothing, nada in the form of a property tax. All of Edwards efforts and energy to focus on retail, strip malls, and the gooky stuff out at Turkey Creek generates a sales tax revenue, minimum property taxes (which are subject to the developers requests for reappraisals and reductions), and the love of the sales tax revenue plays right into the hands of the BEP trap that just cost the Knox County Public School System a quick $3 million.
In the big picture, the loss of revenue is minor compared to what is actually being paid for this collossal school system, it’s not about the money, it’s about the results that you product, not the tests that you take.