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Chip Baker
Chip Baker wants a chance to forge a greater relationship between Hamilton County Schools and the business community, so he announced this week he would seek a third term on the school board.
Mr. Baker has served the northwest area of the county as District 2 representative for eight years, five of them as chairman or vice chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Education.
“I’m running again because I feel like in the past eight years I’ve made a difference in many aspects of the school system, particularly in trying times such as leadership change,” said Mr. Baker, who was on the board when Superintendent Jim Scales came to Hamilton County in 2006.
As a member of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce board, Mr. Baker said he is a natural fit to continue building school programs that support the needs of the business community.
During his tenure on the school board, he supported the school system’s move to a single-path diploma and the division of high schools into various academies focusing on career paths such as construction, health, transportation and communication.
“I think building the relationship the school system has with the business community is the key to the economic future of our community,” he said.
Mr. Baker, 50, is executive director of the Riverbend Festival. He and his wife, Karlette, have four children: Shea, 15; Skyler, 13; Sullivan, 11; and Sophie, 8.
He said he would like to see the board work more as a team, saying it was something all nine members needed to work on.
Treena Smith, a friend of Mr. Baker, worked on a committee with him to help bring a high school to Signal Mountain, which will happen this August when the middle-high school opens its doors on there.
Ms. Smith said the fact that Mr. Baker had served on the board for so many years showed he was a “steadfast supporter” of public education who was able to get things done.
“He helped Signal Mountain and Walden residents realize if we wanted a school up here, we’d have to be part of the solution, and we’d have to step into action,” she said.
Despite a communitywide tendency to be critical of the school system, Mr. Baker said there were many positive signs often overlooked.
“The grass is always greener somewhere else,” he said. “But other people outside look at us as a school system of successes, of innovation, of taking a very diverse school system and moving it forward on multiple fronts.”
Kelli Gauthier covers K-12 education in Hamilton County for the Times Free Press. She started at the paper as an intern in 2006, crisscrossing the region writing feature stories from Pikeville, Tenn., to Lafayette, Ga. She also covered crime and courts before taking over the education beat in 2007. A native of Frederick, Md., Kelli came south to attend Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in print journalism. Before newspapers, ...
