Hamilton County school board candidates hold debate before early voting opens Friday

This year's school board election has high stakes.

The next Hamilton County Board of Education will be responsible for selecting the district's new superintendent and ensuring that the district's test scores, which trail the state average, see improvement. Moving forward, the school board also faces the challenge of gaining public trust, which has been waning over the past year.

Four of the school board's nine members are up for reelection Aug. 4, and a majority of their challengers offered solutions during the debate of new approaches they would try to implement if elected to help the district move forward.

The debate, hosted by WTCI, was filmed Tuesday night before an audience and will be aired Thursday evening, just hours before early voting opens Friday. The debate was divided into four segments, with candidates in each race given time to answer questions ranging from budgeting to hiring practices to the need for more vocational training.

Staff photo by John Rawlston / Rhonda Thurman speaks during the meeting of the Hamilton County School Board of Education

District 1

Candidates in this race agreed more vocational training is needed in Hamilton County Schools, but differed when it came to how the school board should allocate its more than $400 million budget and the characteristics wanted in the district's next superintendent.

Rhonda Thurman, the incumbent, said she's in favor of student-based budgeting, which distributes funding to schools on a weighted scale based on the needs of students that attend, instead of relying on basic enrollment ratios. She said she supports this approach because it strips much of the power from the central office and hands it to the principals.

Challenger Jason Moses said he worries that student-based budgeting would be a nightmare for principals, as it could be too much money for them to allocate.

Patti Skates, also a challenger in this race, said additional training would be needed for principals if the district went to a student-based budgeting model, but she sees the benefits of this approach to meet the individual needs of each school.

Moses said when considering qualifications for the next superintendent, he is open to an educator or someone with a background in business taking the helm, adding that he specifically wants the board to hire someone who is capable of handling the large budget.

Thurman wants the board to hire a business leader, "because this is a business," she said.

Skates said she's looking for the best person, and it could be a business person or an educator.

Staff photo by Angela Foster / Jonathan Welch listens during a meeting of the Hamilton County Board of Education

District 2

Teacher recruitment and retention was discussed in the District 2 debate, as incumbent and school board Chairman Jonathan Welch said he wants to see changes made to the current process.

He said the district needs to start by conducting exit interviews so it can know why teachers are leaving, and develop a better way to evaluate teachers.

Welch added that principals need to be given increased autonomy within their buildings, and that the district is "going to recruit better people because we are going to be a better place to work."

Kathy Lennon is challenging Welch, and said she thinks retaining good teachers starts with paying them more.

"Our neighboring states right now are paying so much more and we're losing teachers," she said.

Lennon and Welch both agreed that partnerships with the community strengthen the school system.

To combat low third grade reading scores, Lennon said she hopes to see more pre-K seats available across the county that are aligned with the school system's Kindergarten standards.

Welch said he thinks the district needs to look at the roughly 5,600 students with special needs and then handle each case individually. He cited the district's low inclusion rate of these students in normal classrooms, and said this needs to be reconsidered because national research shows inclusion classrooms benefit all students.

George Ricks

District 4

The topic of funding and equity was discussed at length in the District 4 debate, as about 90 percent of the students attending district schools are considered economically-disadvantaged.

Incumbent George Ricks said if elected he will continue to do what he has been doing for eight years on the school board - advocating for students.

He said specifically the schools need to become more economically diverse.

"If we want to have a mixed community we need to have mixed schools," he said.

Challenger Tiffanie Robinson said she thinks student-based budgeting is a way to create equity in these schools, as it would bring in additional resources.

"It's a tale of two cities in Hamilton County," she said. "And we need to start solving that problem."

Montrell Besley, also a challenger in this race, said he thinks community schools are a great tool that can be used to help these predominantly poor schools serve the community.

"We used to have community schools when I was growing up," he said. "But it wasn't coined that at the time."

He talked about how health centers, mentorship programs and counselors were housed in the school and helped provide students with resources they weren't getting elsewhere.

Robinson, also a proponent of community schools, added that there is a lot of opportunity in District 4 to add resources for the whole community - not just students - by offering things like community dinners and adult education classes.

Ricks repeated throughout the debate that many of these proposed changes require increased funding, which the school system isn't receiving.

"We need to be real about this, if we are going to change our school system we need to add money," he said.

Robinson argued it's not more money the school system needs, but the problem is with how the funding is being allocated.

Donna Horn

District 7

A range of topics was covered in the District 7 debate, as incumbent Donna Horn and challenger Joe Wingate fielded questions and rarely engaged each other.

Horn began by talking about the need for increased principal autonomy.

"Principals are selected because they have certain characteristics," she said. "They need to be able to run their schools the way they want to run them."

Wingate said District 7 is the fastest growing district in the county, and there has been a lack of strategic planning, as East Hamilton Middle/High School was at nearly full-capacity the day it opened and is the only middle or high school in the district.

Wingate said the relationship between the school board and it's funding body, the Hamilton County Commission is fractured and needs to improve.

"The County Commission doesn't feel the school system has been a good steward of taxpayer dollars," he said. "And I certainly feel that way."

Horn said she hopes to see more relationships built between the two bodies, but added that she thinks the school board as a whole is the "least fractured" of the county's boards and commissions.

Horn also talked about the importance of having art in each of the county's elementary schools.

Wingate said art is important, but the focus first has to be placed on the fact that students are not testing on grade level in math and reading.

Contact staff writer Kendi A. Rainwater at 423-757-6592 or kendi.anderson@timesfreepress.com. Follow on Twitter @kendi_and.