Tuesday night, Rick Smith made the third stop on his 40-Cents-for-Public-Schools tour. This time, the schools superintendent spoke to a crowd at Wallace Smith Elementary in Ooltewah. Next week, it's Signal Mountain. Then, East Ridge, followed by Hixson.
Smith is traveling to 11 different public schools, raising awareness, support and consciousness for a proposed 40-cent property tax increase that would boost the county budget by $34 million to make our public school system into something it's never been before.
"The best school system in the South," he said.
David CookRead more
Superintendent Rick Smith makes passionate plea for more school funding
This is a tax increase in name only. More truthfully, we should call it an investment. Referring to this as a tax increase -- poor, bristly semantics -- strips away the beautiful and transforming power that such funding would have in the lives of our children and teachers, whose school day experience would be enriched by what Smith is proposing.
Art teachers in every elementary school.
Foreign language teachers in every elementary school.
Teacher raises.
Technology updates.
Infrastructure improvements.
It would be an embarrassment -- here in 2015 -- to refuse to fund such a curriculum of enlightenment. A 40-cent increase works out to $150 a year for a middle class family, which is what most of us spend on cable TV and cellphones each month. It's the first tax increase in a decade for public schools.
And it's wholly justified.
That's why Smith shouldn't be the one traveling around making speeches. The burden shouldn't fall on him to argue for what's right.
The onus should be on Hamilton County commissioners.
Let them bear the responsibility of explaining why such things aren't good for Hamilton County kids.
Let them travel into our schools, telling county parents and voters and business leaders why our children don't need art instruction and foreign languages, and why our teachers don't need raises.
Let them defend their fiscal rigidity and no-art vote in the face of libraries of research that show the miraculous difference that regular art and foreign language instruction have in the life of a child.
"Students with high arts involvement performed better on standardized achievement tests than students with low arts involvement. Moreover, the high arts-involved students also watched fewer hours of TV, participated in more community service and reported less boredom in school," reports the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.
Refusing to approve this 40-cent proposal becomes an act of neglect -- and harm, like handing out cigarettes on the playground. Plus, it could fracture the school system in deep ways, creating long-term ripples that could play out like this:
The end of a unified county school system.
Angry at the lack of appropriate funding, municipalities could begin to form their own school districts. Early signs of such frustration are evident: Community education funds have already sprung up in multiple neighborhoods, born of the great need and desire parents have to fund the things their children need in ways the county doesn't. (Like art teachers, foreign language classes, supplies for teachers.)
Last year, East Ridge voters amended their city charter in a way that could allow them to form their own school district.
In the days to come, other neighborhoods and municipalities could pass similar charter changes, and then go a step further -- leaving Hamilton County to form their own school districts.
Call it educational secession.
It might lead to the freedom our kids need.
Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCook TFP.