Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 4/16/14. Staff MugsLast week, Hamilton County commissioners voted 8-1 for a property tax plan that promises $100 million for public school infrastructure.
Make that $99 million. School officials will take $1 million off the top, dividing it among our 79 schools for school supplies. (That's about $24 for every one of our 42,000 students.)
Where will the rest go?
Which schools will see repairs and new construction?
Which won't?
Answering this feels like Philosophy 101. Will the county divide the $100 million in utilitarian ways? The most money for the most good?
Or will the funding be an act of justice, with the neediest schools receiving the most money?
In an anti-tax county, Mayor Jim Coppinger led the commission to a nearly unanimous vote on what's essentially a tax increase. Not many area leaders could pull that off. Patience has always seemed one of Coppinger's virtues. (For years, he was playing chess while the rest of us played checkers.)
Yet sometimes, in the sport of politics, such a vote requires deals. It's not unthinkable to wonder whether a commissioner's "yes" vote came with some hidden expectations for his or her district. Some goods. Some dinero.
Like a new middle school. Or a new gym. Or a new addition.
All this is purely hypothetical. Purely. But such an agreement seems normal in the realm of politics, and certainly normal in the realm of local politics.
There's just one problem. (Well, several.)
In February, the school board voted to adopt its 1-2-3 priority list of construction needs.
- A new building for Harrison Elementary.
- Repairing the Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts.
- And a new East Hamilton Middle School.
Now that the $100 million is coming, will that priority list be honored?
Or forgotten?
I'm particularly interested in CSLA families. In 1999, they were promised a new school. Decades later, they are still waiting.
CSLA has won national awards. Teachers are decorated at the highest levels. Parents are starry-eyed over their kids' education. Test scores are through the (dilapidated) roof.
But no county funding.
Short of civil disobedience, parents have tried everything. Petitions. Talk radio. Blogs. Agitating's become a second job. Not too long ago, in one three-day, they camped out on the courthouse lawn, sent 305 emails, packed the commission room.
(One parent sadly joked, we only need 450 million box tops.)
Will CSLA see any of the $100 million?
Don't buy the hype that CSLA would suck up too much of the $100 million. Back in 2012, a new K-12 CSLA was price-tagged at $46 million.
But lately that number has ballooned, with school board members and commissioners estimating the cost at nearly $70 million.
CSLA parents are bumfuzzled. How can the cost nearly double in five years? Where are the engineering studies that prove this?
In the end, the $100 million won't be enough.
So which schools will get funded?
Which won't?
And why?
David Cook writes a Sunday column and can be reached at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.