The joint meeting of the Hamilton County Commission and Hamilton County Board of Education on March 14 was short on action plans, but it sure produced action.
Last Tuesday, the Department of Education officially requested the school board approve $5,324,000 be taken from its fund balance to pay for roofs at five schools and energy management system controls at a sixth.
On Wednesday, Hamilton County Commissioner Tim Boyd released a plan that would reallocate $4.1 million from the county's yet-to-be-created fiscal 2018 budget, allocate $43.15 million in potential new bond funds for a new elementary school and various athletic facilities, and, in the process, free up Dalewood Middle School for Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts (CSLA) to move to by combining Dalewood and Brainerd High School at Brainerd's facility. All of this would be accomplished, he said, without a tax increase.
We believe county commissioners, school board members and school district administrators finally understand that the status quo in Hamilton County Schools will not cut it with the public anymore. That same public has seen - just in the last 15 months - low test scores, an excoriation from the state over the district's low-performing schools plan, the pool cue rape of an Ooltewah High School basketball player that in time resulted in the resignation of the school superintendent, the search for a new superintendent, and the filing of various lawsuits.
We'll know how serious the action is on April 20 when the school board is expected to vote on Interim Superintendent Kirk Kelly's proposal to spend part of the district's fund balance on some facility needs, and then again when the next joint meeting involving the County Commission and the school board occurs.
The school district, for instance, already has come a long way since the March 14 meeting. Before that meeting, County Commissioner Greg Martin had suggested a plan that had the commission using what was left of its fiscal 2017 bond money and combining it with other funds to help pay for roofs on several schools.
At the meeting, County Commissioner Joe Graham suggested the school district use some of its $61 million fund balance to help with its various maintenance needs. But Christie Jordan, the district's assistant superintendent for finance, defended the balance, saying some funds were untouchable, other funds were needed to maintain a cash flow and still other funds had to be used to pay up front for grants that in time would be refunded.
Boyd's plan, meanwhile, was deemed by many to be dead on arrival, but the commissioner at least deserves credit for researching how the potential 2018 county budget might be cut, how savings could produce new bond money for schools and school facilities, and how undercapacity schools might be combined without significant zoning and transportation problems.
His efforts, he said, had produced more communication from the school district than he received in his previous six years on the commission. And, he challenged, any critics should be willing to add to the dialogue.
"I've brought a plan," Boyd later told Times Free Press editors and reporters. "I've never been handed a [schools strategic] plan for six years. If everybody wants to shoot arrows at my plan, you've got to have an alternative plan, and you can't have a tax increase."
Yes, the commissioner pre-empted the budget and county mayor with his "reallocation of county funds." Yes, he has had recent and long-standing disputes with several of the departments and agencies he has proposed cutting. Yes, he pre-empted the school board with suggestions of how potential bond money ought to be spent. Yes, even though his reasoning is sound, there are significant reasons why a Dalewood-Brainerd combination won't work. Yes, his relocation of CSLA to Dalewood doesn't consider the magnet school's needed expansion to grades K-12. Yes, this was admittedly his work and no one else's.
But, while one school board member constantly complains that "if we only had more money " and one county commissioner wants to see if the "ethnic breakdown of CSLA favors one group over another," Boyd has produced a working document.
Meanwhile, the school district is willing to dip into its large pocketbook to roof some of its schools. Open enrollment was mentioned by several school board members as something to be considered at the last joint County Commission-school board meeting. Individual members of both bodies are making noises about not wasting any more time.
As County Commissioner Sabrena Smedley said in Wednesday's meeting of the Hamilton County Finance and Education committees, "It's time to put an action plan into place."
The inertia of the past and the future of the county's students demand it.