On one end of the room where the Hamilton County Board of Education met Thursday, Ted and Kelly Alling were weeping joyfully after the proposal for the Chattanooga Preparatory School they want to start was approved.
On the other end, school board member Karitsa Mosley Jones also was wiping away tears as she quickly left the room after the meeting ended and went directly to her car, having commented during the meeting on the charter school proposal by reminding the public of "how much money we have to pay out" for charter schools.
Where it comes to Hamilton County public school students, why must there be a winner and a loser?
The Allings, who moved to Chattanooga in 2002, have felt a burden for many years to help local students in impoverished communities. They determined, after visiting the successful Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy (CGLA), that launching a companion charter school for boys was the right move.
They certainly didn't have to make the commitment to start the school or buy two buildings to house the school in the Highland Park community adjacent to CGLA. Money buys a lot of other fineries than the headaches of starting a school from scratch, remodeling the buildings into state-of-the-art classrooms and buying an additional piece of property to build an athletic stadium for both schools.
The school is scheduled to start in 2018 with 60 sixth-graders, have a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) curriculum and emphasize mentorship. Plans are to add one grade each year.
The request to approve Chattanooga Preparatory School came from Hamilton County assistant superintendent Zac Brown, who - with other Hamilton County Schools officials - had been tasked with making certain all the t's had been crossed and the i's dotted by charter applicants.
"If we felt [the application] still needed work," he said in answer to a question by school board member Joe Galloway, "the board has an option to deny."
Jones couched her comments on the new charter school as us versus them.
If per-pupil expenditures are about $8,000, she reasoned, spending on 60 students would mean $480,000 would come out of the Hamilton County Schools budget and go to Chattanooga Preparatory School.
"We lose that amount," Jones said. "I just kind of want to make that public knowledge so our community understands how much money we have to pay out - that doesn't go into an actual public school. It goes to a public option. I just want the community to understand that."
To extend that, she had Brown explain that the district currently has 1,090 students in charter schools and Christie Jordan, assistant superintendent for finance/purchasing, note that the county's three charter schools receive $8.8 million for those students.
What Jones, who also made the motion last week for a sense-of-the-board vote against voucher legislation that would help students in failing schools, seems not to grasp is that the money follows the student. The district didn't earn the money, and it's not the district's to give.
Board member Tiffanie Robinson, who did not cast a vote on the charter because of her business relationship with the Allings, made a case for the school.
"The kids in my district, along with Karitsa's district," she said, "are absolutely looking for something unique. More importantly, they're looking for a community to be a part of."
Board member Rhonda Thurman said Hamilton County parents crave educational options for their students.
"I think parents should have the choice to send their kids to school wherever they want," she said. "Parents are going to have themselves options, and they're going to take advantage of those options whether it's through vouchers, charter schools or whatever they have to do."
Both Thurman and Robinson said they didn't believe Chattanooga Preparatory School would have any trouble getting the 60 students they would need to open.
"Just remember," Thurman reminded those present when she cast her vote for the charter school, "this is not our money. The money belongs to the taxpayers."
The vote, with Robinson's abstention and even Jones voting a weak "yes," was 8-0.
"I think [this] was a huge opportunity for Chattanooga - for us to see people stepping out of the business community into our world, into the education community, to take on a really big endeavor," said Robinson, whose schools stand to lose the most students to the charter. "I know their hearts are absolutely in the right place. They're doing it because they care."
Caring about students - and not in which school the money is housed - should always be the first priority for our public schools.