We are frustrated some members of the Hamilton County Board of Education, at least one state legislator and members of the community still do not understand the gravity of improving the district's lowest performing schools.
For more than a decade, the state Department of Education has prodded, suggested, hinted, cajoled, wheedled and otherwise tried to convince local officials of the need to turn around schools where test scores show students aren't making adequate progress in reading and math, are scoring below their counterparts across the state and have nowhere near the wherewithal to make it in college.
Local nods of heads have always followed these messages - yeah, yeah, we hear you - but the seriousness of the problem seems never to have taken hold.
Now, having known for several years that this failure would result in the schools being taken over by the state, local officials are still balking, pushing back and asking for more time.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, the time is up.
Instead of automatically placing the five schools - Brainerd High, Dalewood and Orchard Knob Middle, and Woodmore and Orchard Knob Elementary - in the state-run Achievement School District, Tennessee Commissioner of Education Dr. Candice McQueen has suggested a five-year state-local collaborative that would keep much of the control locally.
Interim Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Dr. Kirk Kelly has said he is in favor of it, school administrators have been briefed on it and school board members have been given a heads-up.
On Thursday, McQueen elaborated further to the board - and to the public in attendance - on the partnership.
"There is not an option for no decision," McQueen said.
The board, in time, must either approve the collaboration (which would have a planning year before being implemented), or at least some of the schools will be placed in the Achievement School District.
Hamilton County School Board Chairman Steve Highlander seemed in wonderment that the state would be the "senior partner" in the plan. He then asked McQueen if the state would take responsibility for the success or failure of the schools under the partnership.
Were we the commissioner, we might have asked the chairman if the board deserved the responsibility up to now. But, diplomatically, she did not, saying it would be a shared responsibility.
Board member Tiffanie Robinson wondered why state and local officials wouldn't have an equal number of seats on the collaborative's board.
McQueen patiently explained the move was an intervention and that the state now had a greater stake in what happened and needed to help ensure success.
She also reiterated how much extra investment - more than $10 million - the state already had made in the schools while they remained under local control.
Board member Rhonda Thurman questioned the legality of the nonprofit collaborative, and state Rep. JoAnne Favors wondered if it was a civil rights violation.
With all due respect, the commissioner of education did not come up with the partnership while driving down from Nashville yesterday. She would never have suggested it in the first place if it hadn't been refined by hours of work, run by experts so they could add their knowledge, and didn't meet with state and federal criteria.
Is that a guarantee of success? Of course not. Neither is the Achievement School District, which has had mixed results.
But in the decade since local officials were first put on notice about the need to turn the schools around, an entire generation of schoolchildren has been lost. How many more must we waste?
A hastily formed organization calling itself the Chattanooga Public School Coalition had members at the school board meeting Thursday. Couldn't the board wait a year before voting on the collaboration, the organization wanted to know.
Seriously?
Where was this group for the last decade? How would it suggest the schools be turned around? How can it guarantee that just one more year will change things? How can it tell parents of students who want their children to succeed that we shouldn't try anything new? How can its members look in the mirror and say to themselves that the status quo is just fine?
It's reprehensible, actually, that too many people in influential positions want to chain students to low-performing schools. The same crowd usually is against charter schools, vouchers and anything that might have a sliver of a chance to raise the education levels of students, too.
How dare they? Indeed, how dare they?