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Hamilton County school board seeks bigger budget by 7-2 vote
The proposed 40-cent increase would buy:
* Art teachers in every elementary school. * Foreign language teachers in every elementary school. * 5 percent teacher raises. * Adult and virtual high schools * After-school programs and extra resources for urban schools * Technology updates. * Infrastructure improvements. Source: Hamilton County Department of Education Previous tax increases * August 2005: 26-cent increase: 16 cents went to schools and 10 cents to general government. * July 2007: 26-cent increase: Entire increase went to general government, but included targeted revenue to replace Red Bank Elementary and East Ridge Middle schools. Source: Newspaper archives
Many of us will buy at least $150 worth of plants this spring for our homes and yards.
Some of us just recently spent $150 on a new spring outfit -- maybe for Easter. Others are springing $200 for season tickets to the Lookouts (even though we won't attend even half of the 70 games). Some spent at least twice that on a prom dress. And stories suggest about 5 percent of us will pony up about $400 to buy an Apple watch in the next few weeks.
But ask us to drop another $150 a year on our property tax for schools and you'd think a mad hornet had tied us to its oversized nest.
Yet that $150 a year for a middle-class family owning a $150,000 home is what it will take to bridge the gap between a school system for 43,000 children that can't buy paper to a system that could offer art and foreign language teachers in every elementary school, and add pre-K education so students with a 400-word vocabulary can start school instead with a 4,000-word beginning. That $150 a year can ramp up adult and virtual high school programs to graduate more students, and it can give our teachers a 5 percent raise so we can attract and retain better educators. Hamilton County is Tennessee's third-wealthiest county, but it ranks 34th in teacher pay.
Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Rick Smith wants to raise $34 million a year for schools here via a 40-cent property tax increase, and he's looking for grassroots support to increase the district's annual budget to about $379 million. Last week he took his pitch on the road, beginning the first of 11 community talks about his proposal.
Times Free Press columnist David Cook on Wednesday offered an apt analogy: "This is a tax increase in name only. More truthfully, we should call it an investment."
Smith says it's more like repair and investment.
About 20 percent of Hamilton County children are enrolled in private schools, something he says "speaks volumes" about public education here. Many of the other local children from middle- and upper-income families are in public schools on the mountains or in Ooltewah and the eastern end of the county -- areas where public school families donate extra money to help fund special art and extra programs for their schools.
That leaves the rest of our schools -- those mostly urban schools that teach the 60 percent of Hamilton County students who receive free and reduced lunches because they live in poverty.
This is not the usual sugar-coated description we give our public schools.
Now, layer onto this little-discussed view the understanding that Chattanooga's new businesses like VW and our emerging technical industry have a voracious need for highly skilled and tech-ready workers. It's easy to see that Chattanooga may be rolling toward a head-long tumble over a cliff edge.
"You cannot aspire to be great city without a great education system," Smith said last week. "We have got to have courage, vision and leadership. We can't think of it as being 'their [poor people's] children or 'their problem.' It's our community. It is past time for us to get serious about what we know about our community and take care of this."
The superintendent is 100 percent right.
He notes that we cannot police this education problem away when students can't stay in school and then can't get a job. He adds that we cannot move families in poverty out of our city. We've tried that by tearing down housing projects and developing neighborhoods, yet we've not changed the poverty level in Chattanooga even 1 percent.
We have a pre-kindergarten program, but it's far too small. Every pre-K here has a waiting list. And we know from study after study that art, music and foreign language learning improves brain development -- especially at young ages.
We know it -- until we begin talking about paying for it.
Here's the thing: Not paying for the education and development of our entire community and for our entire future workforce is like not paying for the economic development that brought Volkswagen here or not paying for the installation of the fiber optic cable that is bringing the entrepreneurial tech industry here.
What's more, not paying for the education of all our children is simply morally wrong.
"I hope this sparks a community-wide conversation," Smith said Wednesday.
So do we. Let's all ask our county Board of Education members and county commissioners why they can't vote to give good schools and complete education to all Hamilton County kids.