It is time to make major changes in the Hamilton County Board of Education.
With four of the nine seats up for election next month, we recommend changing the names on three of those seat nameplates.
Many of our schools - and our students' educations - are in decline. And while this past year was a rocky one - plummeting test scores, a basketball player's hazing/rape and the resignation of the school superintendent - the downward spiral has been years in the making. Now change has taken on a sense of urgency.
About 60 percent of all Hamilton County third-graders do not read on grade level. Systemwide, our students tested below the state average in nine of the 10 tested TCAP categories. Hamilton County spends more per-pupil than most Tennessee counties, but our graduation rate is more than five percentage points lower. Local employers say we have some 15,000 jobs filled by non-local residents because those hiring can't find educationally qualified applicants in Hamilton County.
These are leadership problems - not student problems and not parent problems.
Just as we do, other school systems have students who live in poverty and need extra help. As we do, other school systems have single-parent families. Other school systems also have "iZone" schools with federal grant money that has been put to use. But there, the iZone schools improved. Here, they did not. A state report found $10 million in federal money for our low-performing "iZone" schools was wasted due to a lack of planning and focus.
Our current school board gave former Superintendent Rick Smith a good evaluation and early contract extension just months before the bad scores (which he and other central office officials had not revealed) came to light. The rest of the school year devolved from there.
Leadership of a superintendent is important, and the Hamilton County school board members have but one employee: the superintendent. This means leadership on the school board is paramount.
To that end, of the four school board members on the ballot in August, only District 2 board member, Jonathan Welch - who was elected to the board in 2012 and has been chairman of the board only since September of last year - should be returned to office.
The other three board members seeking re-election - District 1's Rhonda Thurman, District 4's George Ricks and District 7's Donna Horn - should be replaced.
Here's why we think so, and here are our endorsements:
Hamilton County School Board District 1 candidate Patti Skates answers questions during a candidate forum held by the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors at their headquarters on Amnicola Highway on Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in Chattanooga. 9 school board candidates answered questions about their candidacy at the forum.For District 1, elect Patti Skates
Skates, 62 and of Soddy-Daisy, is a long-time educator who currently teaches about 900 students in dual-enrollment high school and college classes at Northwest Georgia Technical College. She also is vice mayor of Soddy-Daisy. She previously taught at Hixson, Central and Red Bank high schools in Hamilton County and Ridgeland High in Georgia. She is a strong advocate of Chattanooga 2.0, an initiative for schools that she describes as a "blueprint" for system change. She also is a strong advocate for vocational education.
"Not every child needs to go to college," she correctly points out.
The incumbent, Rhonda Thurman, is a good person and business woman who has asked many good questions of this board in the 12 years she spent as District 1's school board representative. At times - and especially in the past year - she has been a voice of reason, demanding Smith's ouster and voting against wasting district money to buy out his contract. She often provided welcome balance for a board saturated by educators. But Thurman had 12 years to bring about the change she often talked about but couldn't forge the coalition to accomplish. Instead she gained a reputation, both on the board and in the community, as the "no, no, no" school board member.
This school system is out of time for talk and fights. It needs collaborative action. Right now.
Staff photo by Angela Foster / Jonathan Welch listens during a meeting of the Hamilton County Board of EducationFor District 2, re-elect Jonathan Welch
Shortly after Welch, a dentist from Signal Mountain, was elected by the board as its chairman, he introduced the board to work sessions to discuss policy and budget matters beyond small repairs and light bulbs. Previously, the board was largely just a sounding panel for the superintendent and his central office administrators.
In the aftermath of the December hazing/rape, Welch kept asking questions and approached the district attorney for help. Then he steered the board through its next steps. He acknowledges that those tense weeks were not pretty, and that his lack of understanding about public relations helped fuel public outrage over the failure of the superintendent and the board to make timely public statements and answer questions after the Ooltewah debacle. But in the long term, Welch's handling of the situation was a baptism by fire. He withstood the heat, proving himself a strong, deliberate and calm leader.
Welch will keep up that subdued but steady guidance to lead the search for a new superintendent, one who in his view will foster vibrant and energetic culture in all of our public schools - not just some of them. He wants a superintendent who will allow creative power to be given to principals and who will create a proposal for student-based budgeting to give high-poverty and low-performing schools more access to funds. Currently schools have one-size-fits-all funding, staffing and planning. Welch also advocates an expanded partnership with the city (a suggestion of Chattanooga 2.0) to create more pre-K and community school opportunities using the county school buildings during the off-hours of the school day.
Welch's challenger, Kathy Lennon, has worked as an educator and a business person, but she was not knowledgeable on student-based funding. She advocates partnering with foundations and the County Commission to develop a "strategic plan."
We already have several such "plans," and we've been talking for years. It's time to move forward.
Tiffanie RobinsonFor District 4, elect Tiffanie Robinson
Robinson, 31, is CEO of Lamp Post Properties. She grew up in Tampa and is a Lee University graduate with a master's degree. She also is a mother who is distressed that while the demographics of District 4 - largely downtown - have changed to become more diverse racially and economically, the schools have not.
The reason is that many of the downtown schools are failing and parents are opting to send their children to private schools, she says. That creates a double whammy for the already distressed schools because it robs them of engaged parents and students who will bring cultural diversity to classrooms now struggling with poverty and the language barriers presented by a growing Hispanic population.
"The biggest opportunity in District 4 is creating a community school model that creates wrap-around services for every student - that creates opportunities to get adults in the schools for visits, and that creates more partnerships, programs and private funding."
Another newcomer candidate, Montrell Besley, 35, and a coach and educator at Woodmore Elementary, also would make an excellent board member. (Though it would be a shame to take him from the students. He would have to resign to serve on the board). Besley, a graduate of Brainerd High and Austin Peay State University, wants to see Hamilton County hire teachers earlier in the year so as not to be left picking through the leftovers of each new teacher crop. He also is concerned that Hamilton County students are "pushed" into special education classifications. "What they really need is extra help," Besley says. "It's time for new innovative ideas."
Both Robinson and Besley would bring new energy, new ideas and a much younger outlook than incumbent George Ricks, a long-time board member and fixture in Chattanooga's minority community. Ricks, 66, believes things with the school system are better than they look, and he believes the school system is on the mend. He wants to be part of the healing. But he's had his chance. He's been on the board since 2008.
Hamilton County School Board District 7 candidate Joe Wingate.For District 7, elect Joe Wingate
Wingate is a former East Ridge and Ooltewah high school educator and coach who now is a Chattanooga State professor in exercise science and baseball coach. He was motivated to run for the school board when he realized he didn't want to send his son to the elementary school in his school zone. He also has been disappointed with the decline in scholarship he sees in public school graduates coming to Chattanooga State.
"I've been struggling with this for a while. I'm proud of where I'm from," he says, acknowledging that Chattanooga deserves better schools.
He is a fan of zero-based budgeting, rather than budgets that are just increased every year, and he's open to student-based budgeting. He believes the school board should make parents welcome at meetings rather than hold sessions when working people can't attend. And he's more interested in seeing a superintendent who can handle the budget of a large organization than one who is an educator.
"I have twice the education of the last superintendent (two graduate degrees and a master's), and I have nothing in my training to deal with a $400 million budget," he says.
Wingate also is a big fan of vocational education.
He is challenging four-year incumbent Donna Horn, a retired kindergarten teacher who says the vote she most regrets was the one she made to remove adult family members from teachers' insurance policies. She adds that hindsight is 20/20 and she wouldn't vote again to extend the former superintendent's contract.