Talk, talk, talk.
Right after presenting a proposed county budget for 2018 that doesn't include a tax increase for schools (or anything), Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger last week suggested more meetings and talks as he tried to dig his way out of the hole he's making for us all by kicking the can down the road again.
He shied away from a tax increase and pulled the "talk" card despite widespread acknowledgment from school officials, business groups, parent groups, two editorial pages, some county commissioners and even his own musings that school improvement depends hugely on better funding.
Come on, folks. Just how much talking do we need while every year 38 percent of yet another generation of Hamilton County students drop out or graduate school too poorly educated to get jobs here?
That's not an exaggeration. Hamilton County is one of the few cities in America that has made a manufacturing comeback in the early 21st century, yet employers have said they have 15,000 jobs over three to five years which cannot be filled with local young people because not enough of our children are jobs ready when they finish school.
Think about that: 15,000. That's roughly a third of Hamilton County's total public school enrollment. The problem starts when 60 percent of our third-graders can't read at grade level. And if they can't read well in the third grade, they can't learn on their own and keep up over their next nine years of basic schooling.
Surely you are tired of reading and hearing about this. We are tired of saying it.
But apparently our county mayor and commissioners need to hear and read it every day, because on Friday, after presenting a budget for status quo, Coppinger said the commission and school system "should start working together now" to change the community's "perception" and work to secure more funding for schools "in future years."
Exactly when? Last year it was this year. Before that it was last year. Now it's next year.
Here's a bit of context. The county commission and the county school board have met together to talk about public education - arguably the most important thing we spend our money on in Hamilton County - twice since the fall of 2015. Their second joint meeting was in March, and the only thing they agreed on was to have another meeting.
In the meantime, the county school board is preparing to choose a new superintendent, and the county mayor is pitching his new budget that spends the lion's share (by percentage) of budget increases purchased with our money on jailers.
That's right. Jailers. We don't educate our children well enough to get jobs because we're penny wise and pound foolish, but we'll spend on additional jailers to watch our children when they land - as they inevitably will if they have no jobs - in jail.
So, by all means, let's have - finally - some elected official talk. Everyone else has been talking. We've wondered where you elected folks were. By all means, commissioners and mayor, talk about the Chattanooga 2.0 plan, the UnifiEd conversations, the recent business group plan you asked for and received - the one that recommends ways to save, but also urges that we spend more money for schools, be it with a tax increase or a special schools capital tax fund (like Georgia's SLOST) or a wheel tax.
By all means, talk. Then do something. We're pleased that at long last you seem to realize you have a obligation to help chart a course to success for our students and our community.
We need your committed involvement. Not in the next century, not in the next decade, not even next year. Not when we get a new superintendent, not when first one or another of you takes a courage pill, not in the next blue moon. Now.
Either that or we should just skip straight to turning half of our schools into jails. We can name them for you.