Monday's meeting about Signal Mountain's exploratory look at forming its own school system was touted as an opportunity for residents to ask questions. Finally.
And the "ask questions" part worked. Some 80 questions were submitted online and still more were voiced at the meeting with the seven-member School System Viability Committee that for eight months has been studying the feasibility of the town pulling out of the Hamilton County School District and creating its own school system.
The trouble was with answering those questions.
Far too many of the answers sounded something like this: "It's not our committee's responsibility to determine ..." Or, "that's not what we're here for."
Even the committee's 48-page final report, made public last month, gives the main question (what they were there for) something of a non-answer.
The committee concluded on a 6-1 vote that the town feasibly could pull out of the Hamilton County Schools and create its own district "if" it can overcome certain obstacles.
Those obstacles represent two hugely important and unanswered questions, even in the committee's own report:
' How would mountain residents in Walden and unincorporated areas participate in the creation, governance and financial support for the new district?
' And how would the new system afford to build or buy new schools since the Hamilton County Board of Education has stated multiple times it will not just hand over the existing school buildings to a new school district?
Not having answers is not new for this group that would wall off Signal Mountain because they suffer green flight - they don't like their tax dollars being spent on the education of inner city students in Hamilton County Schools. Never mind that they will still live in Hamilton County and pay Hamilton County property taxes.
For the eight months of study, committee chairman John Friedl said questioning was "not allowed" during the panel's work sessions because it would have "dramatically increased the amount of time we spent and it would have distracted us from the job we were doing."
It should be pretty clear that Signal Mountain residents should not pull out of the Hamilton County school system.
There can be no winner. Signal has been able to show no real value-added gains for what would almost certainly be higher taxes. "Control," not improved education, seems to be the most-mentioned reason for leaving the county. On the county side, Hamilton would lose some of its highest-performing schools. Result: Lose, lose.
But purely from the parental and taxpayer angle, Signal residents should ask themselves this question: If there are only vague answers and non-answers to some very important questions now, what will this would-be new system look like at crunch time?
No transparency or interest in parental and taxpayer questions now is an absolute guarantee of even less transparency and interest later.