Cook: Don’t go down without a school budget fight

Hamilton County school board members, gird yourselves.

Do not go gentle into Monday night.

All spring, Superintendent Rick Smith has traveled the county, talking about his $34 million school vision to anyone who would listen. A little more in property taxes to help make our public schools some of the best in the South?

How could we say no?

Apparently, rather easily.

Last week, County Mayor Jim Coppinger put the kibosh on Smith’s plan.

“I will not be recommending an increase in the County’s 2015 property tax levy rate,” he wrote in a letter to Smith. “Prepare the FY 2016 budget in accordance with this directive.”

In other words: Your proposal’s at a dead-end. Send me a budget that’s balanced, with no increases.

Now, at your Monday meeting, you and Smith have a decision to make. On one hand, you’ve got $34 million of righteous and legitimate needs — don’t call them wants — like art and foreign language teachers in every elementary school. (Shame on us. We have spent more time embarrassed by the Casey barge than the fact we don’t have art teachers in our schools.) And recruiting the best teachers in the South. And making sure teachers have more than $100 for school supplies each year.

But the county mayor has said no.

“I have and always will be a strong supporter of the need for quality public education,” Coppinger wrote. “However, I believe it is in the overall best interest of the County taxpayers to retain the County property tax rate at its current level.”

So you could dust off last year’s budget and play nice.

Or you could go down swinging. Send him a hardball budget.

First, cut stipends for athletics. Middle school, then high school.

Next, cut bus transportation.

Then cut the school week from five days to four.

Make a tremendously loud and gaping hole in the school budget where all our favorite things used to be. Then fill it with much of what your superintendent is asking for.

(Remember when former superintendent Jesse Register did something like this?)

Send Coppinger such a wrecking ball of a budget, and three things will happen.

First, parents will get bloody mad and storm the commission. (Which, sadly, means we don’t get storming mad until our sports are cut).

Second, we’ll have to get honest with ourselves. On the moral register of things, what is most important?

Does middle school football matter more than learning a foreign language?

Should we fund bus transportation instead of hiring the best teachers in the South?

Third, this act of budgetary jiu-jitsu will put the pressure back on the county mayor and commission, where it belongs. Coppinger’s letter was like a hall pass for commissioners, excusing them from the democratic burden and responsibility of public debate.

No debate on a wheel tax instead of property tax.

No debate on exempting folks over 65 from the proposed property tax hike.

No debate on the current research or educational philosophy for any of the things Smith calls for.

Sure, when Smith presented his proposal to the commission, there were plenty of questions. But no public debate, or at least not enough of it. That’s why, at the end of Monday’s meeting, the school board should make its boldest move yet.

Implosion.

Like some political version of “Mission Impossible,” you should self-destruct at the end of the meeting. Close up shop. Disband. So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye. Announce the end of the Hamilton County school board.

Doing so would make the commission fully responsible for education, not just the budget. It would no longer have the luxury of controlling purse strings yet not participating in the creation, debate and implementation of school policy.

No more hall pass.

After all, the commission continues its slow freeze of the school board, refusing to grant it the influence and power it needs and deserves. (Again: our school leaders propose making our schools the smartest in the South, and our commissioners don’t even fully debate the hows and whys of it.)

This is not petulance; I don’t want the school board to end any more than I do athletics or bus routes. Nor am I wanting to vilify the commissioners, many of whom are honestly doing what they think is right.

But something has to give.

So, school board, fall on your sword.

Or use it, like Zorro.

Whatever you do, don’t surrender, not yet.

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.