Rick Smith to share vision for ‘best public school system in the South’ at 11 community meetings

Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Rick Smith will speak Monday night at East Hamilton High School and share his vision to boost the school district’s budget by $34 million through a 40-cent property tax increase. He hopes to fund such improvements as elementary school art and foreign language classes.

Monday’s community meeting is the first of 11 that Smith has scheduled in the school board’s nine districts, which mirror the county commission’s districts. He’s not calling it a campaign, but over the next five weeks, Smith will try to gain grassroots support for his proposal to increase the school district’s annual budget to about $379 million.

“I’m not going to say ‘campaign,'” Smith said. “What I’m going to do is go out in the community and talk about having the best public school system in the South.”

Smith starts Monday night in friendly territory, since East Brainerd school board member Donna Horn supports Smith’s plan, and ends May 12 in Soddy-Daisy, where school board member Rhonda Thurman opposes a bigger school budget and tax increase. It’ll be a mixed bag along the way, with school board members showing varying degrees of support for Smith’s proposal.

“He’s got some great ideas. The problem is the funding,” said Ooltewah school board member Steve Highlander, who’ll host an April 16 meeting at Wallace Smith Elementary School. “I am for the programs. I can’t say I am for a tax increase.”

County commissioners, who control the school district’s purse strings and are expected to vote in May on the school budget, have been invited to all the meetings.

“We have absolutely no control on how the money comes,” Highlander said. “We can make a recommendation. We can say what we would like to see done. [The commissioners] decide whether or not they can afford it and how they can afford it.”

Horn expects a good turnout Monday night. If East Hamilton High School’s roughly 300-seat auditorium isn’t big enough to hold everyone, the talk will be moved to the cafeteria, she said.

“This is a meeting about the superintendent getting out his vision,” Horn said. “It’s his baby. He’s wanted to do this.”

So far, no county commissioners have come out in favor of what Lookout Valley Commissioner Joe Graham dubbed the “Rick Smith 40-cent tax increase” at a March 25 commissioners’ meeting. Horn took exception to that, and told Graham it should be called a “tax increase for the betterment of our youth.”

“Am I in favor of a tax increase?” Horn asked Friday. “I am in support of whatever it’s going to take. And we know it’s going to take money.”

A 40-cent tax increase would cost $150 a year for the owner of a $150,000 house, she said, or about $3 a week.

“What’s it cost to get a coffee? Three dollars,” Horn said. “Or a Dairy Queen Blizzard? Three dollars. It’s a minor sacrifice.”

Thurman doesn’t see the May 12 Soddy-Daisy meeting that she’ll host as a rally for a bigger school budget or a tax hike.

“I just don’t want to see an increase,” Thurman said. “I don’t think Rick’s going to do all the talking. I think the commissioners are going to be [at the meetings] as well. Mine will not be a campaign [stop] for it. That is not the purpose of the community meeting. I want to hear taxpayers’ concerns.”

Smith said it’s unusual to have nine school board members agree about anything.

“I’m looking forward to take the opportunity to get out and talk to the community and see what they think,” he said.

Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/tim.omarzu or twitter.com/TimOmarzu or 423-757-6651.