Enhancements requested in next year’s school budget
* 5 percent employee salary and benefit increase: $11 million * Funding art teachers in all elementary grades: $2.2 million * Hiring foreign language teachers in all elementary grades: $2.2 million * Educational technology and infrastructure support: $3.8 million * Instructional resources, teacher and administration support: $2 million * Opening new schools: $1 million * Capital improvements: $2 million * Increased block grants to individual schools: $1 million * Differentiated urban services and support: $1 million * Expanded graduation options: $1 million Total: $27.2 million Source: Hamilton County Department of Education
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Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond has big ask for county budget Greeson: What’s important and what’s less important; only Coppinger knows
Like Abraham Lincoln giving his famously brief Gettysburg Address, it took less than five minutes for Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Rick Smith to make his pitch Wednesday afternoon for a $34 million annual school budget increase to the County Commission, which controls the school district’s purse strings.
“Chattanooga can be the smartest city in the South,” said Smith, who since March has presented his vision to bring art and foreign language classes to the elementary grades, increase teachers’ pay and benefits by 5 percent, buy up-to-date technology and make other improvements.
Gettysburg gave way to a gritty discussion of dollar amounts and about 90 minutes of questions, opinions and sometimes heated back-and-forth comments from Smith, the nine commissioners and county Mayor Jim Coppinger.