School board District 4 candidates debate

After a year of traumatic shocks in the Hamilton County school system, conditions were ripe last week for an electric debate between three candidates bucking for the chance to represent District 4 on the school board.

Longtime board member George Ricks faces a challenge from Tiffanie Robinson, president of Lamp Post Properties, and Montrell Besley, a health and physical education teacher at Woodmore Elementary School.

In the crowded gym of Orchard Knob Elementary, community members had the opportunity to hear the candidates describe their vision for the future of the school system – three vastly different paintings colored by the candidates’ backgrounds.

Robinson cast a hopeful plan for progress, claiming that a top-down, transparent analysis of the school system’s $400 million budget would help direct spending.

“Our school system and our current leadership makes it very hard for you to understand where money is going,” she said.

She also came out in strong support for a transition away from the current budgeting process, a facility-based model, to a student-based format that she said would allow principals greater discretion with student spending.

Meanwhile, Besley, who repeatedly said he is a product of the public school system in Hamilton County, took an approach that focused on the situation faced by teachers in the county.

“I know what teachers go through on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “The points I want to focus on are teacher retention and teacher recruitment. In some classrooms we have three or four different teachers in a year.”

For his part, Ricks came out swinging several times, saying few people understand the challenges faced by Hamilton County. He said the system suffers from a lack of community support and a long history of underfunding, and candidates need to understand the reality of serving on the school board.

“Politics get involved in the school system and you’ve got to understand that sometimes you have to play that game,” he said.

Contact Emmett Gienapp at egienapp@timesfreepress.com or 757-6731.