Only weeks ago, the buzz about Hamilton County Schools was the 10-year master plan submitted by MGT Consulting Group that offered a blueprint for how the district might operate more efficiently with fewer schools over the next decade and beyond.
It offered a range of ideas about which programs could be moved, schools that could be merged and new facilities that could be built. The plan was scheduled to be debated by the public and adopted or amended by the Board of Education sometime this spring.
Now Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson is waiting to find out whether the state will cancel school the rest of the year amid the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Students have been home since mid-March, TNReady and end-of-year exams will not be given, graduation requirements will be lowered and educators will not be held accountable for student performance.
Meanwhile, qualifying for four seats on the nonpartisan school board has closed, and intrigue already has made its way into the races.
Though the current board will serve through August, the next school board will have to deal with the vicissitudes of the virus, how it will change the 2020-2021 school year, how the near certain economic recession will affect school funding and what, if anything, members should do about that 10-year master facilities plan.
It’s a time that will require the very best minds of education and business since both will need to work hand in hand to guide the district through what is likely to be a rocky year.
And that’s what made Thursday’s announcement that prominent businessman and better education advocate Tom Decosimo will stage a write-in candidacy for the District 2 school board seat so interesting.
First-term incumbent Kathy Lennon had qualified for the position and had not given any indication she was not running until this week. Former Red Bank Mayor John Roberts announced his intention to run but did not qualify for the race. Meanwhile entrepreneur Marco Perez, a previous Lennon backer, qualified and wound up the only candidate on the ballot when Lennon removed her name and cited health reasons, leading some to believe the two had colluded on that decision.
That prompted Decosimo – a founding member of the newly minted Good Government Coalition that had promised to elect strong, conservative candidates to the school board – to announce his bid, saying he had “a plan to lock in a strong majority” of votes and was “confident our strategy will lead to a significant victory at the ballot box.”
He may want to seek out current school board member Rhonda Thurman for advice. In 2014, she was the last Hamilton County candidate to stage a significant write-in attempt at office when she took on then-Hamilton County Commission candidate Randy Fairbanks in the August general election.
Thurman, whose supporters had to write in her name on the ballot, garnered almost exactly one-third of the vote in the race.
However, Decosimo, a Signal Mountain resident, also can look to a precedent in his district. In 1983, three write-in candidates – Marian Summerville, John Long and Bernard Wolfe – were elected to Signal Mountain’s board of commissioners when fewer people qualified for seats than seats were available.
Before that, much less successful local write-in bids in the past 50 years were made by candidates for a Soddy-Daisy commission seat in 1995, Hamilton County school board seat and Lookout Mountain commission seat in 1994, a Chattanooga City Council seat in 1993, a city council seat in 1990, and a state representative seat and a Hamilton County Commission seat in 1986.
Not surprisingly, the Good Government Coalition endorsed Decosimo’s bid, along with Thurman in District 1 and Debbi Meyers, who opposes first-term board member Joe Wingate, in District 7. The latter race also should be interesting since Wingate and Republican District 7 Commissioner Sabrena Smedley have worked together closely since he’s been in office, and Meyers is a member of the Hamilton County Republican Women’s Club.
Tiffanie Robinson, in District 4, is running unopposed for a second school board term.
Whoever is elected will have to grapple with, among other things, an estimated $1.36 billion in school maintenance over the next 10 years if changes are not adopted, teachers who have been underpaid compared to several nearby counties and what school administrators have said is a lack of personnel and teachers to move the district to where it needs to be. All of those will be weighed against a budget certain to be affected by the economic collapse caused by the COVID-19 virus outbreak.
The county is fortunate to have Johnson, whose new four-year contract was approved in February, guiding the district ship, but we foresee difficult days ahead with board decisions on how to spend the dollars of now-lighter-in-the-wallet taxpayers.