As the Hamilton County Board of Education weighs a plan to partner with the state to rehabilitate the district's lowest performing schools, community members shared their questions and concerns Wednesday evening.
A forum held in the Orchard Knob Elementary School gymnasium Wednesday evening was nearly full by the time it started. District 5 school board member Karitsa Mosley Jones explained that Tennessee Education Commissioner Candice McQueen has given the district two options in dealing with its struggling schools - to allow the state to take over their administration by adding them to its Achievement School District (ASD), or to work in unison with the state via a proposed partnership district.
As a shared governance, the partnership district would have a separate school board - 60 percent of which would be appointed by the state, with 40 percent appointed by the district board or superintendent. Once the board is in place, members will appoint a director.
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Rep. JoAnne Favors is holding a community forum tonight at 6 p.m. at Dalewood Middle School.The forum will address the Partnership Zone proposal and the state-run Achievement School District for the five iZone schools.
Jones told attendees that McQueen told the school board that stipulations are all up for negotiation, including the 60/40 percent representation on the Partnership Zone board. Jones said McQueen was expecting a decision to be made by June, but is willing to wait until a new superintendent is appointed in July.
But attendees at Wednesday's meeting balked at the idea of giving up so much control over the district's most vulnerable schools to the state.
Tiffanie Robinson, the school board member representing District 4, said she and the board would address such concerns with McQueen in future meetings.
"I am not OK being the minority partner if we go into this," Robinson said. "We need to have more control in that situation."
Even so, Jones reminded the group that the board is limited to only two options.
"We have to figure out what is going to be the best of the two options for the general population," she said.
Some community members said they didn't think picking one of the two options would address a deeper problem.
"We have such egregious inequity [between individual schools], as we've had for so long," said one attendee. "The five iZone schools could be off the list today, but we don't want to have the equity conversation."
Jones agreed, but said such a conversation must be taken up with the City Council and County Commission.
Also Wednesday, board members fielded questions about the district's ongoing superintendent search.
Many at the meeting also wanted to know about the candidates' experience dealing with improving the performance of struggling schools, teacher advocacy and willingness to involve stakeholders other than children and teachers.
Contact staff writer Rosana Hughes at rhughes@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327. Follow her on Twitter @HughesRosana.