When UnifiEd formed locally in 2014, its founders said they wanted to make Chattanoogans more aware of and more involved in their public schools.
Directors said they weren't pushing a curriculum or a platform, and were nobody's mouthpiece.
The organization was created, they said, to increase transparency, accountability, effectiveness and engagement in the schools.
It sounded good, and we wrote positively about its goals at its outset, but history has shown that's not exactly what happened.
UnifiEd, instead, transformed into an organization that was decidedly partisan, did have a specific agenda and was a mouthpiece for left-of-center causes.
In a Facebook post Monday, it tried to gin up controversy where there is none with a post accusing the Hamilton County Commission, with its proposed redistricting map, of attempting to "break up neighborhoods and communities [that] contribute to lower voter turnout and decreased civic engagement in local government."
It stopped short of saying the commission wanted to starve children and kill old people.
The organization's breathless introductory sentence was this: "Have you seen the new 11 district proposal from the County Commission?"
The accompanying illustration was a portion of the proposed 11-district map that showed jagged lines and carve-in sections - which are created by census tracts - near the intersection of Districts 5, 7, 8 and a proposed new District 10.
However, the post didn't detail how the new map was trying to break up neighborhoods and communities or how it would contribute to lower voter turnout and decrease civic engagement.
Nor did the post make the most salient point - the map is still a proposal, commissioners can make changes at each meeting and nothing is final until the map is adopted.
Hamilton County Commissioners Randy Fairbanks and Chip Baker showed how easy it is to make changes to the map at the commission's redistricting workshop last week.
The new map, in trying to balance the districts by population (which is the law), had moved most of the Sale Creek community out of Fairbanks' District 1 and into that of Baker, whose new District 2 would include both Signal and Mowbray mountains. Fairbanks asked if it was possible to keep Sale Creek, which is at the foot of Mowbray Mountain, in his district.
The Hamilton County GIS mapping team immediately made the move and posted the new map. Fairbanks and Baker said the changes were acceptable to them, and the change became a part of the proposed map. It was that simple.
In the case of the illustration posted by UnifiEd, one of the carve-outs appears to have Tyner Academy in District 5, Tyner Middle School right across the street from it in the new District 10 (though the two will be together in the new school facility about to be built) and Bess T. Shepherd Elementary School also in 10.
District 5 Commissioner Katherlyn Geter previously had mentioned keeping the schools together but did not ask in the most recent meeting that the change be made. She insisted that she needed to have a public meeting with her constituents, which we would agree is always the right thing to do.
The change to place all three schools in the same district would be a simple one and likely would have little or no opposition since there was no one to speak for the proposed District 10. And current District 9 Commissioner Steve Highlander, whose district will yield most of the territory for the new District 10, said he thought it was a good idea.
It is curious, though, that little or no issue has been made of the current map, in use since 2012, which has Tyner Academy and the middle school in Geter's district and Bess T. Shepherd Elementary in Commissioner Sabrena Smedley's district.
All of the redistricting changes, suggestions and discussions this year have come in full view of the public, not behind closed doors as occurred following previous decennial census changes in the county. And Smedley, the commission chairwoman, has repeatedly suggested that commissioners have a meeting or several meetings with constituents to gauge their views on the proposed changes. So we're not sure what is pushing UnifiEd's buttons.
The organization's last admonition on its post was to "Contact your Commissioners to ask for districts that leave neighborhoods intact and DON'T carve up our communities."
That remark is particularly interesting since the proposed map puts all of the county's smaller municipalities in individual districts - as was not the case after 2010 - and since the two commissioners showed how easy it was to make changes only days before UnifiEd's post.
For an organization that promised transparency and accountability at its creation, its most recent Facebook post did not live up to those attributes.