The Hamilton County School's Administration has submitted to the Board of Education a list of school construction needs. I would submit for consideration the following idea:
Don't prioritize the list with one or the other getting built first.
1. Replace or construct CSLA expanding it to a K-12 and you will reduce overcrowding in several schools around the county. This has been a need for years.
2. Construct an East Hamilton County Middle School and fulfill a need that was to have been addressed over a decade ago.
3. Give Sale Creek a building for its middle school students which meets in portables. Housing middle students indefinitely in portables should never have happened. This should be corrected now, not somewhere down the list.
I would hope the County Commission would see that the plan for these buildings and replacements as submitted are needed now and not try to do it one at a time. This would only favor one part of the county over the other.
These projects are not just to provide cosmetic treatments or just to make schools look good. Students shouldn't have their school be a cluster of trailers or be crowded into small rooms not designed to be classrooms because of overcrowding. They should be educated in buildings that were not built by the Depression-era WPA with only one electric outlet in the room.
If the State of Tennessee has seemingly unlimited funds to pay for an eternal widening project for Shallowford Road and now are planning the same for East Brainerd Road, the county should be able to provide these needed facilities for our students.
Ralph Miller