Roy Exum
Let’s get something out of the way real quick. I have no personal “vendetta” against Hamilton County School Superintendent Rick Smith or anybody else. So help me, that’s the truth. I don’t know him. I have never talked to him and, until several weeks ago, I had never laid eyes on him. But due to a series of particular events, I believe very strongly that Supt. Smith should either resign or be terminated after failing tragically at his duty at the expense of all of our children.
In December I was handed a draft of the “Chattanooga 2.0” report. It was produced in a collaboration of our Chamber of Commerce, the county’s Department of Education, the ever-gracious Benwood Foundation and the Public Education Foundation. It was well-done and honest. Yet I was hurt deeply by it because it is irrefutable proof our Department of Education is a broken failure. That’s no personal vendetta. That’s a cold and cruel 40 pages of facts.
At the time I wrote we must do everything humanly possible to embrace the Chattanooga 2.0 program and reach its every goal. I also wrote openly, this on Dec. 13, “Should we fire school superintendent Rick Smith, under whose watch our schools have floundered, or does he improve ‘the central office’ in a way that attacks problems rather than skirt them?”
Admittedly, Smith’s reputation preceded the sobering report. I knew, along with many others, that the Hamilton County district schools, based on Tennessee Department of Education statistics, have been the worst-performing metro school district in the state for three straight years. That’s been known since 2012 – with curiously little outcry -- and it has gotten progressively worse. Among the other specific facts the “Chattanooga 2.0” report revealed …
* -- Nearly 60 percent of all of our third-graders read below grade level with hardly any chance to ever catch up.
* -- Only 15 percent of our high school graduates, based on ACT testing, are ready for college. That leaves 85 per cent of our high school seniors who, in my opinion, have been cheated due to a lack of vision, discipline, motivation and accountability. These kids aren’t that stupid and everyone will agree deserve better. It’s the simple truth and that is why the Chattanooga 2.0 project was initiated.
* -- Only 35 percent of our students have the academic ability to train for technical skills to work at Volkswagen or a myriad of other companies that have moved here. That is totally unacceptable by any standard.
* -- A black child in Hamilton County is 33 times more likely than a white child to attend one of the lowest performing schools in the entire state. In four of our high schools in Hamilton County today, the ACT test average is below what is required for a student to even apply to college.
* -- Hamilton County schools have fallen further behind the state’s norm in every single high school test since 2012, when Smith was appointed. This is not meant to be mean; it is public record.
* -- Two-thirds of our graduates who are accepted at Chattanooga State must take remedial classes. With Governor Haslam’s “Tennessee Promise,” a high school graduate can attend a community college with free tuition and no fees but if a freshman lacks the muscle to make the run at the start of the race, each is already set up to fail.
* -- Over 65 percent of our high school graduates will not seek post-secondary education when we have 15,000 jobs available that assures those who receive additional technical training a salary of $30,000 a year. It you think that’s a fabulous opportunity, let me give you the stopper – that same 65 percent today averages an annual salary of $9,000 a year. So who speaks out for that 65 percent, who holds our education system responsible for such tragic failure?
These are facts. That I or any others who have reported on this has a personal agenda, an accusation of a “vendetta,” is ludicrous. Please. There is a deep moral concern here for the future of our community that is held by many others in our community besides me.
Nine days after the school system was laid bare by the Chattanooga 2.0 report, we have since learned four freshmen basketball players at Ooltewah High were sexually abused by their own teammates. We know that not one person in authority ever reported it. Only because an alarmed UT Hospital notified police, in all likelihood the shocking crime would have never been known by the public. Am I the only one who is terrified about things like this?
One of the freshmen, a 15-year-old, required emergency colorectal surgery and most certainly could have died. That’s when I went from ‘hurt’ to ‘mad’ and, on January 2nd, I wrote that such insanity was “so far over the line that a steel fist and a hob-nailed boot should have already been brought down mightily on the high school’s basketball team.” I’ll admit it. I don’t tolerate barbaric behavior well.
But with Rick Smith’s personal consent, the team played several more games. As a matter of fact, it was three weeks before the superintendent of our school system ever made a public comment as he insisted not one adult was at fault. During that span, the arrow on my dial had moved past ‘furious’ to ‘livid.’ Yes, it did, and three adults have now been charged with failure to report the sexual abuse of a minor. They will appear in court this week.
It was pretty obvious the HCDE wanted this to go quietly away but my compass doesn’t work that way. We have a black kid stuck in his bed in East Lake who “the system” wants to be forgotten yet he is wearing a catheter and a colostomy bag. Not on my watch. I’m a big believer in the words of Edmund Burt, who in 1770 said in The House of Commons: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
It was inhumane to me to witness the way the biggest horror I can remember in high school athletics in our home town was being handled by the very ones who we entrust with our most precious beings. You’ve got parents of 43,000 children who are beside themselves with outrage and fury and a superintendent who was clearly incompetent in his initial response. Everybody who has followed the catastrophe knows that is the truth.
Public trust has not only been terribly breached and sullied but in the past month Chattanooga’s Department of Education has been put in harsh light and found to be an abysmal failure on every front. The Chattanooga 2.0 report wasn’t any vendetta – it is a plea, a call to action. We ought to be pushing it hard right now but with bullying and hazing triggering an avalanche of contemptuous scorn, any solutions for Chattanooga 2.0 must wait. Supt. Smith must be held accountable for what has actually happened, based not on my opinion but on these well-documented facts.
The worst moment, outside of the horror show in a Gatlinburg cabin, was when School Board Chairman Jonathan Welch, after apologizing for making the nightmare worse, allowed an open forum at a School Board “work session” last Thursday night. The pain and the suffering of those who spoke earnestly into the microphone was a startling testimony of their helplessness. Quite candidly, it was also a poor reflection on our elected School Board’s ability to manage and to lead.
I watched Rick Smith’s face intently the whole while as two particular women, Tonya McBryar and April Alaster, stood and told vividly how Tonya’s son and April’s granddaughter were victims of our Department of Education. Both students were horribly bullied and no one did a thing about it. Rick Smith’s face showed me, and I am a guy who has studied a lot of faces, that he could have cared less. I wanted to cry. That’s when I went from being ‘livid’ to a far-different place called ‘resolve.’
Don’t you see? These two women – and many others via email -- are totally helpless to do anything about it, just like the kid wearing the colostomy bag. My emails and phone calls from others who are miserable and heavy-burdened assured me the people in our county need somebody to take a stand. In honesty, the School Board should have questioned the HCDE unmercifully two years ago when it first saw the plunging state scores.
Instead, the board gave Smith a $25,000 raise in the middle of a four-year contract and now, at $200,000 a year, he makes more than the governor of Tennessee. This makes no rational sense. I also think there should have been a greater response after the Chattanooga 2.0 report was first introduced but Rick Smith, from what I have witnessed, is held to no standard.
Neal Pinkston, the county’s District Attorney General, quickly realized from “media accounts” that an investigation was warranted and he got with Sheriff Jim Hammond. The two, using DA investigators and Sheriff’s deputies, are on no ‘witch hunt’ and certainly have no vendetta but already three adults have been charged with a criminal act. When the investigation being conducted by District Attorney General Neal Pinkston and Sheriff Jim Hammond is completed, there are stories about the HCDE that may be told that are beyond belief.
I give you my word I have no vendetta nor ax to grind. I do think I have a moral and ethical obligation, somewhere deep inside of me, to try to defend those who have no voice. I am no great crusader but, maybe with my words, I like to think I ought to try. I was raised under the teachings that no man can be strong without first helping the weak, and that no man ever stands as tall as when he bends to help a child.
Rick Smith has been weighed in the scales and found wanting. That’s a fact.
royexum@aol.com