Roy Exum
On the very front page of my Sunday newspaper there was the pressing news the Chattanooga Times Free Press will host a forum on the impact of effective teachers, the importance of recruiting effective teachers, and the earnest efforts to retain effective teachers in Hamilton County on Oct. 18. By my informal count it will be about the 30th forum on education we have had since a Chattanooga 2.0 initiative affirmed our public schools are lousy last December.
To add insult to injury, the four participants who will lead “Study Hall: a Conversation Teacher Prep and Quality” at this very time last year were obviously part of the problem yet now are being presented as experts. My heavens, at what point in this senseless circus are we going to reach the “tipping point” and actually do something rather than only talk about it?
Consider this fact: Human beings can actually create and birth another miraculous human being faster than our so-called educational leaders can initiate badly-needed and grossly overdue changes in the basic goal of educating our children. I think Pablo Picasso had it right: “When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”
As the heightened microscopic view of all that is wrong in our system comes into focus, we find our “Read 20 Program” claims on its website that since 2006 the county-financed effort had distributed of over 960,980 books worth $11,531,760.00, interacting with 528,158 children, 46,387 parents, and to have participated in 211 community events. That’s insane – right now we are assured 60 percent of our third graders cannot read at grade level.
County Commissioner Tim Boyd, among many others, finds such figures are mathematically impossible and it appears he is right; that’s over 500 books a day and where did the money come from to buy $11 million in merchandise? Who has counted 528,158 children when the entire pre-K through 12 enrollment has never been above 43,000 a year since 2006?
Yet Hamilton County has paid out over $2 million since 2006 in what is believed to be little more than salaries. (In 2015 Shawn Kurrelmeier-Lee, the county’s chief reading officer who – albeit strangely -- is not a member of the Dept. of Education, was paid $104,476 by the tax payers just last year.)
We know Chattanooga’s Public Education Foundation has a payroll that now exceeds $2 million a year. In a school district where rats are reportedly a problem in several schools, and roofs are leaking, it appears there needs to be much stronger oversight of what one school board member describes as “a bunch of snake-oil salesmen” who are forming foundations to exploit our educational failures.
We know the Unifi-ED Foundation is part of the puzzle but what is more puzzling is what is exactly its purpose, especially after a strange appearance before the Hamilton County School Board recently left everyone scratching their heads at that exact question. Never mind just exactly who invited these people to “help,” but in honesty it appears an increasing number of camels are trying to get their proverbial heads in the already over-crowded tent.
On the Public Education Foundation website, it reads, “We do more than provide funds; we’re innovators, working with partners in education to transform public education. Our mission is simple: we want to increase student achievement so all students succeed in learning and in life.”
Connect the dots: if the PEF is “increasing student achievement,” and if the Hamilton County Dept. of Education is indeed regarded as the worst metro school district in the state, something is out of kilter with the goal of “all students succeeding in learning and in life;” 65 percent of our graduating seniors must take remedial courses at Chattanooga State. That is most definitely not innovating.
The Chattanooga 2.0 education initiative also appears to be floundering. A list of “urgent concerns” that was just released said nothing the original report did not include nine urgent months ago. But that is nothing compared to the storm clouds any fool can see brewing at the Hamilton County School Board over Chattanooga 2.0. By lobbying hard against any school board member seeking re-election, the Chattanooga 2.0 leaders have quite obviously cooked their own goose.
For the first time many can recall, the 2.0 activists launched a determined effort to replace four school board members in the August election. They even made a public announcement that they were contributing cash to each of the challengers’ campaigns and, to their glee, they backed three winners over incumbents.
But to their short-sighted discredit, they failed to unseat the popular Rhonda Thurman so when I pull out my little crystal ball, it is hardly a stretch to see any Chattanooga 2.0 proposals that come before the new school board as being markedly unsuccessful. I can’t imagine Thurman or the five members who watched the 2.0 crowd’s open chicanery now welcoming the meddlers who seek to usurp the school’s board duties. And guess what? It hardly takes a degree in logic for five school board members who didn’t run this cycle to recognize who will become the targets in the next 2.0 volley.
Make no mistake. The school board controls public education in Hamilton County and there are no other seats at the table. In recent years a well-identified lack of board oversight has been costly to the 42,000 students in the system and when the last school board installed Kirk Kelly as the Interim Superintendent it virtually assured the same “central office” would remain intact.
That is precisely why, when the Times Free Press holds its 90-minute “Study Hall” on Oct. 18, the panel of four “experts” – as sad as it appears – have each had a direct role in where we find our public education system is today. While it is hoped to be a wonderful experience, with scintillating ideas and exciting conversation, my honest belief is that it will be “all talk – no action” for about the 30th straight time.
That’s because a woman could have conceived and birthed a baby in less the amount of time we’ve talked about our education system instead of taking the bold and mighty steps to fix it.
At what point does the continuing disappointment stop? And where, oh where, does the buck stop? Where is the “doer of deeds” who can send the snake-oil dreamers packing so the efforts to actually teach our children can commence? I have an idea …. perhaps we should have a forum.
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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ? Theodore Roosevelt
royexum@aol.com