Roy Exum
I was still a young boy in short pants when I was taught about a blivit. Actually, a blivit isn’t a real word but it is famous just the same. In the Deep South, a blivit is what you get when you try to jam ten pounds of ‘stuff’ into a five-pound sack. Truth of the matter is it can’t be done but people – smart and learned people at that – have been trying to master it for as long as I have lived and, brother, it ain’t ever happened.
At Thursday night’s meeting of the Hamilton County School Board, the ever-impressive comptroller of the Department of Education – Christie Jordan -- presented the board members with 300 pages of line items that comprise the 2018 school year budget. Another Southern phrase you won’t find in your Funk & Wagnall’s is “goat roping.” Oh, there are words like “cluster” and “fubar” that come close but the only true definition of “goat roping” is best understood when you try to do it in a muddy pasture wearing slick-soled boots.
The base budget Christie presented last night was $364,961,051. Actually, the overall budget will probably wind up about $417 million but you need to realize that is almost exactly what it was in this school year. With what, three percent inflation it is impossible and makes no ‘common sense’ whatsoever. Oh, and the schools just hit up the county for a $32 million supplement. That given, now tell me how that works?
The stark fact is there hasn’t been a property tax increase in the last 12 years, and if that were to ever happen at your own house just you watch – I can safely predict you’ll soon appreciate the non-word of the day -- blivit.
Candidly, there is no way for the school system to keep up. But because County Mayor Jim Coppinger and the county commissioners put self (re-election) over duty (constituents), every child in public schools suffers. That’s harsh – and involves people I respect -- but look at where we are, what we have allowed to become, and why we are losing the fight for quality education rather than trying to win it. It is embarrassing, I say.
You can hoopla all the Chattanooga 2.0s you want, the Public Education Foundation, UTC’s efforts to renew its embarrassing quality of the education majors, but until you pay the freight, the train can’t roll (another cotton grower’s truism.)
As Interim Superintendent Kirk Kelly said, “When you go for 12 years with no way to gain extra income or to project it, how does growth occur?”
Short answer: There is no way. So rather than grow, the school system has gone backwards in an easily demonstrable way over the last decade. We all know it. There are 60 percent of our third graders who can’t read. The average age of our 79 public schools is 40 years and climbing. Over half of our high school graduates are not college-ready.
Christie said the only way to find any money, for anything, is to take that money away from something else … and of those 300 pages of line items, each is so bare-bone it is bleached white. Another Southernism: “Robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Translation: never works.
Next Tuesday night the Hamilton County Commission will have a joint meeting with the School Board. Of the 18 assembled experts, there is not one – absolutely none -- who can explain that when the proposed 2018 budget offers $3 million for physical repairs and improvements, how that pithy amount can possibly meet a present-day list of urgent needs that now exceeds $200 million.
Now chew on this: if we launched a fully-funded $200 million repair order today, it would take approximately 30 months to fulfill it. And if we fully funded a new Harrison Elementary, Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts, and the major overhaul at Snow Hill Elementary, we are a full three years away from reality.
To illustrate: This means a third grader at any of the majority of afflicted schools in the district today will be in the sixth grade at some other needy middle school by the time the job is done. I say her education will be “afflicted” somehow and there are teachers far smarter than me who swear this is true. But our children have no say in the matter. Not a one has an option. What if you were the parent, the grandmother, the pastor?
Not one new school is currently being constructed in Hamilton County. When I was told that there were no current additions being constructed last week, Dr. Kelly came with the correction last night that Sale Creek has a $10 million project to eradicate “portable classrooms” and that there is a $7 million addition underway at Wolftever Elementary.
So, allow me to amend: We have $17 million in current construction and we are talking stale peanuts when compared to nearly $190 million in current school construction in Nashville. Go to any other school district in America. We are the albatross. Again, this is a blivit and no longer can we stand idle as our children and their parents endure this blight.
Last night it was learned that Hamilton County’s public schools are at 83 percent capacity. County commissioners say rezone students but that is stupid. We have huge growth in some areas of the county and little in others. Almost every classroom at every school is being used – that’s a given – but the district has grown an average of 325 students in each of the last five years.
We have a school in the Collegedale-Ooltewah area that is bursting with 116-percent capacity and thousands of new homes are still going up. One county commissioner wants to bus them on an hour-plus bus ride each way. And we elected this guy!
Alright, so let’s call the hand: It is sparkling clear that Hamilton County is not supporting public education. Period. I am not casting blame on anyone but until we demand our county commissioners and our school board face reality, the biggest cheaters in our county are those we have elected. Already one county commission has sworn “not another penny” for schools and that is not just delusional, it is disastrous.
Christie Jordan, famous for keeping notes and accurate figures, claims she went back five years into her records and – glory – the same items on this year’s $200 million repair list that was revealed last week – get this -- were begging for the same attention in 2012. That’s five years of dripping faucets, hacking air conditioners, and backing-up sewers. This must stop with a major commitment – not to physical plants but to the nine-year-old girls and the 14-year-old boys who – read this slowly – have no other option.
That responsibility – don’t confuse it with blame for the past -- starts with County Mayor Jim Coppinger and must be shouldered by all nine county commissioners who have made 42,000 children their victims. You disagree? Then go look for yourself. Take Kleenex with you.
When the rain drizzles through the roof at Orchard Knob Middle, when half the restrooms at Harrison Elementary cannot be used, when teachers must give up personal earnings to use part of their paychecks to buy crayons and poster board, who will stand for our children?
This Tuesday night I beg you to watch closely; we’ll see who you elected that can make a blivit disappear. And who you elected that cannot.
royexum@aol.com