Roy Exum
I will never forget it. It was Christmas Week in 2015 when a longtime newspaper friend of mine in Knoxville called one morning and, amid Season’s Greetings, wanted to know what kind of basketball we played in Chattanooga. I said something like, “much better than Knoxville,” and he laughed out loud. “You haven’t heard?” That’s how I learned an Ooltewah High player had been raped by his teammates with a pool cue.
It was the most horrific moment in my half-decade in sports. The whole thing would have been tightly covered up if a UT Hospital clerk had not followed protocol and called the cops. The KPD filed a report, an eagle-eyed reporter from the News-Sentinel spied it, and the word got out.
That’s when the nation-wide pandemonium started. And that’s when I heard the victim was being ignored by our Department of Education. As I began my fight against evil, I got my first whiff of our wretched public education failures in Hamilton County. About the same time, you’ll remember the paralyzing Chattanooga 2.0 Report got out, confirming far-worse failure than any of us could possibly believe.
In the past 18 months, I have surprised myself. I have written columns on education at least once a week and now it all comes to a head – this is the most important week in public education in Hamilton County since it was formed in 1819. Laugh if you will but I sincerely believe that not in the last 200 years have the futures and the lives of 42,000 children been in quite as much jeopardy. If we stand still, it can only get worse.
We are at a fork in the river. We can continue in the same direction where a pitiful 1.9 percent budget increase in education will put us in the same “still water,” the doldrums where there is no wind nor current to move us forward. In a way we deserve it. We have had no true leadership in at least 10 years and no real funding in the last 12. What did any of us expect?
It is the belief that parents and teachers are eager to take the other fork in the river. For the past 18 months there have been countless forums held, committees assembled, symposiums praised and – as the PhD’s say – more “capacious harangue” thrown around than Moon Pies have been baked near the Tennessee River. But that’s all water downstream. You can never drink it again.
All that matters now is that it has come down to a final 36 hours.
On Wednesday morning the elected County Commission will have what is believed to be its last chance to do better than increase our education budget by more than a do-nothing 1.9 percent. Late Thursday afternoon the School Board will then select a permanent superintendent who its elected members believe will be the man to lead us out of what we’ve discovered has become a self-perpetuating mess. We’ve had the last three superintendents leave prematurely while not one elected leader has done a thing. This madness must stop once and for all.
By Friday our entire county will be able to identify which among the nine county commissioners and nine school board members took a stand and which ones ran. You see, this is an election year (next May). While the political thinking is that a tax increase is fatal to a re-election bid, an angry and skeptical public is fed up with lily-livered politicians who are “all talk-no action.”
This week please judge our commissioners and school board members on little of what they say and a lot on what they do. They got us here. Applaud those with the fortitude to get us out. Not next year. Not with another committee. We’ve got one commissioner who worries about seniors but where is just one who worries about 42,000 children? Personally, I am going to champion the re-election of those willing to seek today’s solutions rather than tomorrow’s faux promises.
For instance, just last Friday County Mayor Jim Coppinger had the audacity to write the school board a letter stating the county and the education leaders must begin to work together in the future to better support the schools’ funding. Hello, this after the last 18 months of continuous chaos! I’m a big fan of Jim Coppinger but our county mayor needs to cowboy up and heed the words of my old-time football pal George Allen: “The future is now!”
Coppinger’s letter is hardly more than some prophylactic ploy to ward off the public’s ire and disdain for refusing to confront our immediate and critical needs in both education and county government. He knows the jail issue has yet to be addressed during his term and, while he vows education is his greatest and most immediate concern, he is best aware of all among us that a 1.9 percent increase is nothing more than as they say in Texas: “Big hat – little herd.” My gracious goodness, sir -- The future is now!
I knew Coach Allen back when he was with the Redskins and let me share a couple of other truths: “Every day you waste is one you’ll never make up,” – think about that. And what every elected official should learn by heart is, “The achiever is the only person who is really alive.”
After five ‘final-finalists’ were interviewed in the most exhaustive fashion possible last week, the word on the street is that it has boiled down to two: business executive Arthur Wayne Johnson and Interim Superintendent Kirk Kelly. Johnson endeared himself when he told the school board to hang any contract in their ear -- he’s had success in everything he’s touched and his life’s ambition is to now help children. “Just you watch,” was the essence of his message.
Dr. Kelly, on the other hand, sounded like some swami when he promised, “The biggest way we can make changes is from within.” Kelly, the interim for the past 15 months, has done a noble job – no question – and as an Interim he’s been in a terrible spot. His hands have been tied; what happens if he ain’t the pick? Yet, if he gets the job, do the notorious “good ole boys” continue to rock ‘n roll?
Is Kelly comparable to “still water,” doing the same things that yield the same results? Or will he finally become unleashed to use his years of experience in education, his wealth of what golfers call “local knowledge,” and his ever-growing contacts in the county and its communities to thrive “from within?”
Johnson is much like that other fork in the river. Who knows what’s around the first bend or two in the stream? Some educators are jumpy since he has no experience in schools. Others are worried they’ll be replaced and there are those “good ole boys” – let’s face the truth – who fear their professional or other short-comings will surface.
So how do I handicap Thursday’s vote, based on my hunches?
In the voting where the board narrowed nine candidates to five on May 24, the only candidate to make all nine ballots was Bryan Johnson, the chief academic officer for Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools in Tennessee. But the inside rumor is Wayne Johnson did a far better job presenting himself and then the Kelly loyalists edged Bryan Johnson “into the rail” – a horse-racing technique where the horse out of the first gate is pinched into the inside rail for much of the race and, being blocked, can never make a move.
That said, Bryan Johnson is definitely the dark horse going into Thursday’s vote but here’s my thinking: The school board has now tipped its hand enough times to easily show it is divided. Former HCDE members Joe Galloway, David Testerman, and chairman Steve Highlander always vote together with Karitsa Jones joining them.
You can look for veteran member Rhonda Thurman and three first-time members, Tiffanie Robinson, Joe Smith, and Joe Wingate, to usually go the opposite way. That leaves Kathy Lennon as the swing vote and she’ll lean with the former HCDE crowd more often than not.
A case in point: During the May 24 voting for the final finalists, Kelly tied with candidate Jack Elsey for the fifth and last spot. The outcome was so predicable it was laughable. Galloway, Testerman, Highlander and Jones went with Kelly while Robinson, Smith, Thurman and Wingate picked Elsey. Lennon threw her vote to Kelly. Surprised? The four who voted for Elsey didn’t vote for Kelly on the original ballot either.
Finally, there is this: In recent weeks Mayor Coppinger has talked numerous times about the public’s perception versus the public schools reality. That is most ironic.
For the past 18 months, the overwhelming perception from every direction has consistently been to change the system and bring in new leadership. Yet as we face these critical 36 hours, the reality is there is a 1.9 percentage budget increase with strong odds the school board will retain the same leader.
As many a jilted teenager has asked, “What do you do when the only one who can make you stop crying is the one who makes you cry?”
royexum@aol.com