Back in September, when Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs announced an Education Liaison, the tabloid bully gals got all fired up on their online site and was hating on the person and position. When the Education Liaison sent an email to the board in January, the tabloid bully gals fired up a story saying the Liaison had violated a state law of lobbying the legislature. Interestingly, the first time the email was requested through open records was from BrianHornback.Com according to my source. So it appears that the School Board Members are using the tabloid bully gals to be their soap box grandstanders.
Now, there is a tabloid bully gal story that a couple school board members are upset that they passed a resolution opposing a bill and are upset that it didn’t get sent to ALL members of the legislature. It was only given to Speaker Pro Tem Bill Dunn, who is a sponsor of the bill the board opposes.
a screenshot of a portion of the tabloid bully gal story
Apparently, the School Board didn’t think to mail to resolution to ALL legislators, or send it to Senator Becky Duncan Massey, who serves as the Knox County Delegation Chair and request that she to forward to ALL legislators.
It seems that Betty Bean and a couple of School Board Members are advocating for an Education Liaison.
The school board absolutely DID think to have it sent to all members of the legislature. It actually says that, right in the resolution. I also said it during the meeting. It was right there, in the the language we voted for.
The resolution was supposed to have been sent to every legislator. Most of the Board believed it HAD been sent to every legislator, exactly as we directed. Only last week, I found out that it had only been sent to our local delegation, so I delivered copies to the Education Committee members that day and will deliver copies to the rest of the legislature this week.
The unfortunate part if this, is that the whole purpose of passing a resolution in December was for our position to be communicated before bills began moving through committees. We wanted our position to be clear, well before they voted to divert millions of tax dollars to a gift card type of voucher scheme, when that money could (and should) be used to lift up ALL of our students in public schools. (There is no reason for Tennessee to be 45TH in the nation in what we are willing to spend for public schools!)
I would be glad to send you a copy of the resolution and/or a copy of the ESA voucher amendment. Since all of my KCS email is public record, I am glad to forward whatever you would like (as I would be glad to do for any citizen who asks questions about school issues). I believe true transparency requires that, whether or not any “official” written request is made.