This morning, I posted this commentary about the Knox Schools Bonus aka Incentive aka whatever you wanna call it. By 5 pm when the Knox County School Board met, Superintendent Bob Thomas had modified his plan to give ALL Full Time employees $1,000. I am not saying that my post changed the plan, but I am not saying that it didn’t. School Board Member Betsy Henderson asked about folding this into pay raises instead of an incentive. That is ultimately what needs to be done, the longtime employees (classified and certified) that top out of scale and never receive a significant raise to even pay the cost of living increase for insurance is unconscionable.
Also, from tonight’s meeting I am gonna vent about a couple other things.
- When a student is speaking on Public Forum, make a motion to suspend the rule and allow them to finish.. Instead tonight, Vice Chair Virginia Babb excused him, only when the last public forum speaker approached the podium and asked to give up her time to give him her time to complete his statement. Babb and Chair Susan Horn acted like they never heard of such a thing. Knox County Law Department Attorney Gary Dupler instructed them how to suspend the rules to accomplish that. How they did not know that is unbelievable. The board needs to be the board and operate as such.
- If you are an elected school board member and a parent/tax payer stands at public forum and says I emailed all nine of you and only four have replied back, five of you need to reevaluate your commitment.
This commentary brought to you from someone that served on the School Board for four years, Vice Chair of the Board for a year. served as that East Director of the Tennessee School Boards Association for two and a half of those years and maintained a full time job with a wife that worked a full time job and we raised three kids of school age. So, I know the commitment, I did it, I ain’t just a keyboard warrior.
