The following are all statements of Dominque Oakley, a candidate for Knox County School Board, Seventh District in 2022.
I am crushed by the loss of a KCS special needs educator and a valued bus driver. My heart goes out to their families, their coworkers, and their students. I have lost a fellow teacher unexpectedly and I know what a massive hole it creates in a school community. I mourn for both Hardin Valley and A.L. Lotts today, but I fear we will be mourning in even more communities much too soon.
As a mother of a special needs child who has been underserved in the Knox County School System, I am not surprised that this struck first in our special needs community. Special needs families and educators are all too often neglected and treated as second-class citizens within KCS. These tragedies only confirm what we already knew.
Our Board of Education signed a letter stating that they were “a model” for in-person learning during the COVID-19 pandemic the same day two dedicated members of KCS died. The fallen staff members were sacrificial lambs of the Board’s choice to put politics ahead of saving lives.
As devastated as I am by the loss of these valued members of our community, they are not the first educators in Tennessee we have lost to COVID-19. If nothing changes, they will not be the last. The Board is aware this is happening in our community and had many chances to stop it, yet they chose not once, but twice to do less than they had last year. This Board has now lost the right to say that they have done everything within their power to save lives. The only thing this Board is “a model” for is a failure of leadership that has resulted in the loss of human life. That is an unforgivable failing.
We must all hold this Knox County School Board accountable. Today we mourn, but we must insist on change. We must contact our board members, reach out to our governor, and tell them that these deaths need to be the last. No more dead teachers. No more dead students. And when the polls open, we WILL vote the people responsible out of office.
Dominque Oakley is a candidate for Knox County School Board Seventh District (Powell and Halls) Primary May 3, 2021
