Where have all the teachers gone? reader asks
I am a student at Farragut Middle School and am writing to you, hoping that you can help us get some answers. We, I and a lot of the other students at the school, would like to know why we are losing our technology teacher and the technology position that he has been teaching at the middle school for the last six years as well as another teacher (who they have not named yet) and why a growing community like Farragut is losing six teaching positions over the next 3 years in the first place. We need as many subjects as possible in order to meet the needs of our diverse community and get an adequate education. Instead of cutting classes we need to be adding classes like foreign languages. The school system seems to have decided that it is okay to cut back and crowd us into even a tighter area and give us fewer choices. Farragut had one of the highest rates of harassment in the county. Studies show that when animals are crowded they often become dull or fight. (See reports by Calhoun, Skinner, Hock, Cohen, & Audrey — Google Feedback and Crowd-ing) Is this what our community has chosen for us?
The Carl D. Perkin’s Act supports the technology position that is being destroyed. Technology is needed in this day and age to run many programs and machines in all types of positions such as teaching how to use grading programs, electronics, keyboarding, digital art, banking, automotive analysis and many more. I would like to know why we are losing teachers when we are increasing Knox County’s size. Tennessee is No. 48 in the United States in education. I fear that if we keep letting positions and teachers like this go, that we shall soon become number fifty. I am beginning to understand why I hear my older friends say that they want to move away as soon as they can and why they want to go to school in places far from here. The Carl Perkin’s Funds are still available. Why are we not trying to get these funds? Why are we not writing grant proposals and trying to make [our] schools the best that they can be?
There is a School Board Meeting June 7 at 5 p.m. and we are hoping that we can get answers at that meeting and I hope that a lot of students, teachers, parents, and business people will be there to support us.
Sincerely,
Eric Summitt
