This evening the Knox County School Board held a once in a decade meeting at West High School in the main auditorium. Kudos to Dr. Dan Murphy for the leadership to pull the school system into this type of 21st century event. I am a native of Knox County and the last time the board held a public meeting like this is when the board was dealing with the desegregation plan for the city/county school system.
How did this decade meeting measure up to the ones in the past. This one was lame. Back in the desegregation days emotions ran high and at times became hostile. Give the Knox County School System credit tonight they were ready to return to the old days. In attendance were two Knox County Security department heads and two Knox County School Security officers. The public/security ratio was better than the teacher/student ratio in a West Knox County school.
The actual attendance must be broken down in two segments. The first is the
5:00 p.m. until 6:15 p.m. This was the public input session. I was positioned to count the entire room and to add as people entered late. For the first session there was a total of 84, this number includes public, school district office staff and others. Knox County fourth district Commissioner Phil Guthe that has been unfairly labeled as “not school family friendly” was in attendance, In addition the media contingent consisted of 10 individuals a reporter and photographer for each of the three television stations, a producer and cameraman for Knox County Schools, the Schools PR person and a reporter for the Knoxville News-Sentinel. On the panel were 8 of the 9 school board members, the school board secretary, the senior deputy law director and the Superintendent of Schools. The security force of 4 already mentioned combine for a total of 109 persons.
The second part of the meeting was from 6:20 p.m. until 7:20 p.m. This session was for the school board members to interact with the Superintendent and themselves about possible budget cuts. Many of the teachers and concerned citizens that were advocating a few minutes before to force the Mayor and Commissioners to put their commitment where their rhetoric is, obviously were not as committed themselves as they left the building. The attendance numbers dropped to a grand total of 81.
The obvious NO show for tonight, 5th district School Board Member Karen Carson who recently held a town hall meeting and makes lots of request for citizens to make comments to her via email and phone, however when a large number of citizens come together to voice their concern, she is not present and accounted for.
There is a lot of material to cover from this event. I will post several stories over this evening and the next day or so as I breakdown my notes. I wish West High School had wireless internet in their auditorium as I would have blogged live from the event.
