This from today’s Knoxville News-Sentinel and this from Volunteer TV WVLT concerning last nights Knox County School Board meeting.
This school continues to be the red headed step child of the Knox County School Board. It has one school board member, Indya Kincannon of Knoxville inner city still trying to reject the school all together. Last night, she advocated to rezone the students from Farragut to Carter, Halls to South-Doyle, Gibbs to Karns and every school in between. Her possible motives and continuing efforts to reject this new school will require a separate post in the near future.
This school has already suffered a 1 year delay. The architect and school board during the hiring process, publicly stated the school would be built and ready for occupancy by 2007-2008, only to now delay it until 2008-2009. The $40.0 million dollar budget for this school is above and beyond the school systems capital fund. Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale and the 19 member Knox County Commission has given the $40.0 million to the school system for the sole purpose of this project.
In previous post, here and here, I have documented all the additional programming that have driven this project to the price tag where it is today. In talking with a school board member last night, following the meeting, I was assured that the $3.0 million dollar plus field house has been eliminated.
The problems that the students in west Knox county have are 1.) Indya Kincannon 2.) a couple of career politicians on the school board that refuse to discuss anything that may affect “their” projects. 7th district Diane Dozier and 8th district Jim Williams. They talk a good game in public about doing what’s right “for the children” but when it comes time to walk the walk for all their talk. They really only mean “the children” of their district. Jim Williams has NEVER voted for a project in the west end of the county, while receiving pork barrel project after pork barrel project in his sparsely populated district.
The County Mayor and County Commission should have taken the $40.0 million dollars, selected a site, built the building and handed the keys to the school district in 2007-2008. Because this building may never be built, this way. It took 1 year to break ground from the time the school district had the $40 million dollars. The wheel tax passed in November 2004 and was appropriated in December 2004, the ground was broken on December 2, 2005, and now it suffers another delay.
Just to avoid any misconceptions, I support building a new high school to
alleviate over-crowding in West Knox County. I also support building a high
quality facility that includes top-notch classrooms, a football field,
stadium, and track.
At our meeting last night I suggested that re-zoning also be considered as
part of the solution to over-crowding. We have excess capacity in some of
our schools and, as stewards of tax payer resources, it makes sense to use
our existing facilities to the fullest possible extent. I never mentioned
any specific schools. I would rely on staff to come up with a coherent
strategy that makes the best use of our existing capacity and also enables
people to attend schools as close as possible to where they live.
If you have any questions that I can help answer, my contact information is
available on my website, http://www.indyakincannon.com.
Thanks for your interest in providing great schools for all of Knox County’s
children.
Indya Kincannon
School Board member
Knox County School Board
I am pleased that Ms. Kincannon is a regular reader to Brian’s Blog.
I appreciate Ms. Kincannon confirming what I reported. She suggested re-zoning students to schools that are under utilized. A few years ago there were two high schools in Knox County that had capacity, Gibbs and Austin-East, one located in the county and the other in Knoxville’s inner city. I would presume not much has changed in a couple of years. I will look into it.
Fulton High School is in Ms. Kincannon’s district.
Ms. Kincannon’s “spin” that fully utilizing all high schools but keeping students close to their homes is a stretch, when the only under utilized schools are A-E and Gibbs.
Farragut’s baseball field has been paid for by our student athletes over the years working their rearends off. Karns High School recieved a $1.0 million dollar baseball field paid for by the taxpayers. Farragut never recieved a field house until the football boosters built and provided it, last year. Gibbs High School received a multi million dollar field house provided for by the taxpayers.
Millions of dollars were spent at Fulton and A-E, improving and expanding them a few years ago due to the city school system ignoring them before the city school system went broke. The county should have built a combined school on the standard kniting mill site, merging A-E and Fulton.
To transport kids from the county tax base (west knox county) to the inner city or to Gibbs in order to fully utilize high schools in my opinion is wrong.
This funding for this new school is being provided by the Knox County Mayor and the 19 Knox County Commissioner’s .
The $40.0 million is NOT coming out of the school district’s current captial plan.
Its great to know that members of the school board and other elected officials are willing to respond to a blog post. Would that more elected officials would hold themselves to that kind of accountability and scrutiny.