All posts by Betty Bean

Betty Bean

Resistance is futile on Emerald’s proposed charter school

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Betty Bean
Government/Politics columnist

Before the summer is over, the school board will approve the district’s first charter school.

Last week, Steve Diggs (executive director of the Emerald Youth Foundation, an organization that he helped found in 1988 as an inner-city youth ministry that has done immense good work with disadvantaged children in the years since) formally announced that Emerald Charter Schools will submit an application for a tuition-free, K-8 public school, to be called Emerald Academy, on April 1. The school board will vote it up or down before the start of next school year.

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Betty Bean

Mari Brooks speaks out for colleagues

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Betty Bean
Government/Politics columnist

Hardly anyone in Knox County has poured more time, work and love into a school than Mari Brooks at West High School, which she believes is the last, best hope for a better future for a significant portion of its students.

“I am a devout believer in public education,” she said. “It is the foundation of our nation, and it’s where kids learn to live in the real world. We’ve got kids born in 33 different nations at West and everything from the lowest socioeconomic group to the highest and everything in between. At West High School, you can excel no matter what your background.”

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Betty Bean

Mark Taylor challenges TVAAS

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Betty Bean
Government/Politics columnist

Mark Taylor has become the second Knox County educator to challenge the constitutionality of the Tennessee Value Added Assessment System for teacher evaluations.

The Tennessee Education Association filed a lawsuit on Taylor’s behalf in federal court last week charging Gov. Bill Haslam, Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman and the Knox County Board of Education with violating Taylor’s 14th Amendment right to equal protection from “irrational state-imposed classifications” by using a small fraction of his students to determine his overall effectiveness.

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Betty Bean

Checking that gift horse’s dentures

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Betty Bean
Government/Politics columnist

Last summer, shiny happy school board members gathered around Superintendent James McIntyre to cheer the announcement that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was giving Knox County Schools a humongous grant to help figure out how to spend taxpayer money. It was festive.

Nobody was rude enough to correct McIntyre’s math when he said it was a $1.2 million Gates grant, when in fact $840,000 came from Gates and the other $360,000 in equal amounts from the Knox County-subsidized Great Schools Partnership and from Knox County Schools. And nobody mentioned that the Parthenon Group – the Gates-approved, Boston-based business consultant chosen to create the “Smart Spending” plan along with its subcontractor Education Resource Strategies – is known for recycling the same advice in different school districts, so there wasn’t much mystery about what the recommendations would be.

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Betty Bean

Looming health-care deadline spawns signup push

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Betty Bean
Government/Politics columnist

Time is running out on the open enrollment period to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

The deadline is Monday, March 31, and local residents can find information on the city of Knoxville website at www.cityofknoxville.org/AffordableCareAct, as well as at healthcare.gov, the federal government website. Or call 1-800-318-2596.

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Betty Bean

Will money buy love?

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Betty Bean
Government/Politics columnist

Fourth District incumbent Lynne Fugate is one of schools superintendent James McIntyre’s strongest allies. She is in her second year as school board chair and is seeking to be elected to a second term.

Fugate is sitting pretty, money-wise, reporting a balance-on-hand of nearly $18,000 at the end of the last reporting period, on Jan. 31. Her list of financial supporters is long and impressive, studded with the names of some of Knoxville’s most powerful citizens. She raised much of her war chest at a January fundraiser at the home of Ann Haslam Bailey, including a $1,000 contribution from James Haslam II, also a strong McIntyre supporter.

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Betty Bean

Why Knox County?

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Betty Bean
Government/Politics columnist

First District County Commissioner Sam McKenzie is one of Schools Superintendent James McIntyre’s most reliable allies. A certifiably smart guy with a master’s degree in physics, McKenzie has supported McIntyre’s budget requests and repeatedly reminded colleagues that running the schools is not their job.

“Let’s stay in our own lane,” he tells them.

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Betty Bean

Opting out: parent says K-2 testing harms daughter

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Betty Bean
Government/Politics columnist

Jennifer Nagel’s 7-year-old daughter spent her snow days reading a book. That might not sound like a big deal, but to Nagel, it’s almost miraculous, because reading has been an ordeal for her daughter, who has an undiagnosed learning disability. Nagel says her daughter’s teacher has been very helpful, but the school system has not. So she started looking for solutions on her own.

Almost by accident, she found a critically acclaimed series of books co-written by actor Henry Winkler and the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity for and about dyslexic kids – who knew the Fonz has a master’s degree from Yale, and dyslexia?

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Betty Bean

McIntyre is focus of 6th District slugfest

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Betty Bean
Government/Politics columnist

The 6th District for both school board and county commission stretches from Amherst to Hardin Valley, from Karns to Norwood and Pleasant Ridge, swooping up to Ball Camp and Byington-Solway and Karns.

These disparate communities are bound together in a newly configured district, previously represented by Cindy Buttry and Thomas Deakins, who were squeezed out when district lines were redrawn. Buttry bowed out in 2012, and Deakins will not stand for re-election this year.

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