If anyone says this move will improve your child's education do not believe them. School boards are the democratic means for parents and teachers to advocate for their children's schools. School board members must be responsive to families about nothing other than the details of schools in their purview unlike the county commission. This power grab means parents will have little transparency and reduced influence over local school funding decisions.

This is Kevin Huffman's ideal for TN. Remove local decision-making power of our public schools and move it towards a centralized, top-down autocrat who will do his bidding.

Shifting school board control of school finance decisions is step one for starving public schools and enriching privatized, unaccountable edu-preneures. Giving county mayors this level of increased control removes critical decision making power from elected school boards and opening us up for step 2- undemocratic mayoral appointed boards.

This ALEC/DFER devised plan is anti-democratic. It robs parents of their local voices. Say good-by to local school boards. Say hello to autocrats and billionaires making decisions about public schools who don't even send their own children to public schools.

Look at NYC, Chicago, Detroit, NEW Orleans for the model. Chicago's model is rife with cronyism, fraud, arbitrary uninformed decisions, made by individuals appointed (not elected)by the mayor who have no interest in the communities or the schools they serve. Huffman's dream scenario.

BTW, this is where Huffman sends his daughters to school in Nashville:
(link...)

He doesn't propose we give all children the same school experiences his children are getting, does he?

This move has nothing to do with "improving your children's education".

Yes, that's my concern too, JC and Phil.

From a previous conversation we had here in May 2012, these are just some of the country's larger school systems that no longer have elected local school boards and are instead under mayoral control:

Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Cleveland, OH
Hartford, CT
Los Angeles, CA
New Haven, CT
New York City, NY
Philadelphia, PA
Providence, RI
Washington, DC

Discussions are now (or were recently) underway on establishing mayoral control in these larger school systems:

Atlanta, GA
Detroit, MI
Houston, TX
Milwaukee, WI
Newark, NJ
Peoria, IL
Rochester, NY

In most of the cities in which the mayor already has control, he appoints both a superintendent and a school board (so it isn't particularly clear what authority those school boards actually have--but it's scarce little).

With all due respect guys, I am not seeing how this impacts local education decisions. I read the version put out last Oct and it really does appear to be an accounting issue.

The bill under consideration this session, of course, hasn't yet been filed.

I linked Betty's article primarily as a "heads up," since for whatever reason Tim Burchett seems to think this session's proposal would give him "more control."

Guess we won't be able to say yea or nay until we see the full text of the bill once it's filed--but Burchett appears to know something about it, a;ready.

What Betty is reporting on won't affect Knox County at all. She makes that pretty clear.

What Betty is reporting on won't affect Knox County at all.

As it stands now. Will have to see the bill as filed, amended, etc. Burchett is lobbying for it.

ETA: And there's nothing at all wrong with being vigilant about attacks on public education, which frequently start by nibbling away around the edges.