Cindy Buttry's proposal would have zoned as few as 200 kids to HVHS (the school that people were raising hell about building to accommodate "only" 1,300).
Her proposal to make HVHS an "open" zone is clearly popular with the crowd, but it is irresponsible and is simply pandering. In theory, she says, they'll make the curriculum offerings so good that kids will be enticed to transfer there. But you can't budget all those bells and whistles without a clue as to what the student population is going to be.

But you can't budget all those bells and whistles without a clue as to what the student population is going to be.

Thus, the burning question: Who Wanted this? And why? And who was supposed to go there?

Oh, yeah, I remember.

It was wheel tax v. property tax, library v. a new West Knox high school to relieve overcrowding.

Who exactly was asking for this again...?

the people asking for it are the folks who cried when the original proposal was made in december - and now this is what the county is left with.

huh?
They haven't voted yet.

they haven't voted on rezoning yet; dan murphy is still talking and he's the first board member to do so. They have, for some reason, divided the issue into the rezoning issue and then the grandparenting,which they say is the siblings being grandfathered but actually sounds like the entire grandfathering issue, which includes current high school students and is about the only thing that makes the rezoning proposal close to acceptable for current students.

From Knoxvnews blog: The school board passed the system's controversial high school rezoning by a 5-4 vote. Voting for the proposal were Sam Anderson, Indya Kincannon, Dan Murphy, Karen Carson and Jim Williams. Cindy Buttry, Thomas Deakins, Rex Stooksbury and Robert Bratton voted no.

the five are Anderson, Kincannon, Murphy, Carson, Williams

Buttry and Bratton are clearly fixin' to run for something next year.

And now the question is - what's next?

Interesting the 15-minute debate about whether to vote yes regarding the superintendent's proposal to allow grandfathering and if that would somehow tie the superintendent's hands... this is an interim superintedent... surely when the school opens and the rezoning takes effect, there will be a different superintendent... if they hadn't voted for the grandfathering, who is to say that a new superintendent who follow Mullins' proposal without that in writing board vote?

The grandfathering as a separate amendment was a political play to try and get the vote shot down.

This makes the case to fund vouchers.

River Dog
Professor of Dogology, Emeritus
University of Tennessee

We as voters need to go to the polls in 2008 & 2010 & fire Sam Anderson, Indya Kincannon, Dan Murphy, Karen Carson and Jim Williams. The school rezoning travesty should have never been allowed to happen.

Unfortunately, school board members weren't included in the Tennessee Supreme Court's interpretation of Knox County's term limits in its Charter. Thus, it will be up to the voters to term-limit these 5 school board members themselves.

Sam Anderson's agenda is to prop up a failing school to retain his past glory of his state championships as their football coach. Austin-East should have been closed & its students rezoned to West, Fulton, Gibbs, Carter, & South-Doyle. This rezoning won't put one more student at A-E.

Under federal law, all parents in Holston Heights, Chilhowee Hills, & Spring Hill can simply refuse to send their children to A-E & by law, these kids must be provided transportation to continue to go to Carter, Gibbs, & Fulton, respectively. That is what will happen, unless these parents decide to home school them, send them to private or Christian or Catholic schools, or just move out of their neighborhoods.

All the school board did in the case of Northeast Knoxville is to devalue the residential and commercial property in the Asheville Highway, Rutledge Pike, & Love's Creek corridors. The A-E zone now extends all the way to East Towne Knoxville Center Mall.

Drive through the neighborhood around A-E. The kind of overgrown lots, boarded up houses & businesses, crime, prostitution, drug dealing, gang infestation, drive-by shootings, etc., that you see occuring every day & nite around that school will now extend all the way to the Holston River, to I-40, to the mall, etc. The Knoxville police will have to start patrolling a much wider area to keep citizens safe.

Expect to see many "for sale" signs go up in Holston Heights, & especially in Chilhowee Hills, & Spring Hill. The term, "there goes the neighborhood," has never been more apropos.

Indya Kincannon lacked the courage of her convictions. When her proposed amendment to keep Spring Hill in the Fulton zone failed, she failed herself to keep faith with her constituents & vote "NO" on the overall plan, as they expected & needed her to do.

Jim Williams should have stepped up to the plate & strongly protested this social re-engineering that is going on at the edge of his district. Of course, none of the people who vote for him are being rezoned. They are all in Sam Anderson's or Indya Kincannon's districts. Thus, his hands-off approach allowed this to happen. He fiddled while Rome was burning. He is as much to blame for this happening as anyone. His vote & his comments as a former coach & principal could have made a huge difference.

Dan Murphy & Karen Carson are lost causes. They are obviously going to support the administration no matter what. They are the main leaders of the school board & their constituents need to turn them out of office.

The elections in 2008 are huge for Knox County. They will determine whether or not we ever get metro government, which we desperately need. City government is in great shape. County government is in total disarray, shambles, & turmoil. It is a total farce.

We as voters must retake control of our government. We have to vote the rascals out of county commission & the school board. If not, this is just the beginning of more to come in which the will of the people will be totally ignored.

The sum total of this is that you will start seeing more vacancies in East Towne Mall, less commercial development in the area around that mall, & trashier neighborhoods extending out toward it. More people will be moving into the Carter & Gibbs communities, exacerbating the overcrowding at Gibbs.

Fewer & fewer students will attend A-E. They could move the zoning line all the way to Sevier County, Jefferson County, & Grainger County, & not one more student would attend there. It simply is a failed school, not just a failing one. The test scores there lag far behind all other high schools.

The so-called "magnet" concept has also failed. Everyone in Knox County can attend A-E & be provided taxpayer-funded transportation to do so, yet virtually no one outside the A-E zone does. Neither A-E nor the magnet concept are viable & neither ever will be, no matter how much money & effort the school board throws at either.

Look for a complaint to be filed with the Office of Civil Rights and perhaps a lawsuit in federal court, too. A-E will remain a 90%+ minority school. That should be unacceptable to everyone who truly wants to desegregate our school system countywide.

Why not put the A-E students in better environments in the 5 high schools that surround it? This would give those students a chance to do better in school, to motivate them to compete with other students whose test scores are higher than theirs, to further desegregate all 5 of those other high schools, which will continue to become more & more segregated until A-E is finally closed. It is inevitable that A-E will close. It is only a matter of when. When school starts in 2008, it will have less students in it than it does this year. Enrollment will continue to decline no matter what the school board keeps trying to do.

Government will not dictate where people live. They will choose to live wherever they want & will continue to send their children to the schools they want. This futile effort of trying to force unwanted changes on the community is a total, dismal failure, & it is one more example of how the government that governs least governs best. The heavy-handedness of the school board will not & should not be forgotten.

The taxpayers are going to be saddled with more transportation costs with this rezoning. It is shameful that we have allowed our so-called representatives to turn this into a ridiculous circus. Knoxville as a whole is suffering from this process.

Drive through the neighborhood around A-E. The kind of overgrown lots, boarded up houses & businesses, crime, prostitution, drug dealing, gang infestation, drive-by shootings, etc., that you see occuring every day & nite around that school will now extend all the way to the Holston River, to I-40, to the mall, etc. The Knoxville police will have to start patrolling a much wider area to keep citizens safe.

That's ridiculous. All you are doing is putting people off your message, whatever it is. And it sounds racist. You probably ought to tone that kind of crap down or take it somewhere else.

I cannot pretend to fully understand the "no Child Left Behind" provisions, but isn't Carter also a "failing" school under NCLB criteria? I understood that only four KC high schools are considered "succeeding" under those standards?

Here's a problem I had and it's one that many will have now.

My child, who graduated last year from Karns, went to a school that had a school board member that I couldn't vote for because we lived in a different school board district. I live in Karen Carson's district and Karns is in Cindy Buttry's district. So, who's my school board member?

Tamara, i think some folks misinterpreted what you were trying to say.
Thanks for clarifying.

It seems we still need to take our drive through Farragut together.

Y'all need to take a drive around Karns High too. The road that most people north and east of KHS is fairly narrow and you have to share it with 18 wheelers coming and going in the industrial park. It's really fun when Witt Lumber Company is bringing a load of trusses out of their factory.

CL, did you know that there wasn't any safety study for this plan or for any bus routes? KCS picks roads that are safe. How do they define safe? They have not been notified that they are not.

How does that make you feel?

Y'all need to take a drive around Karns High too.

Hey, they're gonna finish and open the Karns Connector any day now. Well, maybe in a couple of years. Hopefully there won't be too many fatalities before that.

The preacher who pleaded with EVERYONE in the room to vote for or against this for the RIGHT reasons was the best speaker of the evening, audience and board members alike. I hope he comes back when the middle and elementary schools are rezoned.

This has been a total screw-up. Kids that were making very ggod grades now are problem kids because this has a lasting scar on them. They give up and it shows. But the school boards says "kids deal with it, its the parents that do not"
How many board members send their kids to private schools?....I wish we had a chance to send their kid(s) to a zone the public decides.
We are moving and hate Knox county, the school board and all it stands for now.
This was nothing more than taking kids that had very good grades and moving them to a school that is high priority, a school that is failing and trying to use the student and parents to help bring to schools grades up....period. Indya Kincannon, I can't even stand to hear you...you voice makes me puke!