We have politely and intelligently called, e-mailed and met with our school board members. Monday night's speakers were eloquent and factual. Mullins slept through all the
parent comments while other board members chatted and ignored parents. The right thing to do for ALL children is to vote no and create a task force of parents and professionals who can create a compromise for elementary, middle and high school students. Our school board prefers to force and bully their power instead of thinking creatively and collaboratively. Powell will file their OCR suit and wealthy communities will file their own lawsuits.

What can we say that matters to this school board? They haven't heard anything we have said so far. Is it any wonder people are uninvolved in politics? The amendment for Holston Hills still leaves underdog Austin East getting less than it deserves and needs from the city. The amendment proposed for Bearden High will "allow" the wealthy neighborhood behind us to drive their children to the school that is so close we can hear the marching band on clear nights. Our tiny, poor subdivision will have to cross Morrell, cross Northshore and drive all the way down Sutherland. The amendment proposed for Farragut sends more
students from Farragut to Bearden instead of to the brand new high school, which is why my children are being sent down to West. With or without the amendments, my children and the children whose parents are too tired from
trying to feed their families to fight the establishment will lose.

I find it amazing how 9 people can have the ability to change the lives of thousands of people, change the values of investments of even more, create increases in the county budget which will force increases in taxes to all in the county, and not have any accountability to anyone. I am equally amazed that our local news services have not once tried to investigate the rezoning issue. Instead they prefer to just sit and state half the facts of events that already occurred. I’m very disappointed to say the least.

They have all focused on just the one small piece of the over all problem, who will attend HVHS. The board and news agencies never once address the bigger issues. Where is the money to pay for the increase in the school budget? Why are students being shifted from schools in good standing with NCLB and good performance report cards to schools that are in poor standing and poor performance?

The last few days both the board and news agencies have made special effort to report a handful of folks that support the rezoning. In every case the rezoning is an improvement for them. This isn’t reporting nor is this validation of the proposal. Find some folks that are taking a step backwards and who still support the proposal and then report that. We all know they won’t find anyone.

Instead there has been nothing but half-assed movement by all our elected government officials and even less then that from the local news agencies. Once again one must wonder if this is because the rezoning doesn’t affect them personally and if they had a hand in it. Why else would they not be up in arms and trying to help the people they “serve”.

Kudos to the McCaughan’s and the others that have tried to bring forth the outright absurdity of this rezoning proposal. But at this rate, I guess I’ll be seeing you at West High in a few years.

While I agree with most comments here, I sincerly hope is that this will open everyone's eyes. I am not speaking to those who have responded to this thread -- I am talking to all those who probably will not even read this. We must stay involved. We must be informed. Some people do not even read the newspaper or watch local news. That is not enough. There coverage of the issues is inadequate. We all should have been informed to know that when they placed that first brick in Hardin Valley that this was going to happen. We should have called a time out before building this school.

Some people say -- well it's there now so deal with it. We are dealing with it. A small piece of our community will be sent over or under the highway to another community – resulting in feelings of isolation and separation from existing relationships.

Why do we study history? To learn from our mistakes. Let's not let politicians take the easy way out. There was available land in better locations. You might ask, but at what cost? Well, how to you calculate the cost we are paying now? There has been a change to almost every community around the county.

Let’s all pay more attention to issues all over the county, because our backyards are bigger than we thought.