make HVHS a model school with special classes and amenities and let anyone county-wide choose to go there as long as they provided their own transportation

Yup, nothing like a world-class school that east and south Knoxvillians can send their kids to if they have the time etc. to drive all the way to Hardin Valley twice a day.

that change doesn't always make sense - it just happens and you have to deal with it. Maybe this is not being done for the right reasons - my point is that using the argument that change will make my children uncomfortable is NOT a sound basis from which to make the decision re:school zoning.

If it were just about school colors, Lotta, I'd have to agree with you. But in a true community, people have a sense of ownership about their schools, and for very good reason. Here in Powell, we have a great deal of equity, both financial and sweat, in our schools.

We have raised $150,000 to create a playground at Powell Elementary, spent another $100,000 on maintenance and addtional equipment over the last ten years, and lost countless Saturdays to pushing wheelbarrows, pulling weeds, and raking mulch there. In the three years my husband spent as Playground Chair, the task was a family affair involving all four of us. The county has spent not one dime nor one hour on this task--it's ours.

At the high school, we privately raised $950,000 to the county's $50,000 match to build our All Sports Complex over the course of several years. It is the site used for Powell's Junior Pro Basketball League (and the League's commissioner, elected last month, is also someone now being told he lives in Karns, not Powell), serving over 1000 Powell children.

In a related oddity, we are also being told that the Powell-Levi Baseball Field, a community gathering place for many years, now lies in Karns. My Girl Scout troops and Cub Scout dens both have maintained it for forever.

Over the last ten years, my family has pumped literally thousands of books in school and classroom libraries at all three schools (as some here have seen me collecting by the buggy-load at the Friends of the Public Library's annual book sale).

In my family, we have painted school bathrooms, planted and maintained shrubery, directed traffic, mopped cafeteria kitchens, and on and on for over a decade--and we've performed those tasks with our neighbors who share our sense of ownership about our schools.

I can immediately think of three families living west of Clinton Highway, where we are slated for rezoning for Karns, who have the same multi-generational service relationship with our schools:

--Four generations of the Harbin family include Hack (who built half the homes in Powell), Jim (who continued the tradition and also served as a County Commissioner from Powell), Rick (past prez of the Homebuilders Association), and Rick's daughter, my son's age.
--Three generations of the Hinton family include Mary Jane (secretary at PES and power-behind-the-throne for 40 years, son Mike (former teacher and principal at two Powell schools),Jeannie (teacher at PMS for over 30 years), and Jeannie's son (a high-acheiving teen whose example as a deaf PHS football team member inspires us all).
--Three generations of the Hodge family include Leolah (past principal at PHS), Bob (of the N-S sports section and perennial school volunteer, especially on the playground with my husband), and Bob's son.

My point is that even as the subdivisions encroach, a large core of us in Powell have been here for eons. Rick Grubb is now telling us that Clinton Highway is the western boundary for our community, and would boot generations of residents who know otherwise.

And meanwhile, the DAR marker at Clinton Highway and Emory Road contradicts him: It says that 200 years before Rick Grubb's arrival, Fort Meneffe, which served as our first school, stood there, squarely marking the heart, not the boundary, of our Powell community.

I must add this anecdotal evidence of our sense of community here in Powell: Seven years ago, when I moved from one Powell location to our newly-built home on family property in Powell, my doorbell rang just 24 hours after my arrival. On the front steps stood Mary Jane Hinton, whom I reference above, holding blueberry nut loaf in tin foil. Surprised, I asked her how she knew I was living at this house now. She said my mother's neighbor's "beauty operator" told her. I'm tellin' ya, what we have here is rare.

Cathy said: Lotta - What reasons would you prefer?

I prefer sound reasoning - my comment refers to the emotional tone coming from the media.

Every school community seems to have a small, but vocal, minority focused on maintaining property values and denying access to a certain school population, Randy. A few of my Powell neighbors have frustrated and embarrassed me on that score, in fact, as I'm sure has happened in every community countywide. I've been quite up front with these few Powell residents to offer my reminder that these are children we're talking about inviting into our community. Naysayers of this sort do not speak for the kind and welcoming majority of my community's residents.

It hasn't escaped my notice, though, that the rezoning plan for Powell High would ultimately route Northwest Middle and Norwood Elementary (around 75% Economically Disadvantaged, per State Rpt Card) into our community's schools. Given that the Powell demographic is already approaching the Knox County average for Economically Disadvantaged students (Powell Elementary is 35% ED, while the county average stands at 40% ED), it is not unkind to ask whether a proposed influx of children whose families struggle would cause our Powell schools to carry a *disproportionate* percentage of such students.

Every school community has a moral obligation to help support those children who, for whatever reason, are guiltless in their capacity as the offspring of struggling families. However, to the extent that family income level often impacts student performance, and that student performance drives perceptions of a community's schools, it is not unreasonable to rely on that countywide measure of *average* percent of ED students, 40% in Knox County, in making any determination of whether one's school community has been asked to offer more than its *fair share* of community support. Our school board members have an obligation to answer every community's questions in this regard, sensitive topic or no, if the burden of carrying the county's struggling children is to be equally shared.

I sincerely hope that stirring the socio-economic pot among the county's school children has not been a secondary objective in this proposed systemwide rezoning plan. While I beleive, like you, that the pot should be stirred, redefining the longstanding historic boundaries of communities, and ripping residents' multi-generational friendships asunder, is not the correct device for this pot-stirring.

As I've opined several times before in these rezoning threads, integration of socio-economic and racial groups is best acheived through increasing the availability of mixed-income housing in a given area. Just as it is not possible to "export democracy," it is not possible to "export community," either. Both these institutions sprout from within an area's existing borders and attempts to change those borders do not automatically result in any newly-defined "communities."

PT: "So where does this leave us?"

I'll be demanding that I be "left" in the school community where my children are the third generation of participants, and where my home lies on dirt defined as "Powell" by four prior generations of my family.

The Knox County School Board and the MPC, on the other hand, I beleive are "left" on stage naked, while we point and gawk that these emperors have no clothes.