If 350 additional employees don’t help raise the Hamilton County School System’s test scores then those new employees will get to keep their jobs, regardless of results, said School Board member Rhonda Thurman.
As The Tennessee Star reported, school system officials have proposed adding that many new employees because they believe it is the path to improving their academics.
County commissioners may have to raise property taxes to fund these new positions, several of which are administrators and social workers.
“We never get rid of a program. All we do is keep adding on to them,” said Thurman, who said these positions are unneeded.
“No one ever loses their job or is held accountable. There is all this great and wonderful stuff that is supposed to happen, and the people in charge tell us how these positions will improve everything — and then they don’t (improve everything). No one ever loses a job.”
School Board member Kathy Lennon, though, said she’s confident in Superintendent Bryan Johnson’s plan for additional school employees, and she believes it will impact school systems academics in a positive way.
School Board member Joe Wingate, meanwhile, said this plan “is just a proposal for how organizations should run best.”
“If five years from now we aren’t making progress then it is up to us to motivate Johnson, or we go back to the drawing board,” Wingate said.
“I am confident with our leader. I hope we can hang onto him. I am confident he will be successful.”
As The Star reported, county residents may have to pay 17 percent more in property taxes so the school system can have enough money to create these 350 positions.
School board members have already voted in favor of the plan. Hamilton County resident Nancy Patty said she’ll lose an extra $500 a year if county commissioners raise her property taxes.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
[…] member Rhonda Thurman, a critic of the proposed bump in spending for the school system, recently told The Star that even if the 350 personnel do not help to raise test scores, they likely still will […]
This type of action and thinking is the reason that people do not want to give more money to education. We spend more money and the results do not improve.