Atomictumor

I’ve been keeping largely quiet about local stuff lately. Theres a plethora of stuff to bring up, the whole Target thing, the elections coming up, the school budget, and usually I’m all up ons, because I like being a gadfly.

This year, tho, I just don’t have much pump in my bump, or something. Last year, we started the Support Oak Ridge Schools campaign, and this year I find that I don’t even have the website up and working.

Some of it has to do with a bit of disillusionment I feel regarding the neverending nature of having to deal with the same old problems, no matter how much sense by stance seems to make (to me). I mean, dur, its a no-brainer, if you don’t pay teachers, they’ll split. Simple as that. Sure, they’ll want to be loyal to Oak Ridge, just like I do, but this year they’ll be lucky to get a 2% raise. Knox County, Blount County, the other schools in town, they’re all bound to give a bigger raise. I wouldn’t blame anybody for chasing the buck.

Which leaves us a bit screwed, because in Oak Ridge, when you boil it down, its still the education thats the calling card. I mean sure, everybody knows the place for the labs, and achievement scientifically, but that means squat if these things are in a town full of dumbasses. It particuarly means squat if the types of parents who care about their childs education (and, by extension, care about other things, like the civic nature of their town), pull up their stakes and move where the good teachers are. Hell, I wouldn’t blame them for that either.

Last year, when it became apparent that the city was going to choose hobbling the school system as opposed to making a change to the property tax rate to fully fund the budget (after it had been hacked to death in two school board meetings, trimming all the fat and an unhealthy chunk of meat), the issue became top priority for a lot of people. We ultimately failed, but brought enough heat on the city council so that they’d think twice about making decisions that’ll be detrimental to the school system.

This year, I’m hoping the heat is enough, because all the people that got all worked up about the schools are currently worked up about Crestpointe, and the prospect of fat times head when the massive sales tax dollars fill up the school board’s coffers. I sure hope thats the case, but, cynical as I am, I’m not too sure.

However, thats long term, at the least 2 years from now. This year, in order to fund the school board and just get more than a paltry 1% raise for teachers, we’re going to have to talk the city into dipping deeper and either shake a million bucks out of general funds, or raise property taxes for it.  Next year, gonna be the same talk.

How bad could it get?

I’m not really interested in answering that question.  I’m just too freakin tired.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 9:36 am and is filed under Local, Oak Ridge Schools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.