Community voices: How to fix our aging schools
We reviewed hours of public meetings and read documents outlining public input — here's an overview of the community discussion about the schools facilities proposal.
Hamilton County residents spoke out about school facilities plans during a series of town hall events over the last two months. Graphic/Ian-Alijah Bey
By William Newlin
For the last two months, community members have attended town hall meetings, responded to surveys, and reached out to the school board to share thoughts on the schools facilities proposal released by local leaders in August.
After decades of insufficient investment in Hamilton County Schools facilities, the district needs more than $1 billion in maintenance, according to the 2020 MGT Consulting Group report. In order to address those needs, the latest proposal calls for school closures and consolidations, campus expansions, and a handful of new schools across the county.
Community members have responded with a mix of mix of curiosity, criticism, and alternative solutions to the plan. After reviewing town hall meetings, school board meetings, and public documents, Chattamatters has compiled the following overview of the public discussion around the proposal.
Click on the following links to see the community feedback compiled by HCS for each proposal:
Check out our Instagram @chattamatters for our summary of community feedback and school board discussions about each project. You can watch the November school board facilities committee meetings here under the "live" tab.
Visit @chattamatters on Instagram to see our detailed summaries of the schools facilities discussion.
How community feedback was gathered
The public responded to the proposal in three ways:
Public town hall meetings held across the county
An online survey (with more than 1,000 respondents)
Directly contacting school board representatives and county commissioners
Hamilton County Schools administrators consolidated the community feedback into short overviews for each project.
The school board has yet to approve any project in the plan. Once the board approves a plan, it will be up to the Hamilton County commission to approve a funding plan.
The school board has yet to approve any project in the plan. Once the board approves a plan, it will be up to the Hamilton County Commission to fund the projects.
Pushback on closures and consolidations
In some cases, community members favored renovating and expanding existing buildings rather than closing and consolidating schools. For example, a proposal to close Clifton Hills Elementary and relocate students to East Side and East Lake elementaries met significant pushback. So did the proposed K-12 campus in Soddy Daisy, eliminating Soddy Daisy Middle. Likewise, residents expressed concern over consolidating four schools (DuPont, Rivermont, Alpine Crest, and Hixson Elementary) onto one campus.
Concerns included rezoning, the size of consolidated schools, transportation barriers for parents and students, and meeting the needs of diverse student populations.
“Our parent voices have been very clear and united in expressing to us and to you at the community meetings that they don't want the Clifton Hill site to be divided,” Kristen Light, a Clifton Hills parent and teacher, told school board members at a Nov. 20 school board meeting.
Building trust
As for the recommendation to close Dalewood Middle School and create a combined Brainerd middle and high school, community members focused on the district’s ability to follow through with its plans.
Veronica Clift-Ryan, a graduate of both Dalewood and Brainerd High, said she was still undecided about the plan.
“I’m still not sold, because it was so vague, the information that was put out,” said Clift-Ryan at an Oct. 17 community meeting at Brainerd High School, adding, “I’m just going to keep my mind and my heart open.”
“My thing is this,” Clift-Ryan said, “if we’re going to do this… we need to do it top-notch.”
At the Nov. 27 school board meeting, Superintendent Justin Robertson said of the Brainerd discussions: “It essentially was, ‘If you're going to do it, do it the right way.’”
Other community meeting attendees said they felt left out of the facilities planning process. The sentiment was strongest among Howard School families as Howard’s overcrowding and maintenance needs weren’t mentioned specifically in the facilities plan.
“There was a lot of … frustration about not being included in the beginning of this process,” said school board member Jill Black, who represents Howard. “And also mistrust of central office of Hamilton County Schools to not follow up on the best interest of the students.”
Domino effect
The administration said other proposals would create space to move Howard Connect — the magnet middle school on the Howard School's campus — and open around 400 seats for the high school.
One idea proposed by school board members and the community was to relocate Howard Connect to the new Gateway facility bought this year from Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Roberston disagreed, preferring to place Chattanooga High School Center for the Creative Arts (CCA) at Gateway and combine its fine arts programs with IT-focused career pathways for grades 6-12. Gateway’s final use is undecided.
“You still are opening up more seats at six through eight with this model, regardless of if it's called Chattanooga High, regardless if it’s called CCA or Howard Connect,” Robertson said.
If CCA were relocated from North Chattanooga to the Gateway campus, its current building could possibly be available for the proposed relocation of Normal Park Upper and Lower Schools.
What’s next?
The school board will hold a work session with the administration at 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 14 to examine final facilities proposals. Another school facilities committee meeting will likely follow before the board approves a plan in January.