Piper’s Platform for Change

Education

Knox County Commission plays a major role in the direction of education in the county. The School Board of Knox County determines the needs of the school district, draws up a budget and submits that budget to the County Commission. The Commission can either fund all the requests or indiscriminately eliminate programs, materials, training, employee pay and benefits. The County Commission has the final say on the school system operating revenues.

I see three critical issues facing both the school system and the county commission.

The first issue, particularly here in the second district, is the number of schools that have been closed as the school age population shifted to other parts of the county, like Oakwood Elementary.

This shift means school buildings and property have been abandoned because no action plan for using the property by the school system or transitioning it back to the tax rolls has been formulated. This decreases surrounding property values by 30%!

To remedy this I plan to organize a community action committee to:

A condition of purchase is that redevelopment take place and a fair market value be set on the property.

This plan would enable the neighborhood to have a say in the use of the land, bring revenue to the school district and return the property to the tax rolls to create a continuing stream of revenue.

The second issue will emerge when the new superintendent is named.

The commission must work with the superintendent to achieve the goals that will allow every student to graduate with the knowledge and skills to be competitive in the workplace of this century.

A functioning task force with membership from the Knox County community, school district representatives, and the County Commission can define specific ways for the school board and commission to work together. Some creative, outside the box thinking would bring vigor to the commission/school board that currently does not exist.

The third issue facing the commission, who is charged with funding the school board requests, is to structure salaries and benefits to keep Knox County competitive with surrounding counties in recruiting and retaining quality teachers.

Each year, Knox County is unable to recruit some of the best prepared teachers because the starting salary and increments are not competitive. Each year, Knox County loses some of its best teachers to neighboring counties and states because the salary is not competitive with our neighbors.

This cycle of continual recruiting and replacing teachers wastes the training and experience teachers receive here and take to our neighbors. We must stop this cycle.

I pledge to work not only with the new superintendent but also the business community on ways to generate additional revenues to locate the money to offer a competitive and attractive salary and benefit package.