the School Board has resigned itself to “what looks good on paper” in the present.

Disastrous School Rezoning - 04/09/2012 - Chattanoogan.com:

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Disastrous School Rezoning

Monday, April 09, 2012

Particular Hamilton County School Board members are in support of a disastrous piece of town planning that will cause children to arouse from bed at 4:30 a.m. in order to attend our public schools starting this fall. Each child’s emotional and physical need for sleep and development is being shoveled aside despite the blatant public outcry of wrongdoing by the communities and families involved. Calculated bus routes will begin picking up children as early as 5:30 a.m. in East Brainerd in order to bus them to outlying Ooltewah Middle and Ooltewah High School. 

Hamilton County School Board members have feigned ignorance yet demonstrate strict compliance with Rick Smith’s agenda for re-zoning East Brainerd to “reduce over-crowding”. Statements such as, “I don’t have enough information,” “I’m not familiar with the layout of the land,” and “Well what else is there to do?” have fallen from their elected lips. 

The re-zoning will shift more than 400 children more than 5-10 miles from their currently zoned schools into Ooltewah Middle and Ooltewah High Schools, requiring some children to ride 9,000+ miles on the bus for an average middle and high school term. 

The zoning map is not only illogical in terms of distance, it displays favoritism for persons of “importance.” For example, Linda Mosley (who recently announced she will not be running for re-election) was re-zoned out of Ooltewah zone into East Hamilton school zone. Her home is located less than three miles from Ooltewah schools. David Testerman has been the only elected Board member to publicly stand and speak out against the proposed re-zoning.

In reality, this shifting into Ooltewah schools when Ooltewah is currently expanding its economic and industrial populations is equipping that zone for one of the fastest over-crowding of schools in the county’s history. It is a failure of the Board to heed the community’s stark warning. Facts and statistics are being ignored in political games of meetings, slideshows and stark statements between sides. The human cost of the influx of industrialism is rising not only in our community but in our state. The School Board and the public are aware of the influx of workers and subsequently families to companies in Ooltewah: Volkswagen, Amazon and a newly announced tire production facility. Yet the School Board continues to proceed with plans to herd children from East Brainerd into the burgeoning, soon-to-be desperately bulging Ooltewah Middle and High Schools. Rather than address and resolve over-crowding within the districts and building the schools needed for the communities, the School Board has resigned itself to “what looks good on paper” in the present.Ultimately, an outcry for an over-crowded Ooltewah school system will occur.

In 1845, there was a book written called Sybil: The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeili. The book describes the split created within a country during industrialism. It is sadly relevant and poignant to the current re-zoning and subsequent shifting of our children due to over-crowding. Mr. Disraeili wrote, “…A density of population implies a severe struggle for existence, and a consequent repulsion of elements brought into too close contact. In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.”

I have not written clearly enough. The actions of the School Board are demonstrating callous indifference to the children that will be commuting more than 20 miles per day to attend schools distant from their neighborhoods. The School Board demonstrates a disease of obsession with favoritism, money, and degradation of community as well as inattention to children’s’ spirits.

In sum, I want to publicly recognize those Board members that will continue to run the political rat race of inconsequential participation in the forward movement of “progress” in Hamilton County and our “world-class” failing academia. Your names will go down as ones forgotten, your legacy one of cowardice to stand and make a difference.

Vanessa Pickett