REZONING A TOUCHY SUBJECT

No school wants to lose its identity, but Hamilton County Commissioner Joe Graham’s recent suggestion about merging underutilized schools makes some sense from a dollars and numbers standpoint.

Now, dollars and numbers should never be the only criteria in considering what to do about the touchy subjects of rezoning schools and building new ones, but they are important. And it’s not like schools with traditions and loyal graduates never change in Hamilton County.

Chattanooga High School for the Creative Arts, for instance, was once the non-magnet Chattanooga High School. Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences was once Riverside High School and before that a previous location of Chattanooga High School. Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts, for at least the first 40 years of its existence, was Elbert Long Elementary School.

Graham suggested schools such as Brainerd High, Tyner Academy and Tyner Middle Academy might be merged. His idea is that once schools are merged, it would leave some building available for an expanded Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts (CSLA), which would expand from a K-8 school to a K-12 school.

We have advocated building an expanded CSLA at the current site, an expense that would run upwards of $60 million, and we still believe that is the best idea. However, we believe a merged Brainerd and Tyner Academy, which could retain Tyner’s math, science and technology component as a school within a school, offers flexible opportunities for the county.

In the 2015-2016 school year, Brainerd’s enrollment was 517 and Tyner’s 552. Both schools have accommodated — and could accommodate — twice as many as they currently educate. With a merger, one of the schools, if the county is adamantly against building a new CSLA at its current site, could become the new site for the magnet school.

That also might help with zoning, which Hamilton County commissioners suggested on Wednesday the Hamilton County Board of Education was going to have to examine. Currently, for instance, considering only high schools and using 2015-2016 school year figures, Ooltewah was the county’s largest high school with an enrollment of 1,499 students. East Hamilton was third with 1,014 students.

A merged Brainerd and Tyner zone then could be extended west to the Tennessee River, removing students in East Chattanooga from having to cross the river and travel up to Hixson High School. Then the Hixson zone could be moved farther north to alleviate the 1,175 students at the county’s second largest high school, Soddy-Daisy.

The problem is narrowing the overcrowded Ooltewah and East Hamilton zones. An expanded CSLA would create hundreds of more slots for students that would help with the overcrowding, but it also makes sense to widen the East Ridge High School district to the northeast, taking in a swath of students in the Ooltewah zone, which, incredibly, runs all the way to the Georgia border on the west side of the East Hamilton zone at one point.

However, truth be told, parents in higher performing schools such as Ooltewah and East Hamilton will not stand still for their children to be zoned to a lower performing school, which East Ridge is at the moment. If such were to happen, neighborhoods in those rezoned areas would begin to see “for sale” signs as neighborhoods across the city did in the early 1970s when school busing sent children away from neighborhood schools and, in some cases, across the city for their education.

That same time also saw the beginning of several area private schools, a population that now has grown to some 20 percent of county students.

Ideally, all public schools should be high performing schools, and we believe that is what county commissioners, county school administrators and parents would like and what county schools administrators are attempting to create. But that doesn’t solve the burgeoning problem of overcrowded schools.

Hamilton County Commissioner Greg Martin, who served on the school board for parts of two terms before being elected to the commission, said it accurately at the commission meeting.

“I think,” he said, “that the most difficult thing that the school board ever does, probably, is rezone students.”

Martin is right. Decisions on rezoning affect real estate prices, growth patterns and the most important thing parents have — their children.

At this point, we would not want to suggest that Brainerd be merged into Tyner or Tyner into Brainerd, but difficult days — without moves that make everybody happy — lie ahead for those who would consider rezoning. We trust county commissioners and school board members will use both their fiscal brains and parental hearts to make the best decisions for both students and taxpayers.