ENDORSEMENTS FOR SCHOOL BOARD

With five of nine school board seats contested in Hamilton County’s Aug. 2 General Election, there’s a good chance for change on what is likely the most important elected body locally.

Our public school system, with more than 44,000 students, has been mired in controversy and paralysis for years.

After hazing rapes, bottomed out test scores, pathetic public support and a threat from the state to take over five of our lowest performing schools, Hamilton County schools have no where to go but up.

Finally, up they are coming — in enormous measure thanks to two outside school advocacy groups, the state and a new superintendent.

Both Chattanooga 2.0, a Chamber of Commerce-backed group, and UnifiEd, a grassroots awareness-raising group, have pushed our Board of Education members to change the superintendent and to embrace the fact that doing things as our county has always done them does not help students.

In 2016, a Chattanooga 2.0 report revealed that 60 percent of our school system’s third-graders were not reading at grade level, and 60 percent of our high school graduates were not job-ready. The county’s new manufacturers and employers at any given time could not fill as many as 15,000 job vacancies with qualified Hamilton County residents.

That same year, when four school board seats were up for election, three incumbents were tossed out in favor of new board members. This year, a fourth long-time member has opted not to see re-election, leaving an empty seat, and three other members are up for re-election. More change is inevitable, and we believe that is a good thing. Here are our endorsements for school board seats in districts 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9.

ELECT HURLEY, OUST SMITH

We all woke up one recent May morning to read a news release from two school board members that read like a modern-day George Wallace manifesto warning of new imagined forced student busing. The imagined culprits were UnifiEd “liberals” out to accomplish a common county goal of creating student equity by easing the effect of concentrated poverty that has hampered some Hamilton County schools.

UnifiEd had dared to call for the Department of Education to “develop a plan to end socioeconomic and racial segregation.”

One plan suggestion, in addition to things like adequate funding and recruiting the best teachers, was possible zone changes to support student choice and open enrollment “paired with a robust transportation policy.”

The idea — not unlike Hamilton County’s magnet schools and planned Future Ready Institutes — would create expanded opportunity, not forced busing, as the news release signed by Joe Smith and Rhonda Thurman intimated.

Smith, 64, and a 2016 appointee to the school board, seeks election to a full term of representation for Hixson, Middle Valley and Big Ridge. Thurman’s seat, representing Soddy-Daisy and Sale Creek, is not on the ballot.

Smith started out great guns, but with this news release he went off the rails.

We believe there is not a race-hating bone in Smith’s body (indeed, the father of two and longtime leader of the YMCA’s Y-Cap program has taken in and raised 19 foster children, many of them young black teens he found in need of a stable home).

But there do seem to be a number of tone-deaf bones in his head. We find it impossible to square how could anyone with enough caring in his heart to take in 19 needy children would or could have allowed himself to be so easily led by elements locally who would push such a race-baiting message.

That conflict leaves us believing Smith must no longer be trusted with the decisions our school board has to make.

Smith posits if more parents would be “good” parents and if more people would take the time to foster and mentor children, we wouldn’t have any school problems. That’s noble, but simply not the way life happens. We cannot fix our schools by throwing up our hands and saying it’s OK if only 3 percent of the children in our poorest schools enter kindergarten ready to learn and only about 3 percent graduate high school with the skills to get a job.

We endorse Miracle Hurley, a mother of two and a political newcomer who is the program director for Healthy Transitions, a grant program providing services for youth and young adults at risk for developing a mental illness.

Children from poor, split or marginalized homes come out the door each morning seeing life from a different lens than children from well-to-do homes with two parents and every advantage, Hurley says.

Home life cannot be changed by a school system, but students’ attitudes and opportunities can be changed by experiences afforded by schools and well-prepared teachers. That’s what school equity would look like. With improved student and teacher training and student counseling — dubbed “wrap-around services” — students could see opportunities in a new way.

Like Smith, Hurley doesn’t agreed with “forced busing.” No one does. But no one needs to divide our community with false claims that it’s what “liberals” are pushing.

Elect Miracle Hurley.

JONES DESERVES ANOTHER TERM

Karitsa Jones, 37, is a social worker who was elected to the school board in 2014. Making schools better for all students is her “passion,” she says, adding “I will be the voice for what I believe is right for children.”

She already has a track record: working with our new superintendent and state officials to keep the state from taking over our poorest performing schools, instead forming a joint state- and county-led effort; helping to obtain pilot funding for social workers’ wraparound support of opportunity zone schools, and making improvements to how parents and community leaders can approach the board.

Jones said she believes the threatened state take-over “woke everybody up. People won’t move to a place where the state has taken over schools.”

Her challenger, 72-year-old Ann Pierre, a retiree who is raising a grandchild, said she became peeved with the disorganization of schools. She holds a teaching degree in education but spent her career as a TVA organizational manager.

Pierre is bothered that the real push to improve our schools had to come from outside groups. She is disappointed the analysis and planning of Chattanooga 2.0 or UnifiEd didn’t come from the board itself. “The school board didn’t drive that. Why not?”

It is an excellent question, and it’s a shame Pierre isn’t running in a different school board district.

JENNY HILL IS THE CLEAR CHOICE

This race is a no-brainer. Vote for Jenny Hill. She is far and away the better candidate, and it’s too bad we can’t clone her.

As a chairman of Metropolitan Ministries, the 39-year-old mother of two and a co-owner of a small business sees that even in Chattanooga’s innovative community, some students are left out.

“We have a disdainful approach, as a community, of public education,” she says. “We have haves and have-nots. Students at Lookout Valley are likely not to have [advanced placement] classes and very few electives. At Brown Academy, students come in with a deficit of vocabulary words. Those children need different support. Every student matters. It should not matter where they live or what their parents’ income is. Strong schools make strong communities.”

Hill wants to see a county with a multi-year strategic schools plan working from the same playbook, with measurable goals and using a systemwide facilities audit.

We need a way to track what our kids do after graduation, rather than gauging graduation rates and ACT scores. Six years later, what happens to graduates from CSAS and other schools will help us really know what works, she says. “We need to take our hearts out of it and put our heads in it.”

Her opponent, 28-year-old Michael Henry, is a data analyst, digital marketing specialist and classically trained singer who just started his own business after brief stints of employment and volunteer efforts.

Jenny Hill’s real-life experience should get your vote.

TESTERMAN’S HEART WINS NOD

This is a race of the upstart and the old hand.

Tucker McClendon, 23, is the assistant manager of the Sunday Chattanooga Market, who says he was struck by the Hamilton County Commission’s “bold” passage of a tax increase to, in part, better fund schools.

“They’ve always put education last,” McClendon said. “Right now with Dr. [Bryan] Johnson [the new superintendent], I think we’re on a turning point.”

He remains bothered by the fact that although he attended one of the county’s better-regarded high schools, he had to take remedial math when he got to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

“We are at a crossroads with education in Hamilton County, and we can either do what we have been doing in failing our students or bring in new ideas and fresh blood to help give our students the education they deserve. And that’s what I plan to bring,” he says.

He also wants a school resource officer in every school for safety, or at least “highly trained school administrators to carry [firearms] in schools.

The old hand — 67-year-old veteran teacher, principal and eight-year school board member David Testerman — is just as passionate, but much more grounded.

He favors open enrollment and SROs in schools, and he is a strong supporter for expanded vocational, technical and STEM education opportunities. Testerman thinks we must restore confidence in public schools by improving them, starting with early childhood education that helps youngsters be ready to learn. We also must put art back in schools.

If we could meld these two candidates into one, we’d have the prefect board member.

We can’t. So we endorse Testerman and hope McClendon will stick around Chattanooga for another run at political leadership.

ANDERSON HAS YOUTH AND MATURITY

This race is even more extreme on the side of passion and youth vs. caution and age.

D’Andre Ja’Rel Anderson is 19 — still a college student, but one who sat as the student representative on the school board during his senior year of high school. One-term school board veteran and chairman Steve Highlander is 66.

Anderson says: “It is time for someone who will push for equity, evaluate the long-term impact of our spending and respond to the community’s concerns. … There is a disconnect between teachers and families and the school board. Issues have often been pushed aside and fixed with Band-Aid solutions until they have become dire enough for the board to finally step in.”

Highlander counters: “I am a barterer. … We have one employee, the superintendent. We oversee the policies. We oversee finances to approve how the money is spent. I think we ought to wait and see what’s offered [on equity, rezoning, busing, plans].” Never mind that Highlander, himself, is on Dr. Johnson’s equity task force.

“Obviously we’ll have to rezone when the new schools are done,” Highlander says. “I need to see what they [Johnson’s administration] recommend. Busing failed, but I’m for open enrollment.”

Anderson is right. There is a disconnect. He may only be 19, but he has a more mature vision than some of our current board members. We endorse him for this school board seat as a needed shot in the arm. We also understand he’ll not likely win. That said, we hope Highlander takes the hint that always taking a middle-ground approach may be exactly why this school system is stuck in the 1960s and 1970s.