Thursday, April 12, 2007

Knox County High School Rezoning

Brian Hornback of Brian's Blog has been very busy the past two-three days and unable (at this time) to dig into all the rezoning changes being proposed. This proposal will change the high school attendance zone lines at 11 of Knox County's 12 high schools.

Next year the School administration will tackle Elementary/Middle School zones. Here is the story in today's Knoxville News-Sentinel, an excellent article written by Scott Barker. Scott is one of the few over at E.W. Scripps owned News-Sentinel.

Interim Superintendent Roy Mullins has the most bizarre reaction to the proposed rezoning. From the News-Sentinel article: Mullins said the parental laments are similar to the complaints received when school officials rezoned students from Farragut to Bearden and Bearden to West in the early 1990s.

"It's dramatic up to the vote," Mullins said Wednesday during a meeting with school board members on the budget. "After the vote, it goes away."

Brian's Blog believes from what we have seen in comments here and other places. From emails that Brian's Blog has received and from the phone calls that the School Board Members and County Commissioners are telling Brian's Blog they are receiving, this is a bigger negative public reaction than the County Commission appointment process for the term limited positions on January 31, 2007.

County Commission must pass a budget by June 30, 2007. The School Board has requested a budget with more than $13 million in new dollars. With television news reports like this one. It is likely that the spirit of cooperation over conflict may have just ended.

Only time and the election results on February 5, 2008 will tell whether the reaction to the proposal will simply go away after the vote.

If you have comments, feel free to leave a comment or send an email to Brian's Blog through the email address on the profile page.

2 comments:

Jack D. Lail said...

It's not exactly a deserted ship.... you said:

Scott is one of the few over at E.W. Scripps owned News-Sentinel.

Brian Hornback said...

Good point, Jack. Let me explain why that was neccesary.

What I wanted to say is that Scott is one of the few good reporters, but then I couldn't think of more than two at KNS and that includes Scott.

So, two is not a few. Two is a couple and at the time of the creation of the post I was thinking of Scott as one of the few, the proud, the only good member of the E.W. Scripps media family.

But, then when I think of the entire E.W. Scripps entity and I can get to three total. So, a few would be appropriate.

My fear in naming Scott or the other two E.W. Scripps employees as good reporters by Brian's Blog standards is that management ie. McElroy and Hartmann may fire all three for not meeting E.W. Scripps standards and instead having the Brian's Blog endorsement.

Speaking of endorsements your companies editorial staff doesn't have a good record on endorsements. The Brian's Blog endorsements have been far more accurate in the electoral results than E.W. Scripps.

BTW, You do good work in your department with E.W. Scripps, I hope they do not terminate you.

Thanks for reading, Brian's Blog.