In the comment thread at No Silence Here, I was asked to justify one of my statements.
Doug, you say that “it makes no sense to bus us twice the distance when an equal number of students are being bused the other direction.” How do you know that the number of West-to-Bearden students is the same as the Bearden-to-West students? I didn’t know that data was available. … please don’t fabricate data to support your point. [Source]
My reply was spam filtered but should be visible now. This was my reply.
…Yesterday with the site overwhelmed, I was only able to pull up the Master Map and had to guess the number of houses in the rezone since the numbers do not seem to be released. It certainly would be nice to look at the numbers as well as the socio-economic demographics.
Counting plots on the West to Bearden map (and my eyes may be crossing at this early morning time) numbers at roughly 275 potential houses. Naturally, not all of those will have children but for the purposes of zoning it should be assumed that they all could provide children.
I won’t bother counting plots on the Bearden to West map because my neighborhood alone is 120 some odd houses.
I am not fabricating data but interpreting what has been provided. Mullins needs to provide more data and better explain the moves. Tell you what. Let’s not move those West students to Bearden…I guessed 275 houses. And then not move my neighborhood plus some from Bearden to West. Selfish? Yes! Why disrupt families and possibly property values by just moving eggs from one basket to another? Zone the newly developing neighborhoods (and we see them all over the place) into the schools to create the balance of students rather than disrupting existing neighborhood zones.
I have spent the better part of decade committing myself to an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school. I have established relationships with teachers and principals. I have volunteered time and self into helping those schools evolve into the system I wanted my children educated within. I have had one on one discussions with Lindsey to correct problems (one such problem took 3 years to resolve). Now, I have to start over again and I do not see a good reason for it.
West may be a great school. What makes a school successful is the community that feeds it and the attitude and efforts of its staff. If the community is aggressive in supporting the school, such as Rocky Hill Elementary, then the school will be phenomenal. I do not know the West community and staff but am familiar enough with the school to be very dejected. This dishevel feels comparable to moving into a new city but not having the luxury of evaluating the neighborhood I have moved into.
This plan is flawed and needs to be voted down.
Wait, aren’t you a lot closer to Bearden than West? Or are you kinda in the middle.
And I thought West was the preferred school over Bearden these days.
We are closer to Bearden than West. I have had many parents say West has great teachers and the school has improved. However, I am very pleased with Bearden Middle (BMS) and Bearden High (BHS).
Oh, definitely! I wasn’t trying to make an argument for y’all going to West.
I guess I was maybe trying to look at the bright side or something.
Can you get a transfer since Tommy will be at Bearden, or would they just want y’all to suck it up for a year?
Well said.
The asinine thing with this is that it really solves no problems, but can completely screw with the student. Moving to another school in high school is bad enough, but when the only reason is “because the Man says so”, it doesn’t make it better.
I’ll tell you one thing. No, I’ll tell you two. Three if you could my telling you that I’m going to tell you.
Anyway, a certain amount of adjustment is always necessary and always will be painful. It would go better if it was completely apolitical, which it can’t ever be and I’m sure isn’t now. But demographics change, and there should be consequences to that. Also, with such a complicated system, mistakes are sometimes caught only after time, and they should be correctable. So theoretically, an occasional alignment is good.
Also, my neighborhood – Old North and Fourth & Gill – has long been zoned to two different high schools (part of Fourth & Gill went to Austin East & the rest went to Fulton). So there’s at least one example of a positive change because of the rezoning.
Fwiw.
[…] More feelings on Knox County School Rezoning […]
I live 1 mile behind Bearden High School, yet am zoned to West High? Seven miles away… Go figure…
The rezoning was full of poor decisions. Many of the choices were made to try to make Austin East viable and unfortunately the rezoning is in no way going to help Austin East.
Economics played a big role in the rezoning. I think shuffling people across town to create economic parity is as wrong as shuffling people across town because of race.
Stay informed. Stay involved! Talk to your school board members. The high school rezoning will be redone in 5 years. In 5 years maybe we can fix this problem.
Is anyone taking note that the middle and elementary school rezonings are occurring after elections?