School Board Enthusiasts Blog: Signal Mountain Community Budget Meeting May 20

Overview
Essentially this meeting was a slightly abbreviated version of the budget presentation made to the school board with community “questions”. There were some new aspects presented which appeared to have the purpose of addressing recent concerns from the public. Granted, these aspects may have originated at the county commission presentation (which I [Carson] was unable to attend due to the timing of the meeting conflicting with school) instead of the community meeting, but I am unsure. Either way, these new items put the budget into somewhat of a new perspective. The other part of the meeting was comprised of community thoughts and questions, although the former was considerably more common.

People in Attendance
Although there were less than thirty people in attendance (including the presenters and yours truly there to run tech) many of those people were notable community figures. They included but were not limited to:

• Mayor Jim Coppinger
  
• Commissioner Chip Baker
  
• School Board Representative Kathy Lennon
  
• Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson
  
• Signal Mountain Middle/High School Principal Dr. Shane Harwood
  
• Administrator Michael Carson
  
• One of the Mountain Education Foundation’s initial board members Tom Decosimo
  
• Charles Spencer
  

Presentation
This presentation truly was the best way to get your mind around the budget as it was long enough to contain the key details, but not too long to get bored. That said, I’m pretty sure the community came expecting to merely speak their thoughts and then go home, so it’s probable that it seemed a bit long to most people. New aspects of the presentation included:

• Establishing that natural revenue growth (the only kind of budget increase the department of education has had since 2005) is intended to cover inflation.
  • Inflation on bread since 2005 has been 45% and natural revenue growth for department of education since 2005 has been 45%.
    
• Handouts with key graphics and more information about Future Ready 2023.
  
• References to specific schools and community problems.
  • Very obvious since this is a community meeting, but I still think this could have helped a lot of people to realize that this budget will help every community and every student.
    

Community Comments
Community comments ranged from comments to rants to legitimate questions. Here are some of the notable highlights:

• One community member voiced their desire for improvements to our schools without a raise in taxes as they didn’t know what they were doing with the existing money within the system.
  • I’ll give you a hint, they’re using the existing money to run the system.  They need more money to offer more services and more pay to teachers. They can’t just offer more for the same price.  
• Many community members seemed to believe that we are just like other school systems and since they have fewer schools than we do, we should close down smaller schools.
  • A fact that the presenters quickly pointed out was not accurate as we have different geography and demographics than most of our surrounding counties.
• This budget does nothing to directly reduce student to teacher ratios, but it is believed that it will help teachers by providing more overall support to students and assisting them with urgent academic needs (such as literacy).
  

Thoughts
Overall this meeting was rather informative, as well as entertaining. There were two teachers present, one student present (yours truly), and I believe four parents present (including Dr. Harwood and one of the teachers). The rest were community members. The way I see it, this budget increase is providing livable wages to teachers, futures to students, and the materials and classes so many students need to reach their dreams. I come from a very privileged school, a school where teachers care about their students, but I’ve stopped many times to imagine what my school would be like without these teachers. If the teachers that have influenced my life so much had decided to teach 10 minutes further away in North Georgia where they can make an extra 5,000 dollars per year and teach in nicer schools, I don’t know where I would be. If I saw that my community had the opportunity to improve my life and 44,500 other students’ lives and didn’t because they didn't want an adjusted tax rate after 15 years without one I would feel ashamed to live in this county, where money is more valuable than students: where money is more valuable than the future.