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Seven Days

Wednesday, December 4
Snow, sleet, ice, and general winter mayhem skirt Knoxville to the north and south, leading local officials to wonder what we did to deserve such flagrant meteorological discrimination.

Thursday, December 5
The beleaguered and unranked football Vols accept an invitation to meet 21st-ranked Maryland in the second-tier Peach Bowl, to be played in Atlanta New Year's Eve. Athletic Director Doug Dickey makes it sound like a better deal than the top-flight BCS bowls. Oh, well, it's Dickey's last bowl. Retiring next summer, he'd best enjoy it.

Friday, December 6
Van Hilleary, the defeated GOP candidate for governor, tells the News-Sentinel he'd like to begin flying again as a navigator in the Air Force Reserves. Little wonder. It's about the only job he's been able to hold in a checkered career outside politics.

Saturday, December 7
Columnist David Hunter says in the Sentinel he's always admired real reporters who meet strict deadlines. Obviously, Hunter has never spent much time in the Metro Pulse newsroom.

Sunday, December 8
Tennessee Titans' quarterback Steve McNair's stellar performance humbles homestate idol Peyton Manning, as Indianapolis Colt Manning fluffs his quarterbacking job in the teams' NFL matchup in Nashville. Manning's old Vol fans are seen trampling their orange #16 signs, caps and jerseys.

Monday, December 9
Poachers have shot and killed three elk in the last four weeks, it's reported, in areas where the native species has been reintroduced and strictly protected. The shootings provoke outrage at the TWRA and the posting of rewards. The question is, how would anyone expect hunters who can't tell cows or people from deer to tell elk from deer?

Knoxville Found

(Click photo for larger image)

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:
Does no one ever go to South Knoxville? We ask, because responses to last week's Knoxville Found were sparse. The photo, of course, is of the trail head of the Mildred Doyle Nature Trail, which begins at South Knoxville's Charter Doyle park, on Martin Mill Pike.

Of course, South Knoxvillians seem a pretty independent lot, so having no one else know about their neck of the woods may suit them fine—at least that would seem so if sentiments expressed in some of our answers are any indication. One respondent referred to the area south of the river as South "By God" Knoxville; our winner, Keith Richardson (why is that name familiar?), called it the Sovereign State of South Knoxville. In honor of his knowledge of obscure places, we award Keith a copy of Tennessee, Off the Beaten Path: A Guide to Unique Places, by Tim O'Brien. If South Knoxville isn't in there, well, it oughta be.

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Thursday, Dec. 12
1:30 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Consideration of the Knoxville Street Tree Master Plan.

CITY TREE BOARD
Wednesday, Dec. 18
8:30 a.m.
KUB Corporate Service Bldg.
4505 Middlebrook Pike
Regular meeting.

KCDC BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
Thursday, Dec. 19
11:30 a.m.
Christenberry Heights Boys & Girls Gym
3916 Claudius Road
Regular monthly meeting.

Unchartered Waters
Knox County receives one application for charter school

Consider how much time and effort went into getting the Legislature to pass a charter schools bill. Consider how much talk there was about charter schools during the recent political campaign. Consider the fact that Knoxville gave birth to one of the most well known school privatization firms in the country (Edison Schools). All this being the case, one might have thought there would be people here wanting to start a charter school.

In fact, there are none, at least not yet. The only person who submitted an application to start a charter school here next year, according to Knox County schools' spokesman Russ Oaks, is Ashley King, a Memphis native now living in Nashville. Meanwhile, Memphis city schools received five applications, and Nashville's school system received three.

King's application to develop a charter high school with up to 1,000 students will be heard by the Knox County school board on Jan. 8, but it is not clear whether the board will accept or reject the bid at that time. The reason for the uncertainty is twofold. For one thing, King has only a rough idea of how his proposed school would work and hasn't explained his idea to many of the people he will need to get it organized. For another, there was, until a few days ago, confusion about whether King's application was received on time.

Charter schools are schools funded with public money that operate outside of many of the normal regulations under which normal public schools operate. President Bush and former President Clinton are both big fans of the charter schools concept, and most states have adopted a charter schools program of one form or another during the last decade. Indiana, for instance, had no charter school law until 2001, according to Dolly Bauman, president of the Charter School Resource Center of Indiana. During the months after the law was passed in that state, over a hundred organizations applied to start one, and today there are already 11 in existence. "The state was inundated with applications," Bauman says.

Tennessee, on the other hand, was slow to jump on the charter schools bandwagon and now appears to be greeting legalized charter schools with little enthusiasm. Gov. Sundquist first tried to pass a charter schools bill in 1997 and got a modified version of the bill approved last year. The deadline for applying to start a charter school in Tennessee was Nov. 15, and only a handful of organizations applied. There were three applicants in Nashville: King, a special education teacher at an inner-city high school, and a nun who currently runs a preschool and after-school program for children from public housing projects.

King says he has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Tennessee State University and has spent the last few years in investment banking. In addition to Knoxville and Nashville, he submitted applications to start charter high schools in Memphis and Jackson. King's concept is to create in each city a charter school loosely affiliated with historically black colleges—Knoxville College here, Lemoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Fisk University in Nashville, and Lane College in Jackson.

"By hooking up with the historically black colleges, we can encourage and help those institutions while at the same time attracting students that might not otherwise be college bound and get them in a college-bound environment," King says. He envisions the charter schools leasing space from historically black colleges and also sharing faculty members as well. "A lot of these schools have some underutilized facilities, and we could cross-utilize existing staff," he says.

Since Tennessee's new charter schools law targets underperforming public schools, many of which are found in inner-city areas near historically black colleges, King's idea may seem logical. However, he has done very little to lay the foundation for his proposed charter schools. He has submitted his application under the name Indianapolis Academy of Mathematics, Science and Technology; according to Bauman, there is no institution under that name in the Hoosier State.

King says he hasn't reached agreements with any of the four historically black colleges, including Knoxville College. And it doesn't appear that he has spoken to any of the school board members in Knox County. "I don't know anything about this application, except that it came in and that it is on the agenda for Jan. 8," says school board chairman Sam Anderson. "That's one of the reasons we put it on the agenda so quickly, is that we have a lot of questions and want to find out as much as we can."

Another thing that makes the prospect of getting a charter school organized next year daunting is the transition from the Sundquist to Bredesen administrations. Under state law, charter school applications must be first approved by the local board and then approved by the Tennessee commissioner of education. Officials in the Sundquist administration are excited about getting charter schools organized. But Bredesen has not named his education commissioner; the governor-elect said during the campaign that he sees merit in the charter schools concept, but he made it clear that charter schools would not be a major part of his education program.

Nevertheless, King says he is working diligently to organize his proposal, and he says a state legislator has asked on his behalf for an attorney general's opinion on the legality of affiliating charter schools with private colleges. "Once we get that, I can come up with realistic numbers in terms of cost and everything," he says. He adds with some confidence that he thinks that "we will have all of them [referring to charter schools in four cities] started by next fall."

Neither of the two school board members with which Metro Pulse spoke was opposed to the idea of charter schools in theory, but both said that they would have plenty of detailed questions about King's proposal at the January meeting. "I am not anti-charter schools," says Anderson. "I am pro-public schools, and charter schools are public schools. But I hope we get more information on this proposal during the next few weeks."

Board member Brian Hornback, who recently moderated a charter school panel at the annual meeting of the Tennessee School Boards Association, was even more skeptical. "I believe we need to look at every option available when it comes to areas that we have that are struggling with low test scores, and so I am open-minded," he says. "But in general, I have a hard time with the charter school mantra, and I have a problem with the idea of taking money from existing schools."

—Bill Carey

Eviction Notice
PBA wants Victorian Houses converted to retail enclave

The city is evicting six tenants from the seven Victorian Houses it owns on the eastern edge of Ft. Sanders with hopes of enticing merchants to set up shop in their place.

The houses are currently managed by the Public Building Authority. The city hopes to create an enclave of shops, boutiques, and restaurants that would complement the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Candy Factory, and the convention center, as well as bring in more rent money.

"Whether we can [attract businesses], the marketplace will tell us," says Dale Smith, the PBA's CEO. "In particular, we'd like to see arts and crafts businesses—something that people would go to get a unique gift or conventioneers would want to buy something from this area."

The tenants to be evicted have been given 120 days notice. Four tenants—the 11th Street Expresso House, Art and Antique Gallery, Sonny's Snack Shop, and Smoky Mountain Glassmasters' Group—are not being evicted, although their rents will increase.

The PBA will require regular business hours and hopes to get about $10 a square foot in rent. Some tenants are paying as little as $33 month.

For now, no major renovations are planned, but they could be arranged when leases are signed, Smith says.

Most of the space in the seven houses is now being used for artist galleries and offices of community and arts organizations, including Keep Knoxville Beautiful and the Actor's Co-op. (There is a possibility that the Keep Knoxville Beautiful office may be moved to the Emporium building, where the city has agreed to rent space.) All of the houses date to the 19th century. It is the largest clump of unmolested buildings from that period remaining in Fort Sanders. They stand around Fort Kid, a popular playground that is heavily used after school museum tours. A few years ago, there was talk of moving the houses to make way for condos, but the idea was quashed after complaints.

Most of the tenants aren't surprised they're being asked to move. "We weren't shocked, we knew it was going to come eventually," says artist Cynthia Markert, who has rented studio space for about seven years. She and three other artists paid $25 each in rent for the space above the 11th Street Expresso House. The owner of the coffee shop is interested in taking the space over for a bookstore, according to Smith.

While Markert isn't bitter about having to leave, she wants the city to take better advantage of the artists working here. She and others suggested to Smith that it could be like Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Va.—which includes galleries and retail alongside working artist studios. "I just think it's a real draw if you can go and see artists working," Markert says. "The dream for us was to have retail downstairs and artists upstairs. And they would have to raise the rent on the studios, obviously."

Smith says an artist colony idea probably can't work in the Victorian Houses, but it might be a possibility for the neighboring Candy Factory. The city is now deciding whether to manage it on its own or sell it to a developer (with some covenants reserving some public space), Smith says.

Judi Gaston says she's sad to leave, but wishes the houses the best.

"I feel like the city's always missed out because we have some nationally and internationally known artists but nobody [in Knoxville] even knows about them," says Gaston, an artist who works in a room next to Markert. "I'm not opposed to change. I don't think what's gone on has worked."

Markert agrees: "It seems like the city never cared about the houses as much as they're about to care."

—Joe Tarr