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by Joe Sullivan

Once you get past the presidential election, there are hardly any races on the Nov. 2 ballot in Knox County that appear to be closely contested.

The sole exception is a special election for the 3rd District seat on the Knox County school board. Because the sharp differences in orientation between the two candidates are emblematic of a schism on the board, the outcome of this race can have a major bearing on how the school system is governed at a crucial time.

The two candidates are David Dillon and Cindy Buttry. Dillon is a former high school science teacher who says he got out of teaching and became a pharmaceutical salesman because he wasn’t making enough money to support his family. Buttry is a UT graduate who works in the Knox County Property Assessor’s office and is the wife of outgoing state Rep. Steve Buttry, who is leaving office himself after three terms to devote full time to his family’s home security business.

Illustrative of their differences is their posture toward the school board’s recent retreat in Townsend for a weekend of bonding, visioning and mission-setting. Dillon contends the overnight stay in Townsend and the use of paid facilitators were a waste of money. Buttry, by contrast, believes this attempt to emulate a corporate governance model was worthwhile. “Trying to build leadership, develop a mission statement and set goals. I think that’s very productive,” she says.

Dillon’s views mirror those of two dissident school board members, Robert Bratton and Chuck Jones, both of whom are actively backing his candidacy. Bratton and James are harshly critical of Supt. Charles Lindsey and insistent that board members should assume a more activist role in managing the school system. While Dillon insists he’s reserving judgment on Lindsey, he shares the activist approach. For example, he says, “In order to get better control of the budget, I would love to see us have a chief financial officer who answers to the board as well as the superintendent.”

Buttry says, “I haven’t aligned with anybody and will be a totally independent member of the board.” But her view of the board’s role is more akin to that of its chairman, Dan Murphy, and his predecessor, Sam Anderson: namely, that the board should set school policies and hold the superintendent singularly accountable for carrying them out.

The 3rd District extends from the environs of Northwest Middle School, whose diverse zone includes several inner city schools, to Karns High School’s rapidly growing catchment in the far western suburbs. Both Dillon and Buttry are predictably strong proponents of the need for a new high school to relieve overcrowding out west. Both of them also put a lot of campaign emphasis on ferreting out waste elsewhere in the school system budget in order to keep more money in the classroom.

Buttry is more attuned, however, to the needs of underperforming inner city schools and to elements of County Mayor Mike Ragsdale’s Great Schools initiative that are aimed at strengthening them with an additional $6.8 million in funding next year. “Anything we can do to help inner-city kids get a better opportunity has got to be a top priority,” she says. By contrast, Dillon seems unfamiliar with Great Schools and is dismissive of school administrators’ efforts to evaluate and perhaps incorporate innovative approaches that have worked well in cities such as Charlotte and Milwaukee. “I’m not concerned about Charlotte or Milwaukee,” he says when they are mentioned as potential models for programs here. “Let’s just become the best school system in East Tennessee.”

As you can tell by now, I am strongly supportive of Buttry. She will contribute to harmonizing the school board and its relationship with the school system’s administration, whereas Dillon will further fractiousness.

In other races, one candidate I consider especially meritorious is state Rep. Harry Tindell. In his seven terms in the Legislature, Tindell has become one of the most knowledgeable and effective members of that body. Second only to more senior Rep. Joe Armstrong, he wields more influence in Nashville than any other member of the Knox County legislative delegation, or maybe all the rest of them combined. That will continue to hold true as long as the Democrats under Speaker Jimmy Naifeh continue to control the House of Representatives. And it’s all the more accentuated by the retirement of Sen. Ben Atchley, who was the Republican leader of a Senate that’s run by a bipartisan coalition.

As chairman of the House’s Local Government Committee, Tindell’s worked with the mayors of Knoxville and Knox County, regardless of their party, on a myriad of bills of local interest.

Tindell is also a member of the House’s most important committee: Finance, and of its Budget Subcommittee. That places him in a key position when it comes to getting funding for things like the East Tennessee Historical Center that’s still a million dollars short in its campaign to raise the money needed to complete its new facility. When he came to realize that Knox County schools were missing out on federal grants available for reading program, Tindell enlisted the help of state Department of Education officials in completing grant applications that will have yielded $2 million over the next three years to Inskip, Norwood and Westview Elementary Schools.

In sum, Harry Tindell is a good man who has done very well by Knoxville and will keep on doing so—so long as he gets reelected.

October 14, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 42 © 2004 Metro Pulse