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by Joe Sullivan

Initial funding of County Mayor Mike Ragsdale’s heralded Great Schools initiative has been hung up for months by reservations on the part of school board members about the way in which the funds would be channeled to a new foundation. But an informal relabeling of the foundation as a “partnership” appears to symbolize a new spirit of accommodation between the school board and the county administration.

Barring mishap, the school board was expected to approve formation of the foundation at its meeting Wednesday evening. Once formed, the new entity would get $1 million that Ragsdale has earmarked for first year’s Great Schools funding, primarily to support an extended-hours kindergarten program for children with reading difficulty.

Next school year, the funding is due to rise to $6.8 million for initiatives that include a birth to kindergarten program and performance bonuses for teachers in inner-city schools whose student achievement exceeds the norm.

While school board members are generally supportive of those initiatives, there have been misgivings on several counts about having the funds placed under the control of a separate entity. For one, there’s been concern that such an allocation could circumvent the school board’s authority, per state law, to decide how school funds get spent. Beyond that, there’s been apprehension that money going from Knox County to the entity wouldn’t be subject to another legal requirement that precludes reductions in a school system’s funding from one year to the next.

If the county mayor and/or County Commission were free to cut off Great Schools funds after school programs based on them were already implemented, then the school board would be placed in the bind of either having to terminate them or else cannibalize regular school funds to keep them going.

Under the accommodation that’s been reached between the Ragsdale administration and the school board, Great Schools funds would go to the school system in the first instance so as to make it clear that they are subject to what’s known as the “maintenance of effort” requirement. But school board Chairman Dan Murphy envisions that these funds would be segregated in the school budget in a way that would allocate them to the Great Schools Foundation so as to make sure they go for intended purposes.

Those purposes would be determined on an ongoing basis by a 13-member board of trustees whose composition also reflects accommodation between the school board and the county administration. The chairman of the school board, the school superintendent, the county mayor and the chairman of County Commission would each have seats on the board. So would the mayor of Knoxville, the CEO of the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership, the chancellor of UT’s Knoxville campus, the president of Pellissippi State, the president of Knoxville College and the president of the Knox County Parent-Teacher Association. The other trustees would be appointed by the nine-member school board from categories that include an educator and a foundation representative.

At the same time, the school board would have a veto over any expenditures approved by the foundation board. So the Great Schools program would only be as great as the two boards agreed upon. And while it’s presumed that the school system would be largely responsible for formulating and implementing the program, it’s unclear who would be accountable to whom.

If all of this sounds convoluted, then perhaps it is. But the construct is symptomatic of the complexities of the relationship between Knox County schools and the executive and legislative branches of county government. The school system is dependent on the county mayor and County Commission for any additional funding, and the Commission’s power of the purse string inherently impinges on the school board’s prerogatives. That tension has been exacerbated by a lack of trust, of which suspicions surrounding the construct of the Great Schools program are only one example.

As awkward as it is, the accommodation that’s been reached could represent a stepping stone to more harmonious relationships between all parties to the partnership. School board Chairman Murphy, for his part, believes that involving the business community as well as higher education and foundation representatives in the decision-making process can broaden the base of support for public education in Knox County.

A prime mover in the formation of the new entity has been Laurens Tullock, president of the Cornerstone Foundation. He insists that it can be instrumental in attracting grants from foundations that have backed similar initiatives in other cities—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation and the Milken Family Foundation, to name a few.

The model which most school board members have bought into is the Milwaukee Partnership Academy. It has a board that’s constituted much like the one that’s proposed here, and it has succeeded in garnering more than $50 million in private funds for Milwaukee’s public schools in its four years of existence. The primary focus is on better preparation and retention of teachers for schools with large minority enrollments.

The biggest difference is that the Milwaukee partnership doesn’t get or allocate any public funds. Indeed, the Milwaukee school system raises all of is public funds through its own taxing authority. That, too, could represent a model for Knox County—one that could avoid the conflicts inherent in the three-way stretch that now exists between the school board, the county mayor and County Commission. But even in the unlikely event that all three parties could agree to it, there’s little chance of getting the change in state law that would be required to implement it. So the partnership that’s proposed represents a meaningful step in conflict resolution.

December 2, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 49 © 2004 Metro Pulse