Knox schools chief to present budget

[Lola Alapo]

Knox County school officials are proposing later start times for some high schools as a way to decrease transportation costs.

Positions also are being eliminated in the district's administrative office and systemwide including 38 custodians. They come after position cuts in elementary, middle and high schools in areas such as career and technical education.

Knox County Schools Superintendent Jim McIntyre today will present the Knox County school board with his budget proposal for the 2009-10 budget year.

"It's a very difficult economic environment," he said. "On the plus side, it's pushing us to be as efficient, as creative as possible to maximize our dollars and give our kids the best education."

McIntyre is proposing a $374 million budget for next year. The current budget is $370 million. The board votes on the budget April 15.

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[Cathy McCaughan]

Fairfax County Public Schools proposed later start times for high school students. Two websites were created to express opinions and research in favor of and opposed to high school students starting the day later than elementary students. The attempts to start high school at 9:30 eventually failed.

[Knox County Teacher]

How many administrative jobs have they cut?

[ChangeAgent]

Three jobs were cut in Central Office, if I remember reading correctly. I believe, however, that at least twice that number were CREATED this year - so I am relatively certain that Central Office is operating into next year with a net GAIN in positions.

[Cathy McCaughan]

No. High School ends at 3:30 now. Schools that begin at 9:30 will end at 4:30.

[Heather Marshall]

Up, you make some very good suggestions...I sure hope the KCS board reads your comments and considers your suggestions.

I have another suggestion. Why not zone students to go to the school that is closest to where they live. There are 3 buses in my neighborhood every morning...it could be 2 instead of 3 if the high school students were zoned for the school closest to the neighborhood. This seems like it would be such an easy way to save busing costs.

[Debi]

The child may need to work & have a college track and not want a vocational training.

[Cathy McCaughan]

Tennessee Vocational Rehabilitation scholarships for college/career training will be almost non-existent beginning this fall.

[Debi]

I can say STUDENT LOANS are non-existent. I got word today, at the moment I have no clue how I will pay for my final year of college. My federal loans are not enough and the private loans I was getting a year ago with no problem are suddenly not even doing student loans any more. I know God will provide, HE always does. But until He comes through I don't have a clue. I would imagine lots of other college students are having this issue at the moment. Anyone wanna donate $10k to a future nurse?

[Pamela Treacy]

As elected officials this is decided by the school board -- but I don't think this should just be "left" to them. Changing the start times of our high school day, even in 7 schools, changes many things for the community. It effects parents, teachers, businesses of the schools set to start later as well as the parents, teachers, businesses of all the other schools who interact with them at athletic events and other functions like church groups, non-high school sports clubs, dance studios.

I am all for saving money, but this changes our local culture.

I read the information about the studies about sleeping patterns. I really don't get this. I don't recall this as an issue growing up.

[Beth Love]

My high school students (particularly my honors kids) are almost unanimous in wishing to start earlier than later. They cite Oak Ridge's start times for their high school students (7:30-2:30). My kids say that they would be home from activities by 5 o'clock or so and be able to get homework done by a reasonable time and have time for family. Most crave, believe it or not, dinner at home with their families.

[heather]

What I really want to see is when they do change the hours for the high schoolers how many absentees they will have. Most parents leave their house to go to work by 8:00am you give a 15yr old a chance to sleep later its an open invitation for them to half make it to school which would be bad for Supers numbers.

Most folks I talked with are in an uproar about it, my son currently arrives home at 4:30pm and HVA is 6miles away. The bus currently picks up the students from Karns Middle School then gets to HardinValley by 3:45PM takes those Karns kids home first and an hour later my son arrives in the neighborhood. Those buses are crammed full of kids already to conserve fuel. Many kids don't want to arrive home during the winter months and have it close to dark outside and my teenager could care less about the hour he gets more he wants to get home earlier. I am curious to see if this passes.

[Beth Love]

There may be two options to the athletic event situation: the first would be to schedule games for later times, which, of course, means later getting home. Conceivably, that could mean a JV football game over at 10:00 on a Thursday night, then the student has homework. I'm not scheduling games later for only 7 high schools will happen. This leads to the other possibility of having athletes dismissed early from school (which does happen now), but in this case missing an entire class to attend an away game. Again, detrimental, missing out on more instructional time.