(This is a column published in Roane County News)
Imagine if your job was to manage the biggest mass transportation system in the county, the biggest food service business in the county, keep maintenance up on eighteen large buildings totaling 1.2 million square feet that are on average 41 years old, manage over 1,000 networked computers, manage the biggest composite library in the county, manage the biggest budget in the county and keep it balanced despite increased operating costs, and lead 850 employees, 550 of them college graduates, and provide the employees with fully managed benefits.
That is the challenge of the Roane County School Board its administration and teaching staff have in front of them.
But, of course all of the above items are secondary to the real job of the school system and that is to educate 7,500 children that reside in the eighteen schools across the county.
If you think keeping the school system infrastructures identified in the opening paragraph is a challenge (which it is), that effort pales in what is necessary to educate our children in 2007.
Our teachers and administrators in Roane county have never done a better job; they are teaching students in more subjects to higher levels than ever before. But a teacher today faces many more hurdles than they did just 10 years ago. Schools now have to administer a myriad of state mandated tests and federal and state regulations have forced numerous non-academic requirements on teachers in the form of student training (e.g. drug awareness, teen pregnancy awareness, etc.).
But the extra demands on our teachers doesn’t stop there. They have to meet strict competency in their subject area and there are more peripheral issues with teaching than ever before. Advances in technology forces our teachers to spend time on learning and using it. They have to be more cognizant as to what they can and can’t say to students and their parents, and how to identify students that may have personal problems. The list is endless.
With all of these many non-academic requirements put on our teachers and administration do you know how many days have been added to our school calendar in the past 50 years? If you guessed zero you are correct. Much less time on task for our teachers than ever before.
But, despite the pessimistic comments above, Roane County schools are in a renaissance. I see nothing but positive things happening to our schools. Almost every measurement of vital signs is positive.
Teacher attendance is up, student attendance is up, graduation rates are up, test results are up in every grade level, virtually every area of curriculum, and every ethnic group. These academic achievements have been written about two different times in the Knoxville News Sentinel – both times Roane County has been listed as the top or near the top county system in East Tennessee. Our system has received citations from the state and some of the programs that have started here have been used as a model by other school systems in the state.
These positive accomplishments have been achieved by a commitment of everyone involved in the school system – from top to bottom.
In future columns I will address issues facing our school system. Re-zoning, new construction, the school consolidation debate, how the budget process works, the role of a school board member, how technology is changing the face of education, the difficulty in obtaining qualified teachers, and we’ll take a nostalgic trip on what Roane County schools were like in 1940 (would you believe we had 31 elementary schools then).
