This from today’s Knoxville News-Sentinel and this from Volunteer TV WVLT concerning last nights Knox County School Board meeting.

This school continues to be the red headed step child of the Knox County School Board. It has one school board member, Indya Kincannon of Knoxville inner city still trying to reject the school all together. Last night, she advocated to rezone the students from Farragut to Carter, Halls to South-Doyle, Gibbs to Karns and every school in between. Her possible motives and continuing efforts to reject this new school will require a separate post in the near future.

This school has already suffered a 1 year delay. The architect and school board during the hiring process, publicly stated the school would be built and ready for occupancy by 2007-2008, only to now delay it until 2008-2009. The $40.0 million dollar budget for this school is above and beyond the school systems capital fund. Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale and the 19 member Knox County Commission has given the $40.0 million to the school system for the sole purpose of this project.

In previous post, here and here, I have documented all the additional programming that have driven this project to the price tag where it is today. In talking with a school board member last night, following the meeting, I was assured that the $3.0 million dollar plus field house has been eliminated.

The problems that the students in west Knox county have are 1.) Indya Kincannon 2.) a couple of career politicians on the school board that refuse to discuss anything that may affect “their” projects. 7th district Diane Dozier and 8th district Jim Williams. They talk a good game in public about doing what’s right “for the children” but when it comes time to walk the walk for all their talk. They really only mean “the children” of their district. Jim Williams has NEVER voted for a project in the west end of the county, while receiving pork barrel project after pork barrel project in his sparsely populated district.

The County Mayor and County Commission should have taken the $40.0 million dollars, selected a site, built the building and handed the keys to the school district in 2007-2008. Because this building may never be built, this way. It took 1 year to break ground from the time the school district had the $40 million dollars. The wheel tax passed in November 2004 and was appropriated in December 2004, the ground was broken on December 2, 2005, and now it suffers another delay.