DEVELOPING: Superintedent proposes rezoning plan changes

underperforming teacher wrote:

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Thanks for your kind words but no claims of heroism here. We just want to make a difference in the lives of the students we teach. Instead of being able to do that, in many instances we are just playing babysitter or police to many who are just waiting until the day they can drop out. And we dare not discipline a student for we know we will not be backed up by the parents, administration or school board. At the risk of sounding egotistical, give me a class full of students (even if it's overcrowded and underfunded) who are held accountable and I promise learning will take place regarless which school zone it's in.

Amen and amen! This is EXACTLY why both my husband and I are no longer teaching. Many kids just outright refuse to do anyting at all. They'll just look at you and say, "You can't do anything to me if I don't do the work", and they're right. Some parents are too self-absorbed to care what their kids do, in school or anywhere else. School administrators tend to care only about test scores and what will make them look good, not the kids themselves. Teachers are caught in the middle. If your child is learning in school, please take a moment to thank them. They are working under tremendous pressure and against all odds.

Apologies, I misspelled "anything" in my previous post. Also, I meant to specify that you thank the TEACHER. Too little caffeine yet.

PLEASE VOTE NO!

John wrote:

maybe I'm missing something here but are you saying that you are going to drive your high school aged kids to school every day instead of letting them ride the school bus like everyone else?
Also,if it takes you 45 minutes to drive from Cumberland Estates to Karns High school,maybe you need to ask someone for directions.

John, you need to be quiet.

Jason wrote:

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I second the motion

AMEN! I third it!

Personally, I think this is all ridiculous! The whole rezoning plan is completely retarded, yea farragut might be crowded a little, but not to the point where they have to build a school over again. I don't think it is right to make us change school. All the Farragut rich teens need to get over themselves and stop complaining. I have gone to like five different schools, I WANT TO STAY AT ONE SCHOOL TILL I CAN GRADUATE!!! I have been at Farragut High Since 5th grade..Its not so bad. Why can't Knox county leave everything how it is? Why are they even building a new school if they are ALWAYS complaining about not having enough money?! Think about it..Isn't it the students who buy the tissues,their own school supplies, books, and the fees we have to pay?! So i'm sorry but I don't understand why they are building another school if they don't even have the money to supply us with the school supplies we need. Some school have crappy computers! If they have enough money to build a new school then why couldn't they have already bought computers.I know the computers at farragut are slow and like 6 or 7 of them dont even work..I say No to rezoning and I think they should get the proper thing for the schools that are already built then having to buy land and build a whole other new school. I think it would be WAY cheaper.. But then again Knox County is retarded...

underperforming teacher wrote:

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As a teacher at one of the "underperforming schools," I take great offense to this statement. I'll be the first to admit there are both good and bad teachers, but the idea that teachers are at fault for schools not meeting NCLB benchmarks is absurd. The problem, although NO ONE is willing to address it, lies with the students and parents, not with the teachers. Please tell me how you FORCE students to participate in class, study, earn credits and graduate. A large segment of our student population is apathetic and refuses to put forth any effort. They are constant behavior problems and do nothing but destroy the learning environment for other students. I know many of the teachers at the "elite" schools and in no way do I intened to take anything away from their qualifications. However, I assure you that if you look at those schools you will find an entirely different clientele. They are comprised predominantly of motivated students who have parental support (and maybe even the dreaded "D" word... discipline) and strive for academic success. Rezone all you want to. Build all the new state-of-the-art schools you want to. Increase the budget millions of dollars. NONE OF THIS will have any significant impact on the educational process in Knox County until someone wakes up and deals with the real issue.

I agree completely. Somehow all of the problems in schools are blamed on the teachers, not the real source of the problem--the students and the parents. We are in a society today where kids don't want to do anything that's not fun. We as teachers try to come up with fun lessons, but not everything is fun. Kids have to learn that there are things you have to do that isn't fun. Parents aren't making them do it, and of course the kids aren't making themselves do it. So, apparently, teachers have to find some way to make these kids learn, whether they want to or not. And the ones held accountable are the teachers! I hope this changes soon, or the U.S. will be in serious trouble.

Unless something changes, my child will attend a school 6 miles away versus 2 miles away. I purchased my home based on my daughter attending Bearden High.

Perhaps she'll excel and be number 1 in her class. I based my home purchase 2 years ago on attending Bearden, which is closest!

So much for using a resource to find where my child would attend when she went to high school - http://www.greatschools.net/city/Knoxville/TN . The School Board's rezoning make no logistical sense...just like it didn't a few years ago when they rezoned Rocky Hill & Seqoyah!

B