ANNUAL FORUM: State of our Schools (Maryville, Alcoa, and Blount Co)

THE DAILY TIMES

Reporter: Amy Beth Miller
9/20/2019

The three local public school directors delivered a united message Friday morning at the Blount Partnership about mutual respect, cooperation and the issues facing educators.

“If you are a child and you’re born in Blount County, or move here, and you get a chance to go to one of our three (school districts), you are luckier than most students in the state of Tennessee,” Alcoa City Schools Director Brian Bell said at the beginning of the meeting. “We have exceptional school systems, and we work really well together.”

Bell, Blount County Schools Director Rob Britt and Mike Winstead, director of Maryville City Schools, each highlighted their district’s accomplishments before answering questions during the annual briefing before the business group.

Need: Mental health support

Asked about their greatest need, the three directors agreed it is mental health professionals.

Winstead had noted in his remarks that all three districts are seeing an increase in the frequency and severity of students with behavior and mental health needs. One reason is parents who have been addicted to drugs, but a range of adverse childhood experiences (ACES) affect students’ brain development and behaviors.

All three districts have added training for staff and partnered with other agencies to provide counseling.

Britt has compared the current situation to a 20-foot wave and warned that a 50-foot wave is coming. He noted that a proposal to add mental health resources in this year’s Blount County Schools budget was cut.

The efforts to serve students who have experienced ACES have sometimes been misconstrued, Winstead said. “We don’t want to give kids an excuse to misbehave,” he explained. “It’s not about that.”

Schools still address misbehavior but support the child to change patterns, he explained. “We’re trying to build resilient learners, students, adults,” he said, so they can better deal with what is going on in their lives.

Facility needs

All three directors touched on facility needs amid talking about their schools’ accomplishments.

“Our cork, what’s kind of causing a conundrum is the size of Alcoa Intermediate School,” Bell said, because that school’s enrollment is over capacity.

The district has been awaiting funding for its plan to expand the school, and he said, “Our intermediate expansion plan is ready to take off.”

With expansions over the past year at two Maryville elementary schools, Winstead said, “We have enough room in every school for all kids.”

“We have a little bit of a bottleneck coming at the intermediate grades,” he noted, and in the short term Maryville will rezone about 80 students from Montgomery Ridge to Coulter Grove, which has greater capacity.

However, Maryville is looking at numerous long-term options, including the possibility of turning the current junior high into a ninth grade academy and considering that building part of the high school.

Britt, meanwhile, mentioned that the county provided $4 million this year toward a $98 million renovation proposal for the two high schools, both of which are more than 40 years old.

Planning is underway to use that money for science labs and heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems at both campuses, as well as adding a fire sprinkler system to the older school. “Heritage was built just before that was a requirement,” Britt said of the school that opened in 1977.

He also described a new $400,000 emergency response system being added to county schools with state grant funding and money from the district’s fund balance, which is like a savings account. In response to a question later, he explained that after installation the annual cost will be about $18,000.

Expanding opportunities

“We have always been a strong academic school, but we left some students out,” Bell said as he began describing the huge strides Alcoa has made recently in students gaining EPSOs (early postsecondary opportunities).

In 2018-19 nearly 72% of the Alcoa High School students participated in programs such as dual enrollment classes that allow them to earn college credit or earning industry certifications.

During Britt’s presentation, he said the fastest-growing county school is the Samuel Everett School of Innovation, home to four alternative programs.

The Preferred Flex Academy, a home-based learning program that includes support from educators for kindergarten through grades six, has 73 students and a waiting list, he said.

Winstead highlighted a new program on which Maryville is taking the lead but all three districts will participate, Tennessee Valley Youth Apprenticeships.

Thirty-five students from across the districts showed up for this week’s launch meeting, along with parents and employers.

The apprenticeships are built on efforts over the past several years of the schools to align their career and technical education programs with local workforce needs, an effort facilitated through the Blount Partnership.

Friendly rivals
 

During the meeting, Bell shared the history of the incorporation of the city of Alcoa, currently celebrating its centennial, and a push by leading citizens of Maryville at the time to name the new city “North Maryville.”

The Alcoa director said that when he travels across the state the most common questions he gets are, “Are you going to beat Maryville this year?” and how did the great football rivalry between the two cities begin.

“I’m fixing to show you,” Bell said, flashing a PowerPoint slide to laughter from the audience that showed a telegram from an aluminum company executive flatly refusing to rename the town “North Maryville.”

When Winstead spoke later, he playfully asked Bell, “Did you beat Maryville this year?” Maryville won 17-3.

In talking about options for new schools in Maryville, Winstead had said with a laugh, “No, we’re not going to build a second high school. We’ll die first.”

At the end of Friday’s meeting, Bell quipped back to Winstead that, “I understand that when Maryville builds that new high school it’s going to be called ‘South Alcoa.’”

Bell had said as he prepares to retire at the end of the school year, he won’t really miss the sports rivalry, but he will miss the collaboration with Winstead and Britt.

In some counties that have multiple school districts, the leaders can’t stand to be in the same room with each other. “We enjoy each others’ company, and we work together for the benefit of the students of Blount County,” Bell said.

“That was just a long way for me to say, ‘Thank you, guys,’” he said.

Trevis Gardner, who previously served on the Blount County Board of Education and on committees with the Tennessee School Boards Association, commended all three leaders at the meeting’s end.

“This community has no idea of the value of the three gentlemen sitting in front of us,” he said. “Other communities are jealous because of the cooperation among these three leaders. The community owes them a debt of gratitude.”

“When they do disagree, the conversation starts with, ‘What’s best for the student,” said Gardner, chief personnel officer for the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority.