Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson will present a proposed $385 million schools budget for the 2018-2019 year today. Since he, rather than Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger, will explain the numbers, the presentation on roughly two-thirds of the county budget may test the first-year leader's power of persuasion on Hamilton County commissioners.
In some ways, commissioners still will be buying a pig in a poke with Johnson.
By all rights, he has taken steps he believes will align the school district for success. He has taken the former iZone schools, paired them with their feeder system schools and created a broader Opportunity Zone, which will focus on improved learning strategies from kindergarten through high school. He has crafted a district facilities plan, which will build new buildings, move a school, reopen another and take care of a number of maintenance needs in the district. He also has offered a retirement incentive package to free up more money for the district.
Johnson, in an attempt to line students with career opportunities, has put together Future Ready Institutes, or career academies, in a dozen traditional high schools. He also has created a new district office C-suite, repopulating the central office with a variety of chiefs and leaders in the hopes of having a working rather than a moribund, soon-to-be-retiring staff.
Last week, he fashioned the rest of the schools outside of the Opportunity Zone into four additional "learning communities," each with its own executive director. The new communities, according to a district news release, were created to foster community spirit and identity.
No one can say he has arrived to be a superintendent to rearrange the deck chairs while the ship is sinking.
Yet, Johnson has been on the job for less than a year. Commissioners will be able to examine what he presents them based on what he's done and what he promises - "the fastest improving school district in the state of Tennessee."
But they won't be able to examine what those changes have wrought, or will produce, because standardized test scores for this year won't be available until fall. And one year of tests is not going to gauge whether the superintendent's moves have been the right ones.
In time, the questions will begin to answer themselves. Will test scores rise? Will the facilities plan be workable? Will students from across the district populate the various career academies? Will the C-suite continue the quick turnover of effective principals from schools to the district office? Will the retirement of experienced, effective teachers be more of a detriment to students than the incentive savings are a help? Will the "learning communities" be just a name or an actual way of fostering community spirit?
We believe Johnson certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt, but commissioners may or may not think the benefit of the doubt comes with a budget that is $12 million more than last year's.
That budget includes, among other things, a 2 percent hike for teachers and other district employees, plus a mandated annual .5 percent step increase; $1.5 million for new positions, including art teachers, counselors, English as a second language teachers and school resource officers; and additional safety enhancements.
In those budget priorities, Johnson seems to have his finger on what parents have had in mind, some before and many since the Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 at a high school in Parkland, Fla. - counselors to lower the risk of potential shooters, and school resource officers and safety enhancements to protect students from those who would attempt such an action.
This year's budget includes as many as six to eight new school resource officers, a down payment on getting one in each of the district's 71 schools. Currently, there is an officer in 29 schools.
After Johnson was hired late last spring, Coppinger and the county commission made an investment in him and in the district in late August when they raised property taxes by, in essence, leaving the millage rate where it was following the 2017 county reappraisal. It allowed him to put a facilities plan in place and, in time, to offer the retirement incentive plan.
We said at the time the new superintendent could not work miracles and could not turn the district around with the snap of his fingers. He certainly can't change the damaged home lives of far too many children within his purview. Yet, we believe the public has seen him as a man of action, as a leader willing to make bold moves, as a man who is not satisfied with the status quo.
We hope commissioners closely question him about his budget today but consider carefully whether the district is more poised to improve today than it was a year ago. We believe it is.