VOL. 53 NO. 25
Kincannon to Slovenia; shakes up school board
School board member Indya Kincannon will resign her position in August to travel with her husband, Ben Barton, to Slovenia where he will teach law at the University of Ljubljana as a Fulbright Scholar. Barton has taught at the University of Tennessee College of Law since 2001. He teaches torts, evidence, advocacy clinic, comparative law, and images of the law. Kincannon, in her third term, has represented District 2 on the school board since 2004. She served as board chair in 2008-10. Their two children, Dahlia and Georgia, will go along for the family adventure. Kincannon said she expects to teach English or Spanish there. Knox County Commission will appoint a replacement. – S. Clark
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Friends and foes at Halls forum
Foster Arnett
Mike Padgett
Scott Green
By Sandra Clark Ever since Tommy Schumpert launched a successful run for county executive from the office, the county’s trustees have had visions of grandeur … or at least sugarplums. Now Ed Shouse (R) and Jim Berrier (D) are battling for the job in the Aug. 7 election. Both spoke last week at the Halls Business and Professional Association. Shouse has served on City Council and County Commission, both part-time. He was a vice president and trust officer for First Tennessee Bank before joining Pete Claussen in the short-line railroad business. He promises honesty and stability.
Leland Price
Jim Berrier
Berrier is a South Knox guy with a master’s degree in business administration from UT who is running for office for the first time. He’s worked as a stockbroker and now is the regulatory supervisor for more than 100 financial advisers across the United States, he said. And he’s got a sense of humor. His grandfather lived on a big barge in the Tennessee River and paid no property taxes, Berrier said. “And now I’m running for (tax collector). I’ve come full circle.” The race for judge of Criminal Court, Division III, has Scott Green (R) and Leland Price (D) vying for the post now held by Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz, who is retiring.
A trip to Happy Holler isn’t complete without a stop at the original Freezo for soft-serve ice cream. Read about the interns’ visit to the Time Warp Tea Room, the Mabry-Hazen House and the Old Gray Cemetery, inside on A-8 and A-9.
Lamar’s rally U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander left no doubt that he will do whatever it takes to win re-election, even reversing his 1,000-mile walk across the state. That would be fun to see because Alexander has aged a bit since that winning 1978 race for governor.
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Following the money By Betty Bean
To page A-3
Blankenship keeps job
THE MONEY TRAIL
Why did the state buy a decrepit block building at the edge of nowhere – near the Strawberry Plains I-40 exit – for a Pellissippi State Community College branch campus? How did Pellissippi State attract Knox County Schools to build a new magnet school in the basement of the former Philips Electronics building at a time when it was closing down community vocational schools, like the agricultural education program at Halls? And how did a local investors group double its money in five years? Turns out that reporter Walter F. Roche Jr. of the Tennessean covered this part of the story nearly two years ago, with a long, detailed account of how a group of investors led by Sam Furrow bought low and sold high after enlisting the help of Gov. Bill Haslam’s chief of staff when the deal to unload the 220,000-square-foot building wasn’t moving fast enough. Read his article and supporting documents at: http://archive.tennessean.com/article/20121216/ NEWS0201/312160067/Tennes see-pays-millions-fi xer-upper/. “The state bought the building by tapping $87 million that it had previously budgeted for TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program for the poor. But that money was able to be shifted for other uses when the federal government boosted its share of Medicaid funding for Tennessee as part of the stimulus package.
Ed Shouse
Judicial candidates must make nice, and both did so in Halls, but Green won the “folksy” prize. “I may not be the smartest person to walk down the pike. And maybe I’m not the smartest person in my race,” he said, “but no one will work harder.” Green’s declaration put Price off pace, and he never even mentioned he’s a graduate of Harvard Law School. Price has a 17-year career as a prosecutor including handling the Channon Christian and Chris Newsom cases – twice. He lives in
The Shopper-News requested title information for the property at 7201 Strawberry Plains Pike from Register of Deeds. Here’s what we got: 3/7/79 – Carl Armstrong to Philips Electronics – $300,000 5/24/79 – Hal Sherrod to Philips Electronics – $10,000 6/28/07 – Philips North America to Furrow Realty Fund – $5 million 3/9/12 – Furrow Realty Fund to State of Tennessee – $10 million
Interns visit Happy Holler
June 25, 2014
In addition to $8.5 million in state funds, $1.5 million was contributed by the Pellissippi State Foundation toward the purchase,” Roche reported. The bulk of the foundation money came from PetSafe founder and CEO Randy Boyd and Don Lawson his wife, Jenny, who donated $1 million toward the purchase of the Strawberry Plains campus. Last month, the building was named for the Boyds, who have given large sums of money to support public education. Roche reported that the building required some $16 million in repairs. Pellissippi started classes in September 2012, a few months after Knox County Schools Superintendent James McIntyre put a career and technical school in his strategic plan. During that time, CTE director Don Lawson said he pitched the idea to Pellissippi State President Anthony Wise one day over lunch. Wise was enthusiastic, since Pellissippi was only utilizing about 20 percent of the building. A year later, the school board voted to approve McIntyre’s plan to shift nearly $4 million in funding for renovations at Pond Gap Elementary School to the new CTE magnet. Knox County program: Don Lawson cut his teeth on vocational education when he was a senior at Doyle High School in 1978 and took an agriculture class from then first-
TITAN A SELF-STORAGE
year teacher Mike Blankenship, whose award-winning agriculture program at the North Knox Career and Technical Center in Halls was shut down last month. Lawson has been struggling to preserve CTE since becoming its supervisor. Although the state funds CTE at a rate of nearly 250 percent of regular academic classes (due mostly to the cost of equipping classrooms with state-of-the-industry tools and machinery and keeping classes small enough for teachers to closely supervise students), class enrollments are capped at 20 per CTE class, making the numbers difficult for principals to work with when they are trying to stretch their resources to accommodate their student populations. Lawson said his program has been cut by nearly $2 million in salaries in recent years and will have five fewer positions this fall, although Knox County Schools reports that 9,598 students enrolled in CTE classes last year, and enrollment is expected to hold steady. The new career magnet academy, where Blankenship has been reassigned, will be enrolling 120 freshman in the coming year, with one grade level to be added annually until enrollment tops out at 500. Students will choose an area of concentration from Advanced Manufacturing, Homeland Security, Sustainable Living or Teacher Preparation. Net operating cost of the yet-unnamed magnet school (the students will choose a name this school year) is expected to be about $1.2 million per year.
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Good news: Mike Blankenship has a job at the new career magnet academy on the Pellissippi State campus at Strawberry Plains. The award-w inning agriculture education teacher will work in the Sustainable Living Career Cluster. More good news: BlankenBlankenship ship will also teach part-time at the North Knox Center where he had been for more than 25 years. This means that rising juniors and seniors at Halls and Gibbs high schools who were left in limbo when Knox County Schools terminated Blankenship’s program this spring will be able to take Ag classes at Halls this fall. Blankenship can also continue as sponsor of the Future Farmers of America, which provides scholarship and career opportunities. This announcement came from 7th District school board member Kim Severance. Bad news: The arrangement is good for one year only. “He blew them away in the interview at the career magnet school,” said CTE director Don Lawson. “I knew he would. He was my teacher back in 1978 when his career was just starting and I was a senior at Doyle High School. He is a super teacher. He’s tireless, all the time going. The science teacher he’s going to be working with said ‘Wow.’ But all my CTE teachers have a youth organization and do these extra activities on their own time.” Lawson’s not the only one who isn’t surprised that Blankenship aced his interview. “I knew he would,” said Ryan Cox, a rising senior at Halls High School who is an Ag student and active in the FFA. “Mr. Blankenship is a great teacher. I think that Mr. Blankenship being part-time at Halls is better than nothing, and I think we are getting someTo page A-3
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