NORTH / EAST VOL. 2 NO. 17 NEIGHBORHOOD BUZZ
Karaoke Review at Beck
Karaoke Review for Seniors will be 2 to 4:30 p.m. Thursday, May 1, at Beck Cultural Exchange Center, 1927 Dandridge Avenue. Featured singers will perform songs from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s from genres of music to include pop, big band, country, rhythm and blues with host Bob Booker.
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Largest land tract
up for sale By Betty Bean The largest available land tract in Knox County – more than 500 acres of rolling hills and green meadows in the shadow of House Mountain – has gone up for sale. Furrow-Strickland Real Estate Services has listed seven contiguous tracts of Babelay farm property located in the Ritta/Corryton area. This land has been in the Babelay family for decades and
SMG to host Media Madness Join the students and staff of Sarah Moore Greene Magnet Academy Thursday, May 8, as they celebrate a new communications lab. The night will feature a ribboncutting for the lab funded, in part, by a grant from VF Outlet, at 4:15 p.m. Local media representatives will showcase jobs in communications until 6 p.m. when the 5th grade will perform “Jazz,” adapted from the musical “We Haz Jazz.” Dinner will be served at 6:30.
To page 3
Community celebrates Chilhowee changes
IN THIS ISSUE
By Betty Bean If last Tuesday had been a sunny day, the ribbon cutting at the new and improved Chilhowee Intermediate School would have been held in front of the school’s new entrance, which has been moved to the back of the building and made more secure. But 5th grade student representative (an elected position) Reagan Boring said nobody minded having the ceremony in the audito-
Jackie Walker makes list of Vols Jackie Walker was a brilliant linebacker, a fierce hitter, intuitive and very quick. He was a hero at Fulton High School and UT, but he never played in the pros.
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Marvin West makes a list, page 5.
Street rods at Chilhowee Park The Street Rod Nationals South Plus is coming to Chilhowee Park Friday through Sunday, May 2-4, featuring more than 2,900 street rods, muscle cars, custom cars, trucks and specialty vehicles, each at least 30 years old.
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Read Betty Bean on page 3
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Why is Tim Burchett slugging the Easter Bunny? Find out on Page 1 of our Karns/Hardin Valley edition.
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rium because the students are used to dealing with inconvenience after living through three years of construction. “It’s been hard to walk around the school without being able to go to the bathroom by ourselves,” Reagan said, referring to security measures because Chilhowee, one of the oldest school buildings in Knox County, was full of construction workers. “But it’s really nice now, and I love
Ava Morell and Kallie Powell after the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Photos by Betty Bean
all the th he ne new paintings (mu(mu rals) on the walls.” In addition to the new entrance and secure vestibule, improvements include a new elevator, a new parking lot, improved lighting, new ceilings and energy upgrades throughout the building. A full house of local elected officials, including Superintendent Jim McIntyre and County Mayor Tim Burchett, showed up for the event.
More photos on page 3
Pellissippi prepares for Tennessee Promise By Betsy Pickle Now that Gov. Bill Haslam’s free higher-education plan, the Tennessee Promise, has earned legislative approval, the state’s community colleges are facing the possibility of significantly increased enrollment, which could put a burden on teachers and classrooms. Pellissippi State Community College, with 10,600 students on five campuses in the Knoxville area, is the largest local school affected by the legislation, but the mood there is preparation, not panic. President Anthony Wise says Pellissippi State should be able to accommodate any influx beginning with the registration for the 2015-16 school year. “We are starting to look at it and to think about it,” says Wise. “It’s really built on the model of Tennessee Achieves, which started here in Knox and Blount counties. I don’t know that we’ll see the huge enrollment increases that we might see in other parts of the state because in essence you can have free access to a community college in Knox or Blount County right now through Tennessee Achieves.”
Faculty and facilities are two concerns. “We’re committed to having fulltime faculty as much as possible teach our classes on campus,” says Wise. “We want to make sure that we have the right kind of academic Anthony Wise and student support programs in place for the new population of students. “We’re a little bit off our historic enrollment high of three or four years ago, so we have some capacity to grow into that. We do have the new facility at Strawberry Plains, which hopefully can absorb some of these new students.” Other potential measures include adding classes later in the afternoon, offering Saturday classes and making science labs available on Sundays. Students who take advantage of the Tennessee Promise plan to earn a two-year associate’s degree are likely to be people who ordinarily wouldn’t have thought about higher education, either because they lacked financial re-
sources or didn’t think they could succeed in the academic environment. Wise says generally 60 percent to 65 percent of students have to take some type of remediation course at Pellissippi State. “That’s among the best at community colleges within the state,” he says. “Some places it’s significantly higher. Most students generally have one area of remediation, and more often than not it’s mathematics.” Tennessee Promise students are likely to mirror those numbers, he says. “One of the conversations we’re having is, how do we deal with the fact that perhaps in the fall of 2015, not only do we see this increase but we see an increase in students who really need additional assistance and support academically in order to be successful?” Statistics show that students coming in through Tennessee Achieves are more likely to stay in school and graduate – and do so more quickly – than the general student population, Wise says, and he thinks the same thing may happen with the Tennessee Promise.
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“I think there are a couple of things that have made Tennessee Achieves successful and I think have the possibility of making the Tennessee Promise successful,” he says. “They have strict requirements on the obligations that the students have to meet – they have to attend meetings at their high school, they have to complete their financial aid form by a certain time, they have to register at community college by a certain time, they have to work with a mentor, and they have to give a day of service back each semester to the community.”
Tennessee Promise Gov. Bill Haslam’s signature initiative was developed in part by South Knox native Randy Boyd. It was adopted 87-8 in the state House and 30-1 in the Senate. All members of the Knox County legislative delegation voted yes, including Democrats Gloria Johnson and Joe Armstrong; and Republicans Becky Massey, Stacey Campfield, Harry Brooks, Bill Dunn, Roger Kane and Steve Hall. The bill was revenue neutral, redirecting proceeds from the state lottery.