HCDE 'Budget Information Session' Set for Tuesday at High School

Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson will lead a budget information session at East Ridge High School on Tuesday, May 21, officials said. The budget review is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m.

Also scheduled to appear with Dr. Johnson is Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger and District 8 School Board member Tucker McClendon.

McClendon said the meeting will center on the $443 million proposed 2020 Hamilton County Department of Education budget. Dr. Johnson is requesting an additional $34 million for operational costs, which likely would mean at least a 34 cent property tax increase for Hamilton County taxpayers. The current tax rate is about $2.76 per $100 of assessed value.

The $34 million would fund additional teachers, counselors, social workers and non-teaching staff. It would also fund a pay raise for teachers.

Earlier this month, McClendon told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that he supported a tax increase to fund new positions. McClendon, a graduate of East Ridge High School was quoted in the Times Free Press as saying, “As someone who went through this system myself without a counselor, without an art teacher, without a social worker, things have changed since 2005. There’s nothing in this binder that does not benefit students. I think the time is now.”

Last week, District 8 Commissioner Tim Boyd had a community meeting in which he disputed HCDE numbers. Boyd told more than 50 people who attended his meeting that he was firmly against a tax increase to fund additional personnel for the schools.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.