Cox Announces House Bid

Sumner County School Board Chair Beth Cox announced yesterday she will challenge 45th district state Representative Courtney Rogers.

The Hendersonville Star News reported:

She will campaign on three major issues: education; business and the economy; and life and marriage issues, she said.
“I think you’ve all seen from my eight years on the school board that I am someone who takes my passion and puts it to action,” she said.

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Clary Announces Mayoral Bid

Former Hendersonville Alderman Jamie Clary became the first person to publicly announce a candidacy for Mayor of Hendersonville, an election that will be held in November of 2016.

Clary made the announcement via social media, according to this Hendersonville Star News story.

Clary served as Alderman from 2002-2006. He ran for re-election in 2006, but was soundly defeated by now-former Alderman Lisa West.

Shortly after Clary announced, friends and supporters of potential candidate and former County Commissioner David Kimbrough indicated they'd received messages from him suggesting he will run. Kimbrough has not made a formal announcement.

Other potential candidates include current Aldermen Matt Stamper and Steve Brown and former Alderman Tommy Elsten. Brown and Elsten both ran for Mayor in 2012, when current Mayor Scott Foster won re-election to a third term. Brown then won election to an open seat on the BOMA in 2014.

For more on Hendersonville and Sumner County news, follow @HvilleNews

Haile Takes on Teacher Pay, Calls for Education Experiments

In a recent, wide-ranging interview on Portland's WQKR radio, state Senator Ferrell Haile endorsed a new state pay scale for teachers that lowers the current range and replaces it with a new range, with a top mandated salary of $41,000 a year for a teacher with 11 or more years of experience and an advanced degree. 

Haile said the newly adopted state pay scale would be good for teachers because the good ones will end up making more money.

Local School Boards are free to adopt their own scale, but must include some form of salary differentiation among teachers and are encouraged to adopt a form of merit pay -- in spite of a number of studies showing performance pay for teachers doesn't work.

In the interview, Haile also noted that Tennessee needed to try more experiments with education because "what we're doing is not working."  What Haile failed to mention is that Tennessee has one of the lowest investments in public schools in the country -- and a correspondingly low set of results on national indicators of student achievement. 

Haile failed to commit to supporting new investments in schools and teachers.  However, in the 2013 legislative session, he was supportive of legislation that would create vouchers for certain students -- likely taking tax dollars from Sumner County and diverting them to other districts.  Alternatively, if a statewide voucher plan is passed (Haile does not oppose this), Sumner County Schools could see a loss of revenue of $2 million or more each year with no corresponding drop in expenses. 

Haile, elected in 2012, next faces voters in 2016.