Hamilton County needs a vocational school.
And county school officials need to back away from requiring a college-track high school curriculum for all of its students.
Are we advocating a dumbing down of schools? Absolutely not: Anything but that.
All students do not want or need to go to college. Some students simply can't perform the full college track, but they can learn valuable skills, skills that will allow them to be welders, plumbers and carpenters. Those with higher academic skills can be the programmers or technical repair persons for the touchscreens and high-tech inputs that run the machinery of modern factories.
Right now, without a vocational track and a vocational-technical high school for these youngsters, we are dooming hundreds of Chattanooga's young people who will not or cannot graduate high school with the skills they need to get a middle-class job.
Hamilton County's graduation rate is 82.6 percent. That means almost one in five high school students here doesn't get a diploma. Can we afford this?
At a time when Volkswagen is expanding its product line with a new SUV and our county is recruiting supplier manufacturers, can we afford not being able to provide these employers with job-ready workers? At a time when Chattanooga is fighting youth gang violence and crime because jobs are scarce for inner-city youths with no diploma and no learned job skill other than drug sales, can we afford not offer more pathways to life success?
Clearly the answers to those questions are no and no.
But you can bet plenty of local leaders will be worrying about what we can afford -- especially since just about any conversation about schools is always shadowed by concerns over tax increases.
On Wednesday, Hamilton County Commissioner Tim Boyd, who leads the commission's education committee and who already has been vocal about the need for a vocational school (he prefers to call it workforce development), said the commission wants to begin building relations with their counterparts on the Board of Education, and specifically with members of the board's facilities management committee.
Why this hasn't been a priority between these two parties before is an absolute outrage, and the sooner it happens now, the better. But, as with most sticky workings, money is often a divider.
Beneath the talk of increased school board/commission cooperation is the spectre of any potential looming tax increase request. Ahead of budget-making last year, school system Superintendent Rick Smith told a group of school officials he "hope[s] to live to the day where we have a tax increase in this county."
Commissioners on the education committee on Wednesday "universally rejected that idea," according to Times Free Press reporter Louie Brogdon.
Boyd has said he believes a vocational high school might be built for $15-$18 million on the campus of Chattanooga State Community College, where he says there are existing but under-used labs. He also believes the county's manufacturers would be willing to help.
Hamilton County used to have a downtown vocational school that turned out hundreds of welders and plumbers and mechanics -- all high school graduates who were welcomed into the foundries and manufacturing businesses here. But Kirkman Technical School was torn down and replaced with the Residence Inn, Hilton Garden Inn and Imax 3D Theater and AT&T Field. Some years later, former Superintendent Jesse Register convinced area educators a single-track diploma standard was the way to go, and he decentralized vocational education programs.
Both moves were well-intentioned, but short-sighted. Now educators -- and especially manufacturers -- are coming back around and understanding the dire need for a broader view of education.
The New York Times last summer wrote that high schools known as career and technical schools or vocational schools are increasing their presence throughout the country as support for career and technical education is picking up steam as an alternative route to the middle class.
On Wednesday, new school board member Steve Highlander told us he will be working to get discussion of a vocational school -- something he championed at a recent school board retreat -- on an upcoming agenda for a school board meeting.
Kudos to both Boyd and Highlander. This is a clear need, though not one with easy or comfortable answers.
Challenges aside, it is past time to get this discussion beyond talk and onto a drawing board.