"Why?" Mrs. Celia in the front office asked me one day when I dropped in to volunteer in the library at my kids’ elementary school. She'd noticed I had picked up a petition to run for school board in late 2021.
I was so new to all of this. I had never planned to run for anything. So I answered with the one thing I knew for sure: "For fully funded schools!"
She laughed. "Don't we all."
But I meant it. And I still do!
Five years later, on Sept. 8, my colleagues elected me to chair the board of the third-largest school district in Tennessee, and I'm still answering her question. These days it comes with two more: How? And for what?
Why?
"Choice" may be the loudest word in Tennessee education right now. The statewide Education Freedom Scholarshipprogram keeps
growing, and the pitch sounds simple: give families options.
Growing up in a blended house with a working mom, I figured out a lot on my own. The one thing I have learned is that kids don’t get to choose their family. And not every family has the resources to drive their kids across town, take them on educational outings, and opt in to a school that isn’t community-based.
I also know where real options come from. Every PTA/PTO meeting is community organizing. Parents who show up, count the money, divide the tasks, and push for what their kids need are organizers, whether they'd use the word or not.
Those rooms taught me that the choice that changes lives isn't a voucher. It's being invited in.
How?
People ask what my plan is as chair. I don't have a plan. I have a trajectory, and it points in one direction: education for all.
I've always been someone who sees the connections: between a line item and a classroom, between a bill in Nashville and a kid in Knoxville. Right now, one connection matters more than the rest. An invitation means little if the house isn't sound.
FY27 closed with a nearly $8 million gap and 29 fewer teaching positions, because you can't cover recurring costs with one-time savings. FY28 is where we fix the structure. Those choices landed in real classrooms, so how we make them matters as much as the math.
Here's the invitation to a budget built earlier and in public.
No parent should need a finance degree and a pot of coffee to understand where their child's school stands.
An invitation to real partnership with the Knox County Commission. The board sets priorities. The commission sets our funding. Late-cycle surprises serve no one, least of all students.
An invitation to “showing our work." If a number drives a decision, you should be able to see that number.
For what?
This board's makeup changed this year, and people are watching to see what we do with it. A majority is an obligation, not a victory lap. It runs to all 58,000 of our students, in every district, no matter how their families voted.
Choice shouldn't be for a coupon and a wish for good luck. It should be for a great school close to home, and a seat at the table when decisions get made, for every family in Knox County.
Mrs. Celia was right. We all want fully funded schools. So come help build them.
Give me a call, send me an email, come to an event. Heck, just show up to a community event. We're building something in Knox County.
Fully funded. Wide open. Every kid invited in.
Katherine Bike is chair of the Knox County Board of Education and represents District 4.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knox County Schools' trajectory should be toward education for all | Opinion
