Dr. Del Phillips has had his hands full since leaving the Columbus Municipal School District last May to accept a position as director of Sumner County Schools in Gallatin, Tenn.
But he scored a partial victory Tuesday when the Sumner County Commission voted 10-1 to give the school system $800,000 to end a budget impasse which led Phillips to delay the start of school.
The district’s 28,000 students, and teachers at 45 schools, return to the classroom today, ending a 12-day showdown between the Commission and the Sumner County Board of Education that packed gymnasiums and commission chambers with concerned parents and flooded the district website’s server with traffic, knocking it offline.
The schools were originally slated to open Aug. 6, but on Aug. 2 the Board voted 10-1 to keep them closed indefinitely rather than cut the district’s proposed $197.8 million needs-based budget by $7.6 million.
The $800,000 offered by the Commission is a small dent in the $2.76 million the Board estimated was needed to open the schools. Formal measures to increase property taxes were rejected, although a volunteer tax fund was approved by county commissioners 22-2 Monday, a Nashville-based daily newspaper, The Tennessean, reported Tuesday.
In an interview with the Dispatch Aug. 4, Phillips characterized the relationship between Tennessee’s school boards and county commissions as more contentious than in Mississippi due to the way Tennessee state law regulates school funding.
“It’s more of a rare occasion if it’s not contentious, because of the way it’s legally set up,” Phillips said.
Though he had warned commissioners that underfunding the schools would likely result in teacher layoffs, the commission’s one-time $800,000 allocation may not be enough to avoid that. The school board will meet Aug. 21 to determine whether such drastic measures will be necessary.
Things have been challenging since the day he arrived. In Phillips’ first 100 days on the job, he slashed $5 million from the budget, furloughed himself and school principals and let go of 50 employees,none of those were teachers, he said.
“I was trying to shield the classrooms,” Phillips said. “Even then, I continued to tell (the commissioners) that if we had to reduce the budget this coming year, I didn’t know that I could do that. I still have to run buses, turn on the lights and air conditioning, feed lunch. I just don’t know that there’s enough room without impacting classroom teachers. We’re kind of at a crossroads.”
Well-known for his motto: “Keep the main thing the main thing,” Phillips seems to be taking it all in stride, chalking up the challenges as a necessary aspect of leadership.
“I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of guy,” he said. “I get up every day believing in children and absolute human potential. I get up every day knowing people are going to do great things. I learned a long time ago that when you’re in a leadership position, you don’t cry about it or whine, you just do your job the best you can.”
Reflecting on his time in Columbus, he said it was “an absolutely wonderful experience.”
“We did some great things there that I think will pay dividends for those students able to be a part of that,” he said. “I absolutely do the best I can every day to try to stay focused on what I believe my core mission is.”
Sources close to the Dispatch said last week that Phillips has applied for the Mississippi Board of Education state superintendent’s position, which was vacated when State Superintendent Dr. Tom Burnham retired June 30, but Phillips has not confirmed those claims.
Phillips had considered the position in 2009 while serving as superintendent of the Columbus city schools, saying it had always been one of his professional goals to become the state’s chief education policymaker.
Dr. Lynn House, former dean of the College of Education at Delta State University, is currently serving as interim state superintendent.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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