letter to the editor
KCS ‘foolish spending’ is label for FHS softball upgrade
Several weeks ago the farragutpress published a story that the parents of two Farragut High School softball players had filed suit against Knox County Schools because the Farragut softball field was not as nice as the Farragut baseball field. They were awarded a judgement for $1,385,000 (+/-) and KCS had awarded a contract to Rouse Construction for work to improve the facility. I later learned that KCS “settled” the action.
First of all, every taxpayer in Knox County needs to know how foolishly KSC is willing to spend $1.3 million of their money on a softball facility. The reason the FHS baseball facility is one of the nicest in the state is due to a lot of hard work by the baseball parents to raise money through local businesses to fund improvements each year.
The same goes for all extracurricular activities at FHS, and I suppose every school in Knox County. I know this to be the case, as I’ve been involved in these projects since 1998: from the school monument at Kingston Pike and Lendon Welch Way to the Karen Beam Memorial in front of the main building — ballfields, band rooms, memorials and monuments.
Any money that was paid for these things DID NOT come from the KCS budget, but from funds raised by the participants and their parents.
So what’s next — are all KCS athletic facilities to be improved to equal the Farragut or Bearden baseball facilities? Should every playing field be as nice as the turf fields the Haslam family so generously supplied to every KCS high school?
A few schools may have to start from scratch, since they don’t have on-campus fields.
I’ve always heard you can find an attorney to sue anyone for anything. This proved that to be true. The person(s) at KCS that made the decision to allot this money should be held accountable and probably fired.
The next time KCS finds an extra million lying around, it should be spent in the pursuit of reading, writing and arithmetic.
W. David Smith
West Knoxville
