Two School Systems?

This debate has raged for years. The question is, should there be two school systems in Loudon County? Not too many years ago, nearly every community had it's own school. Browder, West Hills, Walnut Street, Providence, Pine Grove, Burdett, Oak Grove, and so on. The many schools were necessary due to the lack of transportation. Most students had to walk to school, so the schools had to be close to the community. Over time, roads improved, bus transportation became more readily available. Economics forced the closure or consolidation of most of the small community schools to the point of where the school systems are now.

Loudon County operates nine schools, Eaton Elementary, Fort Loudon Middle, Greenback, Highland Park Elementary, Loudon Elementary, Loudon High, North Middle, Philadelphia Elementary, Steekee Elementary. Lenoir City operates three, Lenoir City Elementary, Lenoir City Middle, Lenoir City High. Loudon City operates no schools.

Loudon County was established in 1870 and a county school system was soon formed. Lenoir City was incooperated in 1907 and a city school system was formed. This is how we came to have two separate school systems.

The Lenoir City charter requires that there be a school board to over see their school system. Given that the school system was established by the city charter, the only way to eliminate the city school system would be a vote of the city residents to change the city charter. If the city school system were ever abolished, the county school system would be required to absorb them.

With the possibility of a new county high school, the discussion of the elimination of the city school system is a topic for some folks. Even if the two school systems were merged tomorrow, over crowding in both systems would still be a major problem.

The addition of a new county 7-12 middle/high school will certainly impact both systems and all schools. It would allow many class rooms at North Middle to be freed up allowing North to become a 4-6 school. This in turn would allow Eatons to become a K-3. Both schools would then have additional space to grow.

Given that a number of current and future Lenoir City high school students would chose to attend the new county high school, the Lenoir City high school's over crowding problem would be resolved. By the county building the new school, the problem of over crowding could be eliminated in both systems.

There's a lot of steps to be taken before the new school could actually become a reality, but every journey starts with the first step. We're just in the first step now.

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10/17/22