On Dec 11, Commissioner Quillen from District 2 made it clear that there isn’t a great influx of students moving to our county. She should know as her profession is Real Estate and she resides in Lenoir City.  After challenging Van Shaver’s bogus numbers on June 24, she again presented current status to us this past week during the Wednesday morning Conservative Club of Tellico (CCT) meeting.  Also this past week, I ran the number of students in each of the 9 schools in Loudon County as you can see.  Overall, we have 405 less students than in 2010, and only one school had an increase in students (Loudon Elementary School).  So, we’re paying the price for a new County High School to be located in Lenoir City, which has their own school system, and they (Lenoir City) fund their own schools…but we’re paying for this high school!  Commissioner Van Shaver and Loudon County Superintendent of Schools knows that Tellico Village (with our pitchforks and torches-as Van Shaver referred to us) can afford to pay for it.  He doesn’t care about all the poor folks in the County that can’t.  A 16.5% property tax hike is not something that the Village should object to…really?  From a recent Open Records Request I made on Dec 2, we’re currently paying to educate 385 Out-of-District (Lenoir City) students.  Thank you all so much for your generosity!  I think it’s time for legal action.
Also keep in mind that two days after the Commission voted to hike our taxes for a new school, the Board of Education released the number of open seats in our schools.  We had 818 open seats in all the schools, and 400 of these were in the county’s high schools (200 each in Loudon County District, and 200 in Lenoir City).  Look at the table…only one school had an increase in students since 2010.