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As many of you already know, the Great Schools Partnership has undergone a change from being a program inside of Knox County Schools to one that is external, under the leadership of Buzz Thomas.

Previously the program was funded through Knox County Schools budget, and the idea of taking the program outside of the school system was to allow funding with private donations.

 

I have posted before about my unease/concern about the individual schools having private foundations that fund special projects for the schools. Wealthy neighborhoods/schools have foundations, but many of the schools in Knox County do not.

 

One of the ways to address this concern is to have a single foundation that benefits all schools rather than a single one. I suppose the new Great Schools Partnership could be looked at that way.

 

It looks like the program is responsible for raising money to fund several initiatives that had already been started by KCS/GSP in the past, as well as new programs they have devised.

 

Currently it looks like they are working on literacy programs for first graders, the expansion of the Teacher Advancement Program, and an 8th grade intervention program.

 

These are all pilot programs, or very limited in their scope, so I don’t know that it really does achieve the role of a “system-wide” private foundation. It seems that we keep funding these pilot programs, but I’m not sure the funding is there to implement them systemwide. I wonder how many of these pilots actually turn into something that benefits the system as a whole?

 

Not really being critical of the GSP, just wondering if it is going to be just raising money to do “pilots” instead of raising money for system wide changes.

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