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Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Rivers, bridges and school zones

Montgomery County Tennessee
Montgomery County Tennessee

The importance of current events has a direct relationship to the impact on your life. I noticed only this morning after the school board decision last night that my residence is rezoned from one elementary school to another. That’s pretty insignificant to me because it has absolutely no impact on my life.

I have talked with several friends in the last month who have been seriously agitated over the rezoning of middle school and high school districts. They were directly affected and felt adversely impacted by the proposals.

But, I have friends in the school system administration who struggle with the larger view of rezoning that isn’t as simple as parents would like to believe it is.

Zoning for Montgomery County is a nightmare at best. And, the end result is that students end up attending schools that may not be the most geographically convenient,

Have you studied a map of Montgomery County? Two rivers slice up the county pretty well. A total of five bridges channel traffic across the two rivers. A closer look reveals that only two high schools are located in the southern half of the county. Even the proposed eighth high school for the end of this decade will be tucked away in the northeast quadrant of the county.

Growth is happening in the northeast quadrant much more rapidly than anywhere else in the county. Consequently, schools are being placed there. That also means zoning lines move closer and closer to the front door of Clarksville High School and Richview Middle School as they hold down the southeast quadrant of the county,

It may not appear to make sense and it may seem crazy that your student could walk across the street to one school but has to travel to another school four miles away. But, it’s all in the numbers and the geography. If the answers were simple, the school system administration would have gone that route already.

Frank White
Frank Whitehttp://www.mediaworksdesign.com/
Frank White is a native of east Tennessee and reveres the hills and nature of the Cumberland Plateau and east Tennessee. He enjoys backpacking, canoeing and flyfishing. He and his wife, Natalie, have been Clarksville residents since 1979. Frank is the owner of MediaWorks, a design and printing company in Clarksville, TN. He earned a BS in mass communications and political science from Middle Tennessee State University and a master of arts in journalism from the Indiana University School of Journalism at Bloomington. He is a distinguished military graduate from ROTC at Indiana University and is retired from the U.S. Army Reserve having also served in the Tennessee Army National Guard. He served with the U.S. Army VII Corps in Operation Desert Storm. Frank is a passionate follower of Christ and seeks to mentor others in exploring the endless depths of grace.
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