Kingsport Spirit

Sometimes we get desensitized to the noise. We are bombarded from every direction with snippets, tweets, posts, shares, headlines, and half-truths. So many people I know have either tuned out or turned it all off at the very time we most need to be paying attention.

I understand that. It is a defense mechanism.

But if we shut down completely, we hand the reins to someone else and allow them to make decisions without question, challenge, or accountability.

Last night, I attended the Kingsport Board of Education meeting as a member of the Pre-K advisory committee. The basic idea behind Pre-K is simple but powerful: if a child begins learning basic skills at age three, that child is better prepared for kindergarten, first grade, and everything that follows.

When I was little, my days were not filled with flash cards, shapes, numbers, and structured learning goals. I remember watching cartoons, riding my bike, and hanging out with my friends. My parents did send me to private kindergarten — one at Mafair Church and one downtown on Shelby Street. I am not sure why there were two. Knowing me, there is at least a chance I got kicked out of one for being hyperactive.

I have faint memories of being dropped off downtown. I seem to remember a cartoonish clown at the entrance. I was terrified. Clowns were supposed to be happy things then, not the stuff of today’s horror movies. I remember it a little like boarding a dog. Mom would drop me off in a quiet lobby, but behind the scenes, I could hear the noise — kids instead of barking dogs. When I moved into the next room, the children were running everywhere. Even at that age, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the chaos.

And the kids who did not go to private kindergarten? I suppose they just showed up in first grade like the unwashed masses.

The Mafair program was quieter and more orderly, but sitting still and following rules was almost as challenging for me as surviving “the yard” downtown. I still remember the tension of being told, “Your mom is coming to check your progress, and you had better behave.” Here I am, nearly 60 years later, and those suppressed childhood memories are still there.

At that time, there were no public kindergartens, and certainly no programs offering two years of pre-kindergarten.

Even after a 35-year career in government, I am still learning. I thought I was done after college, but lifelong learning matters more than ever unless we want to be left behind. As we prepared for the Pre-K presentation, I finally said, “I feel like I need a foreign-language lesson just to understand the acronyms, catch phrases, and regulatory jargon.” Then I asked the basic question: “What are they making us do, and what are we doing voluntarily?”

What I learned is that Kingsport City Schools is trying to teach every child — regardless of race, ethnicity, income, family structure, or life circumstance. Behind the scenes, they work hard to make sure children are treated equitably and not singled out because they receive a subsidized service or need extra support.

Public school is still one of the few places that belongs to everybody. It is our modern town square. It is where future citizens are shaped. It is where children learn to appreciate differences and still get along.

It is also where we learn that not every child comes from a nuclear family.

I was blessed to have a mother and father who stayed married their entire lives and supported me until their last breaths. My children were blessed with a mother and father like that, too. But not every child has that.

In Kingsport, nearly half of all families with children under 18 are non-nuclear, meaning they do not fit the traditional husband-wife-with-children model. About 44% of families with children fall outside that model, including roughly 2,220 single-mother families and 305 single-father families. By comparison, about 3,200 families fit the married-couple-with-children proxy. And even those numbers do not fully capture grandparents raising grandchildren, relatives raising relatives, foster-care arrangements, or children living in group settings.

That matters, because a single-parent household is far more likely to live below the poverty line. Many of those parents are just trying to make it through the day — bills, groceries, gas, work schedules, transportation, homework, and exhaustion. They are not shopping for private-school vouchers. Even if one were available, many could not overcome the logistics of getting their child there.

This is not an indictment of private schools. There are hundreds of valid reasons why a parent might choose a private school — faith, curriculum, discipline, class size, special needs, school culture, family tradition, safety concerns, or simply a better fit for that particular child. That is a parent’s choice, and I respect that. But we should be honest about the difference between parent choice and public responsibility. Private schools may serve many children well, but public schools are still charged with serving every child who walks through the door — the easy and the difficult, the wealthy and the poor, the supported and the struggling, the child with two parents at every event, and the child whose caregiver is just trying to keep the household afloat.

It reminds me of the old Judds song asking if people really fall in love to stay and stand beside each other, come what may? Was a promise really something people kept, not just something they would say. Did families really bow their heads to pray? Did daddies really never go away? Grandpa, tell ’bout the good old days.

I understand the longing behind that song. Believe me, I wish and pray that every child had a loving, stable nuclear family. But any honest discussion of family policy, schools, churches, youth services, or community support has to begin with the world as it is, not the world as we wish it were.

When my son was in college, he once called me just to say, “Thank you.”

I asked, “For what?”

He said, “I thought every child had parents like you and Mom in their corner. I took it for granted that you were just always there — whether it was a home game or 200 miles away.”

He had just come out of a meeting with his college football team. These strong, muscular, imposing young men were in a facilitated conversation about their family backgrounds. Many had learned to wear stoic expressions, hidden behind the facial hair of grown men, while carrying the pain of little boys. They said things like, “My dad wasn’t around,” or “I wish he had cared whether I succeeded or failed.”

Thank God their coach understood that his job was not just to build football players. He was trying to prepare them to become husbands, fathers, and productive citizens. Many of those young men had won high-level athletic awards in their home states. Some were hundreds of miles from home. But many had never had a role model for what life was supposed to look like after football.

That does not just happen in college. It happens in secondary education, too.

So before we say things like, “Kingsport is rich,” or “Kingsport has nicer buildings,” or “Kingsport has more technology,” or “Kingsport has newer uniforms,” or “Let the city pay more if it values education so much,” we need to remember something important: Kingsport City Schools takes all of our children — not just the select, not just the easy, not just the well-supported — and tries to give them the tools to change their economic trajectory, and often the trajectory of their families.

For example, when some people see the nationally acclaimed Dobyns-Bennett marching band, they may say, “There goes Kingsport again, showing off its wealth.”

What I see is something very different.

I see a group of students — many of whom cannot afford the band fees — being invited into something exceptional. I see young people getting a glimpse of the wider world. I see a program that tells them excellence is not reserved for someone else. I see a community stepping in so that a child’s opportunity is not limited by a family’s income.

And behind all of that, I see dedicated but exhausted teachers pouring themselves into our children every single day — through classroom observations, endless testing, changing regulations, shifting expectations, and whatever new rule comes down from above.

The headwinds are strong. The finances are flat, redirected, or reshuffled from year to year. At some point, we have to ask the obvious question: where is the breaking point?

And yet Kingsport City Schools keeps marching on — refusing to lower its standards, refusing to accept mediocrity, and continuing to demand the best for our children. Meanwhile, neighboring systems are able to offer double-digit pay increases without carrying the same level of pressure that comes with a district determined to maintain the highest standards. Kingsport’s teachers and staff are being asked to do more, absorb more, adapt more, document more, adjust more, and still deliver excellence.

That may be admirable, but it is not endlessly sustainable.

The broader point is this: Kingsport’s schools are not simply protecting a reputation. They are carrying a mission. They are serving children from nuclear families, single-parent families, grandparent-led families, foster families, and families stretched thin by poverty, stress, and circumstance. They are trying to hold the standard high while the ground underneath them keeps shifting.

Somehow, they keep showing up.

And so should we.