In today's report: A pair of federal court orders led hospitals and the University of Tennessee yesterday to reverse course on requiring COVID-19 vaccination for employees. The moves came after the state Comptroller's Office suspended exemptions it had allowed to prohibitions enacted by the Legislature in October. For now, at least, neither healthcare workers nor UT faculty and staff are required to be vaccinated. UT also suspended its mask mandate inside campus buildings, including classrooms. It is just the latest instance of federal court orders upending COVID rules at local institutions. We look at the orders and the local impact.
Meanwhile, this week's Knox Found offers a palm to read.
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The Knox County Democratic Party, like its Republican counterpart, will hold a party primary for next year’s school board elections. Unlike the local GOP leadership, the Democrats say they are entering the fray reluctantly. In October, the Republican-majority state Legislature passed a law allowing partisan school board elections for the first time.
“While Knox County residents of common-sense agree that education and school board races shouldn't be political battlefields, the law has been changed by the far right GOP and cannot be ignored,” the party said in a news release.
The party’s Board of Governors voted 15-0 to hold a party primary in Knox County’s first partisan school board elections next year. The news release stated that many members of the Board of Governors are philosophically opposed to partisan school board elections, but felt that sitting out wasn’t an option.
“Refusing to call a primary and not allowing Democrats to run in what are already certain to become partisan races would send our Board of Education down a regressive path of far-right Republican control,” the news release stated. “Fielding only Independents against these far right candidates could dilute the vote in General Elections and make it easier, not harder, for fringe candidates to be elected.”
The news release asserted that Democratic candidates would fight to ensure Knox County Schools are equitable and fully funded, and advocate for higher teacher salaries.
School board elections, often a quiet sector of the political universe, are likely to be hotly contested across the country next year. The national Republican Party has identified them as a priority, despite their traditionally nonpartisan nature.
In Knox County, five of the nine school board seats are up in 2022: Districts 1, 4, 6, 7 and 9. The primary elections for both parties will be held May 3, 2022. The general county election will follow on Aug. 4.
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A few months ago, we reported on statewide conversations about the impact of court fines and fees on people charged with an offense, which can linger on long after any jail time has been served.
A new brief being released today by the nonpartisan policy group ThinkTennessee adds to that effort. In particular, it singles out the loss of driver's licenses for failure to pay fines or fees as a burden on people who are often struggling to make a living.
It also finds discrepancies in how or whether different counties allow people to use payment plans for court fines. About 90 percent do, but that leaves 10 percent with few or no payment plan options.
“Tennesseans who fall behind on court debt face very serious consequences, including the loss of their driver’s license,” ThinkTennessee President Shanna Singh Hughey said in a news release accompanying the report. “But today, the county in which someone lives determines whether she has access to a payment plan that could help break the endless cycle of punishment that kicks in when she misses a payment. Ensuring that the same rules apply to all Tennesseans is an important first step toward a fairer criminal justice system.”
The brief notes that the debt hit certain groups the hardest: "[C]ourt fines and fees have a disproportionate impact on people who are low-income, Black and/or rural, and the financial hardship they experience may lead to increased recidivism with larger impacts for communities as a whole."
It says that in a survey of people with court debt in Alabama, 38 percent of them said they had committed crimes in order to pay it off.
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Knox County recorded 128 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, the highest single-day number since Oct. 16. There were 1,050 active cases, the seven-day transmission rate rose to 11 new cases daily per 100,000 residents. The county's pandemic totals have reached 81,080 cases and the death toll rose to 947 after three fatalities were reported on Wednesday.
The region's hospitals were treating 157 positive COVID-19 patients on Tuesday, along with 32 patients whose test results weren't known.
Knox County Schools reported 59 active cases (48 students and 11 staff), while at the University of Tennessee, there was one new case and 25 active cases (17 students and eight employees).
According to the Tennessee Department of Health, statewide pandemic totals surpassed 1.318 million cases and reached 17,196 deaths.
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Today is the officially designated community input day for the Knox County school board's superintendent search. The Tennessee School Boards Association, which the board has hired to lead the search, is in town for a series of input sessions.
The sessions are organized by interest groups, but all are open to the public and anyone can attend any session. The meetings will be held in the 1st Floor Boardroom of the Andrew Johnson Building. The schedule is as follows:
- 10 a.m.: Classified Employees
- 1:30 p.m.: Classified Employees
- 3 p.m.: Central Office Staff, Supervisors, and Principals
- 4:30 p.m.: Teachers
- 6 p.m.: Community Forum
In addition, there is a lunch for school board members, other elected officials, and invited community leaders to provide input, at 11:30 a.m. at the Crowne Plaza hotel on Summit Hill Drive. That meeting is also open to the public, but only the invited officials will be invited to speak.
And if you can't make it to any of the meetings, you can still fill out an online survey to identify priorities in the search. At last night's school board work session, board Vice Chair Evetty Satterfield said more than 1,000 people had already submitted responses. The survey will remain open until noon on Friday.
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Federal judges this week. |
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