On Tuesday, I attended “The State of the Schools Address.” While at the event I noticed tweets from both the  media and a school board member writing about how well attended the event was.  In my opinion, it was not well attended at all! Sort of. Let me explain. First off,  Mayor Tim Burchett, asked for all the teachers and administrators in the room to stand up. As you can see in the picture below, it appears  just about every person who is  not a county employee or school board member stood up.

So in reality, it appears that we got an auditorium full of teachers who had shown up. But what if they took up all the space? Luckily, they did not. As you can see in a different photo below, the auditorium had plenty of seating remaining. Not only that, the gym was prepared for a major overflow crowd!

In what appears to be one of the biggest waste of County dollars so far this year, the empty gym had not one… but two big screen flat tvs playing in a well lit room with nobody! Truthfully, it blew my mind that the school system would anticipate or prepare a huge gym for an overflow crowd.

So lets recap. Yes, the auditorium was full. However, take away anyone who receives a check from the school or county government and in reality you would have an auditorium almost as empty as… well the brightly lit gym with nobody in it.

-Dan Andrews

Multiple rows of empty seats!

Mayor Burchett asks for all the teachers and administrators in attendance to please stand up.

One of the televisions in the big empty gym.