While detailing how to reduce school $ costs, Russell’s ‘light’ amend irks Hill
Final of two parts on Knox County Commission clashes with local flavor
KNOXVILLE — On one of her two major Knox County Government spending reduction recommendations concerning its fiscal year 2026 budget, Knox County Commissioner Angela Russell said she wanted a roughly $10 million cut from the roughly $700 million already in the proposed budget for Knox County Schools pending final KCC approval.
“I will (attempt to make) a motion to reduce the school funding to the minimum required by Tennessee state law,” she announced to her colleagues during a contentious Monday evening, May 19, Commission meeting in the City-County Building, downtown Knoxville.
County Mayor Glenn Jacobs is among government leaders expressing dissatisfaction with attempted cuts and reduced increases to the proposed budget by this 5th District representative, (which includes Farragut and Concord), with Russell having attempted — and failed by a vote of her peers — to include amendments intended to cut the proposed budget in what Jacobs and other Commissioners expressed as “late” in the process.
“The way they do the calculations, we were still going to be — if you listen to the recording of the meeting — we were still going to be required to give (schools) a $15 million increase,” Russell said about the state requirement during a phone interview with farragutpress in late May. “So I was just suggesting that we give them a $15 million increase instead of a $25 million increase.
“So the schools in the 2021 (fiscal year) budget got approximately $508 million; and last year (2025 fiscal year) they were budgeted to get $675 million.
This year, (Jacobs) wanted to go up to $700-plus million,” she added. “There’s a thing called Maintenance of Effort, which means you cannot give the schools less money than you’ve given them previously.”
“If we cut (the proposed budget) again, that throws their budget into disarray,” Jacobs said during a separate phone interview in late May. “And then there’s also the governor (Bill Lee) who wants teachers to be making $50,000 a year by a certain point in the very near future. Well, when we start cutting that, if we can’t reach that $50,000 a year for starting pay, the state is going to cut their portion of the funding coming to Knox County, which means that it falls even more on the local folks to make up the difference.”
Russell agreed that “we need to pay our teachers more. I’m ashamed that we’re struggling to pay them $50,000 a year.”
She then answered Jacobs and other county and KCC critics of her failed amendments with a few suggested KCS cuts.
“We spend on upper management and crazy job titles like director of school culture and stuff like that,” she said about one area to target for cuts during the interview. “The teachers are providing a service; the principals and the assistant principals, I think, are typically providing a service for our students.
“But it’s the people in the ivory tower that are the problem,” she added. “We’ve got too many people who are not interacting with our students that are on the payroll.”
Jacobs warned about a domino effect of cutting below the roughly $700 million KCS proposed level.
“They just broke ground on a new Farragut area elementary school (Wednesday, May 14),” Jacobs said during the interview. “Well, if we’re cutting operational costs, then they’re going to have to start moving money away from capital into their operations, which then can impair their ability to deliver these projects, including that school, in the time frame that they have committed to.
“All these things all of a sudden just come up in the last budget hearing,” he added.
“… It is troubling as well to the folks out in Farragut; we hear a lot about overcrowding at the elementary schools.”
However, “I want to point out the fact that the school (being built) here in Farragut is not being funded out of the $700,000 operating budget,” Russell said during her interview.
“That amount is coming out of capital,” she added.
Russell versus Hill
About Russell’s second large proposed amendment to reduce or cut the budget, she attempted an $8 million budget cut amendment, which also failed, where county parking lots, including schools, would have the current light bulbs replaced with much more energy -efficient lighting.
Russell explained the current lighting should remain in place until they burn out or quit working effectively.
However, Commissioner Terry Hill (6th District rep that includes Hardin Valley) shot back.
“That would be a very easy amendment to make when the district that you represent is a majority of the Town of Farragut that’s got their own Parks and Rec Department that takes care of their own parks, replaces their own lights,” Hill said during the meeting.
“It would be very easy to make that amendment when, in fact, the people that you directly represent in your constituency would not be the ones even affected by it. It would be the other eight districts out there that would feel the brunt of that,” she added.
“I’m not sure that’s a real, perhaps, fair amendment to make.”
The May 19 meeting “was the first time that I’ve ever seen the majority of Commissioners read the riot act to their colleagues,” Jacobs said.
