Up until now only one school board hope­ful had stopped by. Karen Car­son gladly answered our ques­tions as she runs for Knox County School Board.

1. Intro­duce your­self to Knoxville, who are you, and why are you running?

Karen Carson I am a mom, nurse, and vol­un­teer. My hus­band Joe and I have lived in Knoxville since 1990. We have three chil­dren, TJ, 19, a sopho­more at Uni­ver­sity of Ten­nessee, Doug 17, a junior at West High School, and Rebeka, 13, a seventh-grader at Far­ragut Mid­dle School. I am a reg­is­tered nurse who has spe­cial­ized in pedi­atric health care. I I have worked at East Ten­nessee Children’s Hos­pi­tal since 1990, my pedi­atric care expe­ri­ence keeps me aware of the health and edu­ca­tion needs of chil­dren and their fam­i­lies. I began vol­un­teer­ing with PTA when TJ entered school. I have held numer­ous lead­er­ship posi­tions at the school, County, and state level of the PTA. I cur­rently serve on the board of direc­tors of the Teacher Sup­ply Depot, The Great Schools Part­ner­ship, and his East region direc­tor of the Ten­nessee School Boards Association’s Fed­eral Rela­tions Net­work.

I am com­plet­ing my first term On the Knox County School Board. I was elected its chair in Sep­tem­ber 2006 and reelected in Sep­tem­ber 2007. From my ser­vice on the Board, I know how impor­tant the pol­icy it devel­ops and imple­ments, via the 8000 employ­ees of Knox County Schools, is to the wel­fare and future of this com­mu­nity and its chil­dren. I am pas­sion­ate about the wel­fare of chil­dren and seek this oppor­tu­nity to serve because of that.

2. We think it’s bet­ter know­ing what not to do rather than hav­ing an exten­sive plan. What areas or inter­ests would ben­e­fit Knox County not to ven­ture into?

In my role in set­ting pol­icy for Knox County schools, I need to think about the future and to get oth­ers to think about the future and how Knox County schools are prepar­ing stu­dents to be effec­tive in it. Please send 10 min­utes watch­ing “shift hap­pens” < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U> and let me know what you think about how Knox County Schools should be prepar­ing stu­dents for it. Knox County is now in an area, along with the rest of Ten­nessee, it should not have ven­tured into — its “bar” for aca­d­e­mic achieve­ment, as mea­sured by TCAP stan­dard­ized test­ing, is about the low­est in the Coun­try. Peo­ple can get a false con­fi­dence that because their child is doing well on TCAP’s, they are on par with chil­dren around the Coun­try. This is not nec­es­sar­ily so, and our chli­dren are going to have to com­pete in a global econ­omy.

Pub­lic schools are where many areas of pub­lic pol­icy gets played out — in divorce laws, in immi­gra­tion, in ADA, in drug pol­icy, etc — how Knox County would ben­e­fit from not hav­ing to ven­ture into areas that a fail­ure of the schools would place it in — inad­e­quate work force and cit­i­zens less pre­pared and able to con­tinue and to advance our Amer­i­can val­ues of free­dom, equal­ity, oppor­tu­nity, respon­si­bil­ity, etc.

3. What 5 things could you not live without?

faith, hope, love, fam­ily, friends, and oppor­tu­ni­ties to contribute.