Some familiar faces could be missing from your kids school next year.
Nearly 50 Knox County teachers won’t be getting their contracts renewed.

Forty-six teacher contracts weren’t renewed next year, and more than 150 teachers are retiring. That’s nearly 200 teachers not including the ones who resigned. One teacher who turned in her notice and resigned after a decade on the job talked to us.

Lynn Schneider taught for ten years in Knox County at Karns Elementary and Middle Schools. Lynn Schneider says, “I saw kids who were struggling and we weren’t meeting their needs.”

Now she’s saying enough is enough and leaving the profession altogether. Schneider says, “I knew at the beginning of year I couldn’t do this anymore.”

Her biggest frustrations were teacher evaluations and the common core curriculum where each child must perform to a certain level.
She tells me this hurts most of her students.

Schneider says, “I had kids struggling to do basic math, but being pressured before developmental readiness.”

Lynn isn’t the only one upset with the system. One other teacher spoke out recently at a meeting saying, “I never had any any class that ever said in the throwing of all this crap at people was a good idea for better education.”

Last year angry teachers filled the city county building upset the teacher evaluation system. Many teachers feared for their jobs because of how they are scored. Now Schneider is leaving to start her own business with her husband. Schneider says, “I had to do it. I couldn’t work in a system where I didn’t believe in the philosophy.”  Many Cumberland County teachers share the same opinion that Common Core just is not a good idea and that it hurts both teachers and students.  One teacher said “it’s just bad that we’ve adopted a system of teaching that causes teachers and students to want to quit the whole educational system”