Yes, hopefully it will be a very, very expensive lesson and it should be because of what was allowed to happen at that high school. A school setting should be a place were teens can be teens but where harm is prevented too. The shame of this story is that every last bit of the harm done there could have been prevented. Instead, the failure of leadership, from the very top of the school system on down, is so pathetic that one has to wonder how that any taxpaying citizen in Blount County could stand for how their taxpayers dollars have been spent and will have to be spent in regards to this court case.

In the age of Columbine and of a death's at schools here in East Tennessee, none of the kind of overt racist and dangerous behavior that occurred at William Blount can be tolerated in the slightest, and I mean the slightest. The only legitimate response is to come down so hard, so fast, so clear in opposition to such horrible activities that there is no room for any debate about it. It is extraordinary beyond words that The Daily Times has not mentioned this trial and I wonder if they will even mention it next week. Granted that even with their new ownership now in place one would think that doing their job would be their first priority, not being a mouthpiece for the local county Mayor. However, I believe it was back in the late spring that they did print that the Mayor's office was taking over the schools, so who knows what will be printed.

William Blount High School has such an overcrowding problem that one has to wonder how the State Fire Marshal is ever allowing them to have one class meet there much less the entire school. That kind of overcrowding is a recipe not only for disaster but several students ending up dead due to a possible stampede. The utter, and I mean utter lack of concern for school safety at that school, leaves no question as to what the school system thinks of school safety. Yet, until either the parents and the taxpayers rise up and vote out every Board member, storm the central office daily, and in general, raise as much trouble as is legally possibly, NOTHING will be done about it. The school officials laugh regularly at the citizens and parents of this county and do so because they believe that they are invincible from ever being held accountable for their actions. Hopefully, next week a federal jury in Knoxville will send a clear message about it that not even The Daily Times can drown out.

When it happens repeatedly the school is allowing it to happen.

Obviously you don't care. Many of us do and we should.

If the only way to get Blount County and the school system to greet the new century is through the courts, so be it!

They are not victims; they are “alleged victims.” Just because you cry racism doesn’t mean that there is racism. Just because you say you are the victim of racism doesn’t mean that you are the victim of racism. You seem to believe that these poor innocent little black kids simply showed up to school one day and these big bad evil white racists sprung into action, writing a KKK hit list on the wall of the bathroom. That is foolish thinking.

Lester

At least someone has sense. Now all we have to do is wait for Jessie-the-action-Jackson and the Reverend-I’ve-never-pastored-a-church Al Sharpton to catch wind of this.

Lester

This is at the heart of the problem for both Blount County and East Tennessee as a whole. Rampant racism that still exists but often in covert forms. I wonder how all of you racists will act when you stand before God Almighty to explain your rank sin of being racist?

Taxpayers are often the ones directly responsible for the crooks being in office, i.e., the School Board and the Central Office. Vote them out and the problem goes away. Furthermore, in the private sector as well as many school systems across America, no Director of Schools would ever be allowed to keep his job admitting that racism is NOT the school system's responsibility. Dismissal would be automatic with such horrible statements and leadership by a school director.

I believe that the news reports showed more testimony than two school officials in that case. Furthermore, the admission by the Board and the County School System that they are NOT responsible for the racism in their school is astounding. Are they not responsible for the drugs? For guns? What are they responsible for then? When there is a school shooting like happened in Knoxville, will the school director and his subordinate in the central office say that is not their concern?

It is no wonder that the people who move into this county send their children to one of the city school systems with such statements about race as the system is not responsible for it. I wonder, are they responsible for teaching them anything?

You don't even know the difference between "liberal" or "conservative" but you are quite well versed in populist racism.