Former Oak Ridge City Council member Leonard Abbatiello has officially announced his campaign for one of two seats on the Oak Ridge Board of Education.
He’s challenging the two incumbents, BOE Chair Keys Fillauer and Treasurer Angi Agle, in the Nov. 6 election.
The focus of his campaign is to make Oak Ridge Schools better through “city-schools teaming” and better planning, a press release said. It said Abbatiello is also concerned about ensuring that parents and teachers are represented at all BOE deliberations.
An engineer, Abbatiello has served on the Oak Ridge Municipal Planning Commission, the 2008 Oak Ridge Charter Commission, and as board chair of the Local Oversight Committee and the Anderson County Economic Development Association, among other things.
“During his public service career, he has made it his hallmark to represent every person effectively while working to correct problems,” a press release said.
Abbatiello retired after a 45-year research career at the U.S. Department of Energy facilities in Oak Ridge. He had previously served as an officer in the U.S. Army.
“Leonard holds 12 patents and understands the impact that a quality education has on innovation, economics, and job building,” the press release said.
Abbatiello said the current five-member school board has defaulted on debt payments on the renovation of the Oak Ridge High School by submitting only a partial payment of the required $758,881 debt service in June.
“Since last year, the Oak Ridge Board of Education has been denying its previous agreements to pay their fraction of high school debt, a debt and revenue stream both generated by the half-cent sales tax increase publicly adopted on Aug. 5, 2004,” the release said. “This BOE has paid only a fraction of half-cent sales tax revenues collected by the State of Tennessee and received by the BOE even though they are obligated to do otherwise.”
He alleged that the school board’s position “is that the vote of August 2004 did not obligate the BOE to pay any of the high school debt.
“The BOE contends that the August 2004 was simply a public revenue generation vote which created and directed all new tax revenue to the schools and that the BOE could utilize these new revenues anyway it pleased, denying their responsibility to pay the high school mortgage,” Abbatiello said. “Most likely, property taxes will have to be increased to pay current and future BOE defaults.”
Abbatiello said an adversarial relationship between the BOE and the city is unacceptable.
“Such a conflict will damage our schools,” he said.
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