They say seeing is believing, which is why Sharon Vandagriff, president of the Hamilton County Education Association in Tennessee, took County Commissioner John Brooks to some local elementary schools in serious need of funding so he could see first-hand what students and faculty are up against.
 
"I'm not going to try to sugar coat our problems," she says. "I  wanted to take him to what I call 'happy schools,' where the faculty and students are making the best of what are very often extremely difficult circumstances."
 
In Tennessee, school districts develop and propose school budgets, but it's the County Commissioners who approve or disapprove funding at the local level. With that in mind, Vandagriff spends a day with each of the county's nine commissioners to help educate them about the need for more funding.
 
Last week, Vandagriff took Commissioner Brooks to Red Bank Elementary, a school on the northwest edge of Chattanooga serving a high needs student population. Many of the students come from families barely surviving on or near the poverty level, and who are in a constant state of transition. When a family can't pay the bills, they move out of one apartment to another, and when they fall behind on the rent there, they move yet again, in a cycle that disrupts not only the family, but the children's education. The faculty report that one of their main problems in student achievement is poor attendance and family support.
 
The second visit was to Nolan Elementary, an entirely different experience in an upper middle class neighborhood. Bolstered by a parent-organized foundation with about $180,000 for the school, the facilities are superb and stood in stark contrast to Red Bank. Then it was on to the final stop, Calvin Donaldson Elementary.
 
Calvin Donaldson is in a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood and is staffed by mostly new teachers who don't have a lot of experience with high-needs students.
 
"For the new teachers who get assigned here, it's often a rude awakening to the difficulties of urban education," says Vandagriff.
 
After the tour, Brooks was both impressed and disturbed by what he saw and he promised to be a vocal voice for improved school funding in next year's school budget and beyond. "Schools are the reason I ran for county commission," he says.

Check out a slideshow of the commissioner's visit.