By Bill Shiell

My greatest hopes, fears, etc. for the school year are related to the uninformed Christian parents who pull children out of public schools on faulty logic and reasoning. We are public school people, and we’re committed to the program here. We have a good school and a good school system. It’s not perfect, and no school is. Just as the private school I attended as a child seemed perfect but wasn’t worth the cost in reality. In my world today, our problem is not whether a denomination pronounces that it’s time for an “exodus” or that homeschooling is somehow morally superior. We really don’t have very many homeschoolers. We do, however, deal with laziness. We would accept the word of an email or an innuendo in the neighborhood rather than to rigorously engage faculty, discuss issues with principals, and volunteer to help out in the classroom. We would rather drive across town to a Catholic parish to avoid perceived dangers of a middle school. I know that my son will do well this year, and I’m quite confident we’ll make sure of it. And even if he struggles, that’s good for him too. But I really hope that in a few years, we’ll have some other people with us in the school system who want to roll up their sleeves and go to work too.

Bill Shiell and his wife Kelly have two sons, a 3rd grader at Rocky Hill Elementary named Parker and a 2 year old named Drake. He is the senior pastor of First Baptist Knoxville and the author of 2 books.