The Elizabethton Board of Education gathered in a tense session Tuesday night to decide over a split agenda that included the discussion of a high school senior class registration requirement that forces last year students to take a dual enrollment college class to vote to fund drug-sniffing dogs. The board held a discussion on the new requirement that high school seniors must take the Milligan College Dual Enrollment class beginning the 2019-2020 academic year. This will result in students receiving college credits from Milligan College.

EHS has been working with several universities over the past few months, particularly with the school’s Bartleby program. In particular, the program has signed several guaranteed enrollment agreements with different universities in the East Tennessee area, including Tusculum University and East Tennessee State University.

EHS features another connection to Milligan college: City School Superintendent Corey Gardenhour is an alumnus of Milligan, receiving his undergraduate degree there in 1998 and a Master’s degree in 1999. His profile on the city schools website also states he currently teaches there as an adjunct professor.

Board member, Danny O’Quinn, led the charge against this requirement, bringing up several key points of contention, with the major of which being does this requirement go toward the same programs with ETSU and Northeast State dual enrollment classes that are not currently class registration prerequisites. Also included in his argument was it equitable to spend money on forcing students to take a class that would give them college credit from a university, not of their choosing, and probable repercussions this could have that student future academic or otherwise plans.

Dr. Cory Gardenhour and Rita Booher both appeared to defend the decision. However, the board agreed to investigate including some exceptions to the requirement.

The board voted unanimously to approve agreement and funding of approximately $3,000 to Interquest Detection Canines, a Texas-based company, to provide drug-sniffing dogs for a “period beginning August 2019 through May 2020.”  The money is to fund 10 “half-day scheduled visits.”  Although Rita Booher, board chairperson, said the dogs would be used randomly, it was unclear as to exactly which schools would be affected.  What was also missing was the rationale behind the use of drug-sniffing dogs in city schools.

Booher asked Malana Griffey, student liaison, for comments as to what the other students thought about the drug detection dogs. Griffey’s response was almost inaudible, but it appeared she was saying that the other students thought it was no big deal.