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Officials discuss how best to manage clothing center for Knox County students

Harry October 30, 2024

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — The Knox County Schools Clothing Center is an organization that helps students who need clothes to wear to school. On Tuesday, we heard from members of the Knox County Schools and Apparel Center about how the center should be run.

This happened after the center moved from the old Sears building to Cedar Bluff Preschool. The Clothing Center began in 1935 during the Great Depression, when student clothing needs were high. It still serves the same mission today.

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For the last several decades the organization and KCS have operated under a handshake agreement. This agreement is now being questioned as to who has control of operations. Several options are on the table for how it should work. The only issue raised by PTA members is two positions funded by the school system that remain unfilled.

“Where is the personnel you promised us?” said Clothing Center PTA President Sylvia Woods. “You’ve done this twice to hire employees. Why couldn’t we see any of this?”

Woods has been with the Clothing Center for more than four decades. He said they moved from their old location without any warning.

“I went to the May meeting and they just announced, ‘We’re going to move you from the Sears building to Cedar Bluff,'” Woods said.

Knox County Schools Assistant Superintendent for Strategy Kori Lautner tells 6 News there are many reasons for this move. The biggest one is accessibility for those living in more rural areas of Knox County.

“Not everything you need is limited to one zip code. “We know that clothing needs span the entire county, and we’re a very, very large county,” Lautner said. “The idea of families going to one location and downtown is really unattainable for families living in remote parts of the county. We were looking to move toward a distribution model in this move.”

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This distribution model allows the center to currently distribute clothing to those in need. Employees at the Clothing Center work voluntarily. They don’t get paid and spend days sorting, packing and shipping clothing items. Susan Hager, Vice President of the Clothing Center PTA, said they need someone full time to process requests faster and more efficiently.

“The important thing is the staff. The biggest thing we need is the two staff members that were promised to us by the school system,” Hager said. “They will work full time, so they can work much more efficiently than volunteers who come in once or twice a week and try to fulfill orders.”

Prior to the group’s decision to move to Cedar Bluff Preschool, conversations began about what was the right direction for operating the Clothing Center.

“This is a long-standing debate about the capacity of a volunteer lead organization to do this work,” Lautner said. “Previous leadership at the facility was really honest with us that they were struggling to maintain leadership and survive under a volunteer-led model.”

PTA members had to overcome many obstacles when moving into their new building.

“Since we were not employees, we could not use or access the computers here, so we could not access their computers. “We figured it out, we use our own computers and our own email addresses,” Woods said. “We can’t see the child’s name, but we have the social workers’ name and code. We responded to everything they told us to do or needed to do. We did everything for that.”

In our conversations with both KCS and PTA, we were told that the two staff members promised to PTA are in this school year’s budget. Woods says he was constantly put off when he tried to interview people who applied.

There are three options on the table when it comes to how to manage the Clothing Center;

Both parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding or MOU stating that PTA will retain control of the Centre.
Check out other community organizations to come and help the center.
Knox County Schools controls the center internally.

If you would like to donate gently used or new clothing items, you can drop them off at 709 N Cedar Bluff Road. To donate, you are asked to call 865-594-3791 before arriving.

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