Local News The Crittenden Press (PDF)
(Selected pages from Sections A & B) WARNING: PDF files will take longer to download, especially on low-speed ISPs. Drennan hanging up clothing after 31 years After 31 years of clothing Crittenden County's youth, Lenore Drennan is hanging her last garments on the rack.
A downtown fixture since 1977, Marion Tot & Teen has, in many cases, served three generations of young mothers looking for affordable, conservatively fashionable clothing for their children.
Built from the ground up by Drennan, Marion Tot & Teen was a second career for the woman who has spent seven hours a day, six days a week behind the counter of her retail clothing store. She left Bell South as a customer service representative in 1977 at the age of 38, after 17 years with the company. Knowing little about retail business, but savvy on accounting and marketing, Drennan set out to build a small business that would provide strong customer service for a clientele that was terribly under served.
It was Easter in the mid-1970s when Drennan first realized that Marion needed a children's clothing store. She'd driven to a nearby town and found a couple of dresses for her daughters, Cindy and Pam. As Easter drew near, she realized the girls didn't have matching socks for the dresses and there was nowhere in Marion for a quick fix.
Drennan told her husband, Hinkle, who passed away several years ago, that she'd figure out a way to solve the matter.
"At the time, it was an idle threat," she said, "but a couple of years later, I opened the shop and here I am today."
Drennan hates to see Marion revert back to those days when children's clothing couldn't be found here. However, it could happen. Drennan is retiring this summer and so far there is no buyer for the business.
Drennan opened the shop first on West Carlisle Street behind where Farmers Bank is today. The following year, she rented the Main Street shop where she's at today. It was the former Smitty's men's clothing store and a couple of years after starting her business, she bought the building, too.
"I had an opportunity to sell the building to Bill Wheeler and I decided I ought to go ahead and do it," Drennan said about her plans to retire after more than 30 years.
"I have the best customers in the world and that's what I am going to miss," she said.
Her success in the retail business has centered on a personal touch and catering to her customers.
"You have to be here every day and you have to know what your customers want," she said.
Dresses have been her best seller over the years, but they've changed a great deal.
"Little girls' dresses used to have ruffles and lace all over them. Now, they're just plain, basic dresses," she said.
Her customers come from as far away as Illinois, Louisville, Lexington, Memphis and beyond. Most are young mothers who grew up in Marion and now return here to shop for their children. Her lines start with infant and toddler wear and go up through elementary school age children.
Being open all day on Saturdays has been a key to serving her clients, Drennan said.
"Young mothers usually work all week and also if they need to bring the children in to try on clothes, Saturday is the only day they can do that," she explained.
And it's a family atmosphere that has kept customers coming back.
"Here, they can let the children run around in the store. You can't do that at the mall. You have to keep a close eye on them down there," she said.
Board down to 4 superintendent candidates It appears the next superintendent of Crittenden County Schools will have already faced the unique hurdles often encountered in a small, rural district in this end of the state.
The withdrawal this week of one of five finalist for the job means the remaining applicants are currently working in western Kentucky school systems with 2,500 students or fewer. It appears, however, that was not a requirement for consideration.
“It wasn’t a planned thing,” said school board Chairman Chris Cook. “These just happened to be the most qualified on paper and through references.”
The only one of the five finalists located outside of western Kentucky, James Francis, withdrew his name from consideration Monday, three days before he was to be interviewed. Francis, a certified personnel specialist with Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, cited family reasons for his decision.
“I am happy at JCPS and the timing on this is not conducive for my family and I,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Crittenden Press Monday morning.
Cook acknowledged Francis’ decision and said the board has no plans to replace his name on the list of finalists.
The board met in closed session Tuesday night for the first time after all four finalists had been interviewed, but no decision was made on the hiring. At press time, no further meetings to discuss the hiring of a superintendent had been scheduled prior to the regular monthly board meeting on May 20.
Cook said that date, or earlier, remains the target for making a decision on a replacement for Superintendent John Belt, who announced in February his plans for retirement at the end of the school year.
As the board weighs its decision, it will have three district-level administrators from whom to choose. And all three are currently assistant superintendents at their respective districts of employment – Travis Hamby at Trigg County, Dr. Shirley Menendez at Livingston County and Dr. Rachel Yarbrough at Webster County. Victor Zimmerman, in his fourth year as principal at Lyon County Middle School, is the fourth finalist.
The only one of the original five finalists to have experience as a superintendent was Francis, who served in that capacity at districts in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Yarbrough
Yarbrough, who interviewed with the board of education last week, has the most experience in district administration. She is in her ninth year as assistant superintendent for Webster County Schools and was a principal in the district for more than three years. In fact, her entire 19-year professional career has been spent in Webster County, from where she also graduated high school.
In the last four years, her school district has undergone some dramatic transformations – going to a four-day school week, consolidating with Providence Independent and rising from 115th of Kentucky’s 176 school districts to 53rd in educational performance.
Yarbrough's father is a General Baptist pastor and her mother was a school teacher. Yarbrough said she’s ready to further her career in a district looking to improve on what she says already has a history of achievement. Doing that, she added, can be a challenge in cash-strapped rural districts such as Crittenden and Webster.
A superintendent “most certainly needs to be well-versed in school finance and be resourceful with what is available to continue to achieve student improvement,” Yarbrough told The Press this week.
With a flashlight in hand, Yarbrough introduced herself last Wednesday to Crittenden County teachers and administrators in the dark after a thunderstorm interrupted the power at the high school. She emphasized that a superintendent must rely on vision and communication to get the job done correctly.
Menendez
Menendez, one of two women to apply for superintendent and also a finalist for the superintendent’s position in her current district of Livingston County, has more than three decades in education. All of her experience has come in western Kentucky or southern Illinois, though she has spent the last few years of her career in Livingston County. Before taking on her current role instructional supervisor and assistant superintendent at the central office in Smithland, she was principal at Ledbetter Elementary School.
She met face-to-face with the board on Monday.
“It is an honor to be among the finalists for superintendent of Crittenden County Schools,” she said in an e-mail to The Press. “My visit to the community and schools was quite a pleasant experience.”
Hamby
Originally from Hopkins County, Hamby is another finalist with experience in the central office. A former math teacher, he is finishing his first year as assistant superintendent of Trigg County Schools after serving seven years as either a principal or assistant principal in the Todd County School District.
Hamby said he has been grooming himself for a position at the top of a school system since he began his career in education. He would like to take the reins at a small district in his native western Kentucky.
“I have two children and want to raise them in a small, caring community where they can still be close to other family members who reside in western Kentucky,” he said.
During his tenure at Todd County Elementary School, the school showed an almost 30-percent improvement in its Commonwealth Accountability Testing System scores. He is hoping to achieve the same district-wide success at Crittenden County.
“It is my desire to see the students of Crittenden County receive a world class education and be competitive in a global economy,” he said.
Cook said it is important that the new superintendent have the knowledge and ability to make a smooth transition into the role as head of a district, perhaps giving an edge to the three candidates with district-level administration experience.
“We need to have as little down time as possible,” the chairman said last week before any of the interviews took place.
Zimmerman
Zimmerman, like Hamby, is drawn to western Kentucky and its rural setting.
He is finishing a fourth year in Kentucky as principal at Lyon County Middle School after spending time in six other states. A native of Oregon, he met his wife in Texas and moved to Tiline in Livingston County, where his wife’s family has roots. He has lived there since moving to Kentucky and stresses that family is paramount in his career decisions.
“I have always desired to raise my family in a rural setting,” said the father of five.
Zimmerman, 37, has a 12 years in education and was an art teacher in Texas. He is familiar with Crittenden County’s school district, having previously interviewed for an assistant principal’s position at the middle school.
He said the location and opportunity to continue moving the school district forward are what attracted him to the vacancy here.
“The only personal agenda is to help keep or make a school community that will work together for the benefit of the students, especially when there are difficult decisions to make,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Press.
City considering tax break It’s not a $600 tax rebate check, but every little bit helps.
Marion City Administrator Mark Bryant is proposing a new budget that includes a 10-percent cut in property taxes. That’s a savings of about $24 per $100,000 of property.
“I felt like we needed to try to do something,” Bryant said Tuesday, on the heels of a report that oil had reached an all-time high of nearly $123 a barrel with some projections that oil prices could rise to $150 to $200 a barrel within two years.
The proposed 2008-09 budget will be introduced during the May 19 city council meeting.
“If the city government can survive and get done what it needs to do, let’s do it,” Byrant said of the rollback to 21.8 cents per $100 of assessed property. “People are struggling.”
The city administrator said the reduction would result in about $20,000 less revenue for a $1.18 million general fund but would not affect the city services. Only a quarter of Marion’s revenue comes from property tax, he said, with the bulk generated from a payroll tax.
With the help of a natural growth in property value inside the city over recent years, Bryant said, a tax increase has not been called for in several years. He said the council has not increased property taxes since 1992 and has not changed the employment tax since its inception in the 1970s.
The city maintains about $3 million in reserves and investments as well, he added.
The proposed budget will also include a 4.8 percent cost of living adjustment for the city’s 23 full-time workers and three percent for part-timers.
“This is a good time to take advantage of our good fortune in recent years,” Bryant said of the city’s own economic stimulus package. “We’d be doing what we should for our employees and helping out the community in these uncertain economic times.” With the proposal, city employees should fare better than many of their fellow public employees in the county. The fiscal court’s budget has proposed a three-percent cost of living increase for its employees, while the General Assembly has set the annual raise for educators at only one percent in the coming year.
