Take a look at a new billboard message on I-40 when driving to Lakeland. It’s promoting some pretty good news about Lakeland.
The digital billboard, across from IKEA, is on the north side of I-40 and it’s flashing four messages about the City, its school system and property taxes. It runs until Oct. 28th and may switch to the westbound side the middle of this month.
Sponsored by the Moving Lakeland Forward PAC, the messages started Sept. 28th, according to Derrick Johnston, president of the PAC. Jeff Roman is PAC treasurer.
Link to the website: https://www.movinglakelandforward.org/
The messages congratulate the Lakeland School System (LSS) and its recent state achievements, promote the first new high school to be built in the City, and proclaim low property taxes in the City.
Background
The Tennessee Department of Education announced in August that LSS is an Exemplary District, one of 20 such districts in the state. Both schools were ranked as Reward Schools and LSS was #1 in the state for grades 3-5 and #2 in the state for grades 6-8.
The website Schooldigger.com rated the Lakeland School District first in 140 Tennessee districts: https://www.schooldigger.com/go/TN/district/00154/search.aspx
At the Sept. 11th BOC (Board of Commissioners) meeting, the Fiscal Year 2019-20 tax rate was lowered from $1.25 to $1.24 by a unanimous vote.
Dr. Ted Horrell, LSS superintendent, and Shane Horn, Lakeland city manager, announced Sept. 26th that Lakeland had formally been approved for its application with USDA to fund the first high school in Lakeland. The high school wing beside Lakeland Middle Preparatory School is to begin serving students in August 2022
Reasoning behind the billboards
“We decided to run the ads because we began to realize that Lakeland was getting little to no recognition for its achievements,” said Mr. Johnston. “We constantly see Germantown, Collierville and Bartlett mentioned on major news outlets for their schools yet when we have the number one district in its category, the number one school for grades 3-5 and the number 2 school for grades 5-8 in the entire State, there is barely a mention.”
He added, “The City is constantly in the news for less than flattering reasons, whether its accusations of financial improprieties or the constant fight over the high school, but the good news was going unreported. We want to change that. Some of our own citizens did not even know that we have some of the best schools in Tennessee. We wanted to be sure that as many people as we could reach got the message. We wanted to let people know that there are more good things in Lakeland than are being reported and show that our City is a great place to live. We also wanted to thank and show our appreciation in some way for the LSS administration and teachers as well as the students and parents themselves. This is a high achievement that everyone in the community should be proud of and we would like to help facilitate that.”
Mr. Johnston said there has been a long battle with naysayers over building a complete school system in Lakeland. “We also wanted to somehow announce not only that we will finally get a high school, but the process ended with Lakeland having the lowest property tax rate in Shelby County. 
We are excited by the path that Lakeland is taking and the more people we can share this with, the better.”
The PAC was formed in April. “We are committed to the advancement of Lakeland through the attraction and retention of business, strong community planning and infrastructure and a complete, autonomous school system.
“We are also committed to fighting those that would spread disinformation and misrepresentations about our City. For too long, Lakeland has been subject to individuals who opposed moving Lakeland into the future and fought every attempt for Lakeland to become an autonomous self-sufficient city. They would have you believe that we must rely on surrounding municipalities in order to survive, that left to our own devices Lakeland can never rise to the level of the cities around us; our schools cannot compare nor compete with others around us, that given the choice businesses would never want to locate to Lakeland or that we are destined to only a certain type of business.
“Our purpose is to dispel these myths and to lift our City up instead of dragging it down. We are planning a number of events that we hope will instill more of a closeness of citizens within the community. We are hoping to show what Lakeland can be over what it can’t be. Our schools have already shown us that we can succeed, we must expand their example to the rest of the City.”
…Billboard images courtesy of Moving Lakeland Forward PAC
