Nashville's Online Source for Daily News
Search Site
Panelists grapple with school rezoning issues
"How do you integrate a school in a community when the communities are still segregated?”
That was the question raised at a public forum Tuesday by former Vice Mayor Howard Gentry, who was a student at a time when Nashville’s public schools were racially segregated.
As Metro Nashville Public Schools is considering a Student Assignment Plan that could rezone district boundaries — clusters of schools — potentially affecting the diversity of student bodies, a panel of Vanderbilt University researchers and community leaders gathered yesterday to discuss the extent to which the district has changed since Gentry was in school.
“The face of learning looks different than it did when I was in school here 50 years ago,” Gentry said Tuesday. “When I was in school in Nashville, the face was easy to see. One was one color, one was another. We were educated in different schools in different environments, with teachers that looked like us.”
Gentry, who served as the forum’s moderator, continued: “We’re looking at a system that is struggling… It’s struggling because our communities are still looking like they looked 50 years ago.”
Tuesday’s discussion marked the inaugural public event of the Vanderbilt Center for Nashville Studies, which was established in 2006 to facilitate social scientific and historical research on the greater Nashville community.
Community concern about diversity in Nashville’s schools has increased in recent months, as MNPS considers a district-wide rezoning plan that could end busing.
Metro Nashville Public Schools were legally declared “unitary” in 1998, meaning MNPS is no longer required by law to bus students for the purpose of facilitating diverse racial mixes — basically integration — at individual schools.
As more students now have the option of attending school close to home, critics have called the trend “resegregation.”
But many in the crowd of more than 200 drawn to the event at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts cited other issues facing the district.
Overcrowding in the Antioch area has spurred the need for a new zoning plan, school district officials have said. Because the area is overcrowded, with overflow ninth-grade students from Antioch High School being housed in a different building, the school district built the new Cane Ridge High School, set to open next year.
Another worry involves a small area just northwest of the Antioch cluster that houses Una Elementary School. That school shares the same zone (or cluster) as non-Antioch area Margaret Allen Middle School and McGavock High School — something parents say is not in keeping with the school district’s message of neighborhood or community schools.
However, several panelists indicated that busing students — even across a significant distance — to reach a different school for the purpose of more diverse student bodies and improved educational options could have a positive effect, both for students and for the Nashville community.
In regards to the proposed rezoning, which administrators would like the board to vote on sometime in December, panel member Richard Dinkins — Davidson County chancellor and a desegregation activist and attorney — said, “I don’t think that the population pressure in Antioch means that the whole zoning needs to be revisited right now. We need to really take the time and do that right.”
Panelist Marc Hill, chief education officer for the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, said “I don’t think we can rezone our way out of this problem.”
Still, much of yesterday’s discussion centered on the issue of diversity.
Vanderbilt University researchers Ellen Goldring and Claire Smrekar shared findings from a book they’re writing, which includes research on MNPS. Much of the work they shared Tuesday centered on the effectiveness of Nashville’s enhanced option and new magnet schools in terms of fostering diversity and student performance.
At academic-selection magnet schools in Nashville, students are predominantly white, they said. Students are predominantly black at non-academic-selection magnet schools. And so few Latino students are represented at magnet schools that it indicates this population has a low level of participation in school choice processes.
Some panelists said they find racial diversity in individual schools to be an educational asset to students.
In Nashville public schools as a whole, 48 percent of MNPS’s 75,000 students are black, 34 percent are white, 14 percent are Hispanic, and 4 percent represent other groups. Racial breakdowns at individual schools tend to be less diverse, Goldring said.
Once schools reach a “tipping point” of having 50 percent or more students from one race, the school tends to become less desirable to parents of students of another race.
“We do not want to go back to the way things were,” said Dinkins. “We do have a tremendous opportunity as a community to address some of the remnants that remain.”
However, MNPS School Board Vice Chair Edward Kindall said that the racial, religious and socioeconomic mix of schools doesn’t necessarily need to follow that of the surrounding neighborhood — the relationship can work the other way around.
“We may be able to change communities by where we put schools, and where we zone kids,” Kindall said.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Technorati
Mailing list sign-up
513 Harbor Village Dr, Nashville
Price: $155,000
Bedrooms/Bathrooms: 2/2
1508 5th Avenue W, Springfield
Price: $124,900
Bedrooms/Bathrooms: 3/2
View More Homes
Busing is a great injustice to the kids by preventing them from haveing the total experience of sharing life with those that in the past have become life long friends.They need friends from the neighborhood not from across town.Funny how they are talking about "racial diversity" when according to the numbers whites are the minority. Let them choose if they want to go to neighborhood schools or not. Blacks are not a racial minority anymore, they have become the majority by 14% therefore not entitled to milk the cry of discrimination anymore.Busing is costing us a fortune so IMO kids (and parents) that want to go to neighborhood schools without busing should have first priority. Political correctness has gotten out of hand especially when the facts/numbers don't hold up to scrutiny.The worm has turned and going in the oposite direction now.
Go back to neighborhood schools where parents can be involved. This is not the Nashville of 50 years ago and there is no significant racial discrimination. School attendence will reflect the demographics of the neighborhood.
you forgot vouchers, id.
The demographics of the entire region has changed in terms of the degree of poverty among school children. A study yesterday indicated, I think, that about 14 states in the South now have majority low income school children, which is a level not seen since the 1950's-1960's. It has dramatically changed in the last 15 years. Nashville is reflecting that situation. Parental income and educational level is a major determinant of school performance, the argument is whether stellar teaching can overcome any of this huge builtin disparity and motivate a community to do better than its statistics would seem to predict. The article discussed that the region as a whole needs to focus much more resources towards education, or the economic future is doomed to failure in the region.
The academic magnets have drawn most of the European-American students. That these magnets are required to meet a measure of 25% African-American means that African-Americans, who comprise almost half of the public school studentry, overpopulate the regular schools. If we want to keep the academic magnets (not such a great idea), then, every five years, we should adjust the percentages to reflect the percentages among Nashville's students, not among Nashville's population. Thus, the academic magnets should meet a percentage of, say, 40% African-American currently. This would, w/out rezoning, re-integrate many of the other schools. If it didn't (because the European-Americans would continue to flee to private schools), then re-zoning could occur.Also, the academic magnets must address the situation of the Asian-American & Hispanic-American students. Both populations comprise about ten percent of Nashville's, so they have met a bar to require representation & attention.
With all due respect to Mr. Dinkins and other panelists who feel busing has helped Metro Schools, you are flat wrong. Nothing has done more to disconnect parents from schools both physically and emotionally than busing their child miles from home. Instead of worrying about whether a school has a diverse enough population, we need to worry about the quality of the education and the involvement of parents.
Cowboy, diversity, quality of education, & parental involvement are inextricably linked. None can be addressed w/out the others.
Just on a factual point, the academic magnets stopped using any special lottery pools for different races several years ago. The supreme court decision this past June probably would disallow any further use of straight up racial percentages.
MNPS needs to go ahead and rezone only what is necessary to bring the new high school into the system. The rest of the rezoning debate--including the related issues of integration, busing, magnets, etc.--will need to proceed much more slowly, with significant community input. Why would MNPS think it could push all this through by December? More poor planning.
It's probably impossible to rezone just the Antioch area without including all of Metro.
If so, Parent, then the re-segregation will continue. The academic magnets will continue to be havens for middle-class & upper-middle-class students while the working-class & impoverished students will populate the regular schools.
Idgaf says, " Blacks are not a racial minority anymore, they have become the majority by 14% therefore not entitled to milk the cry of discrimination anymore."Idgaf u make me sick...majority in the public school system is not a milestone.MJB~ great points made...Ethnic diversity in schools is imperative to the culturization of modern society. Without such, children are hesitant or in many cases unable to interact with persons who don't share the same ethnicity as them. I don't like the idea of busing either, its seems a waste of gas...An extremely radical yet simple idea comes to mind with eagerness to be refuted~ Why not make all schools public and then begin the diversification process... that way those stats that Id's spouting will shift significantly and reflect real society. Overcrowding would be solved along with a slew of other differences...
Tippy 48% is greater then 34%.We are talking about the schools here not the population in general. But nice try JJ and Sharpton would be proud of you.
Wouldn't they! My Mother and Father are also quite proud.
So MJB, you are against the academic magnets because one must show that they are capable of being in there, and then continue to perform to stay in there? And that is bad for whom? Oh, right those that don’t give a crap and don’t want to try! So let’s bring everybody down to the lowest level, that way we can all be the “same”.
No Lou lets give everyone the "same" high quality education. Hell thats just right! We're not just talking minorities, but also low-income whites etc. K-12 education is the most important period of development. If the kids refuse to accept it or don't try, then they can leave/get kicked out of school, but everyone deserves a opportunity for quality education.EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EDUCATION FOR ALL!
You can NOT educate those that do not want to be educated! Get a grip on the real world. Everyone in this state has an opportunity to be, and get, an education that would lead them just about anywhere they would want to go. People are lazy and some/most/many do not want/like to work that hard. Yes, that’s right education takes hard work. You just don’t “get an education” you have to WORK at it. Thanks to many influences in our society, working to that goal is frowned/crapped on.So to that end, I say, do for those that want, f’ the rest!!
Uh yeah, thats a given. Those who don't want it won't work...but for those who work hard and have to settle for an overcrowded, underfunded, poor quality school is unnacceptable.
Again, you are missing the point. It is not about under funded/over crowded schools. It is about those that don’t want to learn or care about those that do, that are bringing the rest down. If the school system had separation, not by race or area or neighborhood, but by those that want to learn, there would be plenty of “money” for the schools with those that care, and baby sitting money for those that don’t. Sounds like academic magnets to me! Once society realizes that it, and in turn, the government, cannot be all things to all people, we will have the money we need.
Next Tuesday, Utah voters go to the polls to decide if their state will become the first in the nation to offer school vouchers statewide. Referendum 1 would make all public-school kids eligible for vouchers worth from $500 to $3,000 a year, depending on family income. Parents could then use the vouchers to send their children to private schools. What a great idea. Finally, parents will have choices that wealthy parents have always had. The resulting competition would create better private schools and even improve the government schools. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2007/10/31/utahns_can_vote_for_school_choice_tuesdayA lot cheaper then we are paying for our inferior schools.
You have to have the magnet school in order to give some parents an option other than moving to Mt. Juliet, Sumner, Wmson couty.If most of Nashville's schools are full of nothing but poor blacks, the schools will always be horrible.
Typhani, just a note to tell you not to bother w/ Lou. I tried to reason w/ him for many days, but he loves to judge people. He seems to hate people, and he & rationality don't live close together. There are a few here w/ whom one can reason. Lou ain't one, and, as you've noticed, Idgaf ain't another. You're saying bright things. Keep it up.
Funny, most say the same thing about MJB!! Of course if we all thought like MJB we wouldn’t be here, because they don’t allow freedom of speech in communist societies!!
Say it to their face Big Papa!!! A~hole! U ignorant A~hole!
thx mjb!
No doubt “tiffy” you will show him how “educated” you are by beating him about the head and shoulders for that kinda comment, huh?
Tippy your inner self is coming out.
So what, get over it. I have held myself with much restraint and class with you bunch of conservative "bloggers"...so no sir, you can't question my education or class, its not the issue, and its not questionable. If you agree with him that's fine, just say that...don't try to make it seem like I'm out of line or uneducated buddy!
"If most of Nashville's schools are full of nothing but poor blacks, the schools will always be horrible."I'm speechless.
I don’t have to seem to make it like anything, you are presenting that quite well!I would never agree with a statement like that or any that claims a race can be or not be something as a whole. But you have no idea how to work thru or get around those that do.
Why because somebody dared to utter the truth?
And how would you know that, sir? Because I went on a one line rant to someone who said something ignorant. MJB is right, you have already judged me and you have no idea...
..what I can "work thru" or "get around
If you counter ignorance with violence, you are either the same, or worse, because if you are educated and still promote violence you become a self righteous arse. MJB has never been right about anything she has ever posted in this forum. As to you, I have not judged, just called you out for what you present, and maybe for what you are.
promote violence?! I called him an A~hole... huh? okay lou...I'm growing weary...ten minutes till punch time so good day. Same time same place tommorrow, looking forward to it!
Work to the clock, that’s all you need to do!
No its another expression lou... I don't have set hours and I work overtime often for my benefits and a salary... so u can shove it too...I really don't like you now. Glad I decided to take one last glance...~Now I will go home and get ready for the adorable little trick or treaters...I hope a goblin eats you tonite lou!
My, my, so sensitive! There seems to be some other issues as well, but, alas, you appear to not be able to get past the anger. Hope you learn how to teach what it is you want to put forth, but as of now, it is not a positive message.
Tippy does seem rather angry/hostile don't she?
Typhani, don't resort to name-calling or cursing, please. It just will make people like Idgaf & Lou happy that you look angry. They don't have anything of rationality to say, so they enjoy baiting.Back to the subject: The city cannot “make” all schools public. Americans have the right to create their own schools as long as they meet certain standards. Naturally, some people will create schools for reasons that serve education, and some people will create schools for reasons that serve prejudice & ignorance. Thus, Nashville has many poor private schools.When the courts forced the city to de-segregate, Nashville created the magnet schools as a bone to European-Americans so that they wouldn’t flee to private schools at the prospect of having to sit beside African-Americans. Many of the lesser private schools in the county date from that time, too. The academic magnets have lowered the level of the other schools in town. This is seen most drastically at the middle schools & the high schools, where there is a huge disparity between, say, Stratford & Hume-Fogg.Any new zoning plan should ensure racial, ethnic, & financial diversity in all schools even if that means some peculiar district lines & more busing. I don’t expect it to happen, though. The handful of academic magnets will continue to mask the substandard education that the majority of Nashville’s public school students (&, for that matter, private schools students) receive.
I just call ‘em like I see ‘em. I am not making her, or you MJB, out to be anymore than what you are. The truth always reveals itself. She, and you, need to be honest, it causes a lot less anger.