Past memories, future worries dominate rezoning discussions

School board member George Thompson readily says that he has a PHD — a Pearl High Diploma. He earned it at the old Pearl High School, when Nashville schools were racially segregated. For Thompson and many other Nashvillians, a proposed new school zoning plan is a reminder of student assignment before schools were desegregated.

There are many arguments in favor of the proposed plan, and people from a wide variety of neighborhoods and backgrounds support it. At a recent public hearing, worries about proposed changes to the Pearl-Cohn cluster were among those dominating input from attendees.

In coming weeks, as the proposal is updated by the task force in advance of Board of Education consideration, both memories of the past and concerns for downtown’s future will likely dominate discussion as the task force and school board return to consideration of the Pearl-Cohn cluster.

The proposed zoning plan was created by a task force of community members from across the city. The plan nearly doubles the geographic area feeding into Pearl-Cohn High School, which would encompass much of North Nashville, Metro Center, downtown and the Gulch.

The cluster, if created, would have a percentage of African-American students that is higher than district average, and a percentage of students receiving free and reduced meals that is slightly higher than district average.

At Pearl-Cohn High, 91 percent of students would be African-American, compared to 88 percent currently.

The cluster would also include kids from a low-income North Nashville area who are currently zoned to a more affluent part of Bellevue. It would also include several urban core neighborhoods currently assigned to the Hillsboro cluster — Germantown, Salemtown, Hope Gardens and the Gulch. These areas have been revitalized in recent years to include middle- to upper-class residents, and developers have invested millions in the neighborhoods’ growth potential.

A “prerequisite” of these changes, as set by the task force, is that additional resources be guaranteed to schools in the Pearl-Cohn cluster. Without a total guarantee, the proposal states, the change should not be undertaken.

Concerns about downtown development

Residents of downtown neighborhoods have spoken up against the plan. A letter signed by the presidents of four neighborhood associations — the Urban Residents Association, the Historic Germantown Neighborhood Association, the Salemtown Neighbors Association and the Hope Gardens Neighborhood Association — stated that residents of these areas were “disappointed” in the recommendations. The letter was addressed to the rezoning task force, the school board, the Mayor’s Office and Metro Council.

“[T]his proposal risks dealing a blow to Nashville’s thriving urban core. Without a single downtown school available that is not a magnet, the concept of neighborhood or community schools is an absent one for current residents and presents few incentives for potential residents,” the letter states. “The findings of this task force seem to ignore the urban core of Nashville as constituting a community.”

The letter raises concerns with the current student assignment process, arguing that a single public hearing is insufficient and that such big changes shouldn’t be made with only months left before school board elections. The letter also questions whether additional resources can be provided for Pearl-Cohn cluster schools, and asks how residents of these neighborhoods can be assured “that we are not returning to an era of separate but equal schooling.”

Stacy Mosley, president of the Historic Germantown Neighborhood Association, said Friday that residents of downtown neighborhoods moved there, at a risk, with the “promise” that their children could attend high-performing Hillsboro cluster schools. Mosley said she and other neighbors want their children to attend schools with “balanced” racial and socioeconomic mixes.

“It’s not good for anybody. It’s not good for the kids that are poor. It’s not good for the kids who are wealthy,” Mosley said. “[Neighborhood schools are] not a good idea here. It may be good on the outskirts. It may be good in the suburbs. It may be good in other areas. But for this area, in the inner city, it is not a good idea. They really need to rethink this.”

The proposal would limit the diversity of those neighborhoods, Mosley said, by failing to be an area attractive to young families and couples.

If separate, then at least equitable

North Nashville school board member Thompson said Friday that the idea of zoning all North Nashvillians together and creating a predominantly African-American cluster may be jarring to residents of his district. His own chief concerns, as an individual board member, are the safety issues associated with zoning multiple North Nashville gangs into a single high school, and the financial stability of the proposed additional resources.

Among members of the African-American community in North Nashville, Thompson said, there are highly mixed opinions.

“In the African-American community, there is some degree of division of opinion on being close to home as opposed to being diverse,” Thompson said. “A large part of the younger sect who has no knowledge of the past — they don’t have that much of a concern about it. For those who do have the knowledge of the past, and either the wrongs or the real problems that resulted from it, they’re not too happy about reverting to ways of the past. … It’s a complex thing.”

Darrell Caldwell, the executive director of the Preston Taylor Boys and Girls Club YMCA, has worked with North Nashville kids for more than 20 years. It’s his opinion that community schools, with additional resources provided, would be very positive for the children he serves. But that’s only if additional resources are guaranteed — and he doubts that they could be.

“If there was a guarantee, then I think it would be the greatest thing since apple pie,” Caldwell said. But Caldwell also said he believes resources will not be allocated in that way, and, “because of that, the kids who will go to the schools in the inner cities will have difficulties. They won’t have all the resources that they need.”

Many others also have serious doubts as to whether these resources could be guaranteed. Some skeptics also say they have been unimpressed with Nashville’s enforcement of a 1998 school improvement plan that came at the end of years of court-ordered busing.

Mark North, the school board member who chaired the task force, told The City Paper that there is “distrust” in the community for promises of this nature, due in part to past failures to deliver.

“There is such distrust. You make commitments, and you do your best to stand by them, and someone else down the road reneges on them,” North said. “If you see that enough, you don’t trust the next commitment. That is something that this school system and Metro government has got to deal with.”

Plan could be voted on as early as June

For school board chair Marsha Warden and many others, there are compelling reasons for the school board to make decisions quickly. The district currently has 21 schools operating at below 70 percent capacity, and the repurposing of five schools as proposed by the plan would save the district $4.5 million that could be used for student success rather than bricks and mortar.

Warden has said publicly on several occasions that the existing school board has spent years considering student assignment, and is better equipped than a post-election board to quickly make decisions. As to whether more community input is needed, Warden and others point to the public meetings held last fall in considering a previous proposed zoning plan. Comments from those meetings were taken into account by the task force in making a new proposal.

“Distance is a barrier. If East Lit, which is close to Pearl-Cohn, is too far away for our families in the Pearl-Cohn cluster, then obviously it is very important to look at neighborhood and community [schools] for the Pearl-Cohn cluster,” Warden said. “Will it make everybody happy? There is no plan that will make everybody happy.”

None of the proposed changes would take effect before the 2009-2010 school year.