Rezoning opponents hold first community meeting

More than 200 people gathered in a small church on Scovel Street Sunday for what organizers said was the first in a series of community meetings in opposition to a new school district rezoning plan.

Marilyn Robinson, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said more meetings will take place soon in highly populated areas across town. Opponents of the plan are gearing up to ask the Board of Education to consider in January a major amendment to the decision that established the plan.

“We are not going away. … We will stick on this until we get some [resolution] that’s acceptable to us. We determine what satisfaction is,” Robinson told the crowd. “We just want our kids to have the same experience as other kids.”

Sunday’s meeting was led by local organizations including the NAACP, the Interdenominational Ministerial Federation (IMF), Tying Nashville Together, Urban Epicenter and the Tennessee Alliance for Progress.

Speaking up against the plan were attendees including Metro Nashville Public Schools staff members, Metro Council members and community organizers. Meeting leaders highlighted research in opposition to the plan, and distributed surveys and petitions.

Won Choi of Tying Nashville Together said his organization has compiled research on the matter, and come to the conclusion that neighborhood schools harm students who live in neighborhoods with socioeconomic troubles.

“Neighborhood schools work absolutely [terrifically] if you live in great neighborhoods,” Choi said. “I don’t have to give you research or statistics to tell you that Nashville… [neighborhoods are often] segregated.”

According to Choi, Tennessee ranks ninth in the country in terms of the percentages of black students attending schools of 90 percent minority students or more. He also cited data indicating that, in the South, the percentage of black students attending majority white schools climbed between 1954 and 1988, and then steadily declined since.

The rezoning plan, passed this summer in a divided board vote that continues to provoke local controversy, won’t take effect until the 2009-2010 school year. The most contested portion of the plan recommends that students no longer be bused from low-income MetroCenter neighborhoods to Bellevue’s more affluent Hillwood cluster. Students in those neighborhoods are considered residents of “choice zones,” and can choose whether to attend school close to home or at Hillwood schools.

Supporters say the change brings Nashville closer to neighborhood schools, and improves opportunities for parent and community engagement. Opponents call the plan resegregation, noting the decrease in percentages of African-American and economically disadvantaged students at Hillwood schools, as well as the slight increases in these populations at some Pearl-Cohn cluster schools. Other concerns of plan detractors are that the promises of additional resources for schools in high-poverty areas won’t be kept, particularly as the city enters what many expect to be a serious budget crunch.