School choice options could temper rezoning debate

A group of district policy changes recently proposed to Nashville’s school board could, if approved, open enrollment at many Metro schools.

The changes could result in as many as 70 to 80 Metro schools achieving open enrollment status. In a presentation to the board last week, Metro Nashville Public Schools official Lance Lott said the goal is to make school choice options easier to understand. The plan would allow significantly more choice — if a school has open seats and parents can provide transportation, he said, a goal of the district will be to allow that choice to occur.

“The point would be to get people where they want to be, where they need to be, to the extent that [we can],” Lott said.

Establishment of the district committee that made the recommendations was completed long before the controversial rezoning discussions of the summer. But some members of the Board of Education have indicated that opening up student choice options may have an impact on how the board and the community move forward with discussions.

Board member Ed Kindall said last week that the proposed changes might play a role in his following up on rezoning discussions. Kindall has a series of four motions he plans to make at the board’s next meeting — all pertaining to rezoning, and three contingent upon previous motions failing.

Alan Coverstone, one of two board members elected very recently, said he believes that more choices for students could, in the long run, play a role in lessening the “contentiousness” of rezoning discussions.

“I’ve kind of thought from the beginning that the zoning proposals that were brought forward — while better than the zones we had before — were merely a step toward what I hope we can do in terms of opening up choices for everybody… The choice committee’s report is more ambitious,” Coverstone said. “Drawing lines and moving kids around within the existing capacity, and limiting choices, are things that we know don’t work.”

That’s not to say the recently introduced choice plan absorbs all the issues, Coverstone added.

Coverstone is one who has stated his opposition to rescinding the plan, and his belief that it will have the effect of increasing student choice.

Plan expands options

A committee established in the fall of 2007 made the choice plan recommendations. Board members will need to vote to adopt the recommendations for the changes to take place, but as the information was introduced for the first time Tuesday, that vote likely will take place later.

Part of the plan includes better communication with families about the options available, and the integration of all options — including those mandated by federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) laws — in a single slate of possibilities, so parents can better understand what is available. The plan is also intended, in some cases, to streamline the transfer process for parents.

But the plan does not provide transportation for students beyond the zoning-defined options agreed to by the board. Providing transportation for all students to accompany open enrollment options could as much as double the district’s already sizeable current transportation costs, district officials said.

In terms of the possible effects that the proposed choice plan could have on community discussions of rezoning, Marilyn Robinson, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said Friday that the transportation options defined by the plan mean the increased options will do little to ameliorate her own concerns.

“The problem is, what do students do whose parents have fixed income, or where parents can’t provide transportation to the school of choice?” Robinson said. “Though there may be school choice, that won’t be an option for them if they can’t afford transportation.”

Kindall to move for rescinding?

Transportation issues are part of what Kindall plans to bring up at the board’s next meeting. He plans to ask the board rescind the part of the plan dealing with the Pearl-Cohn and Hillwood clusters, and to firmly define the transportation options of students who choose to attend schools in clusters outside of their neighborhoods.

“Those questions have to be answered, because parents make choices based upon those things,” Kindall said.

In the mean time, Robinson said the local chapter of the NAACP is still working with the national NAACP, and with the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, to assemble information that could contribute to a possible lawsuit stemming from the plan.

But there will likely be no legal action, Robinson said, until implementation of the plan begins. Changes brought about by the board’s summer rezoning decisions won’t go into effect until the 2009-2010 school year.

“It’s nothing but a promise until they actually enact something,” Robinson said.

Robinson added that she is hopeful that the board and community will work to find an alternative solution.

The part of the rezoning plan found objectionable by the NAACP and many other organizations is the recommendation 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. Details that will determine the extent of free transportation were not publicly discussed at the rezoning presentation immediately prior to the board’s vote.

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.