Whom to Vote For? Who Cares?

This includes the most uninspiring group of Dems I can remember seeing on a ballot. I usually vote early, but not this time.

I've listened to each of the District 1 School Board candidates and I'm still probably going to have to write in someone else's name. (Looks like we're probably going to end up with another board member who wants to make schools operate like businesses).

Thursday voting will literally be an unhappy civic duty for me, bordering on a waste of valuable time. Good luck finding someone who inspires you.

TNT Jumps into School Rezoning Flap

Amy Griffith reports that Nashville's community- and faith-based IAF-affiliate, Tying Nashville Together has come out against the MNPS-adopted rezoning plan that would send north Nashville students to the Pearl-Cohn cluster.

I wrote a Vanderbilt dissertation and an article or two in my time on TNT's brand of community organizing.

Inside the Chamber Box

Bruce Barry has an outstanding response to the school rezoning histrionics of the past few weeks.  He underscores what I think is the primary problem of the advantage that the Chamber of Commerce enjoys over others who cannot give candidates as much money as the business community does:

[The Chamber] regards a weak school system mainly as an inconvenient obstacle to economic development and employment growth, not as a collective community enterprise that is failing to deliver on a civic obligation to create educated citizens who can fulfill personal aspirations and advance democracy.

Market assumptions have a troubling tendency to hyper-commodify every quality including broader civic values (like mutual respect and honor) and virtues of a democratic society (like fairness and justice).  Education has a larger purpose than the "bottom line," and yet because of the Chamber's influence over the school board, Nashville schools are not likely to serve any purpose higher than what business models require.

Can Anything Good Come from Janel Lacy's Office?

In what looks like another rather half-baked, milque-toast, lawyer-measured statement, Karl Dean supports the school board's rezoning plan:

In response to a recounting of Thompson’s remarks, Dean e-mailed a statement Tuesday afternoon through spokesperson Janel Lacy. As he has previously stated, Dean said he believes that everyone involved in the process has had “honorable intentions.”

“I know the task force worked very hard on the plan,” Dean said in the statement. “Our goal as a city should be to move forward on every aspect of improving our schools. If people feel their voices aren’t being heard that causes me concern. It’s my understanding there is agreement on the majority of the rezoning plan. People should be able to come together and calmly work through the few areas of concern.”

Mayor Dean talked a good game about being out in front on education in Nashville early on, but if he is so committed to the school board action to rezone north and west zones, why isn't he stepping up in drum major fashion on behalf of this cause?  The heat gets turned up, and an anemic statement about pavers for the road to hell is the best he can do?

Chamber Continues to Get Flak for its Public School Patronage

Progressive Nashville weighs in and cites some familiar names, Sharon and Howard Gentry, who both sit at the receiving end of a lot of campaign finance cash and who are entangled among the benefactors giving that cash.

Notable among those in the most recent campaign finance report is money given by Tom and Constance Cigarran. Tom Cigarran is a member of SuccessPAC, the Chamber's political action committee. The reports show that Tom and Constance each gave $1,000 to Sharon Gentry's campaign and Lee Limbird's campaign. Gentry's husband, former vice mayor Howard Gentry, works for the Chamber.

The Chamber claims that its money is given freely and without strings attached, which is true. However, major contributors get access to candidates and they use that access to promote the Chamber's agenda.

So what is the Chamber's agenda? That's what's unclear. It's obviously political because of the money it spends in that arena rather than on what's happening in the classrooms.

Most importantly, we must remember that the Chamber's mission in life is "supporting the growth and prosperity of Chamber-member businesses," according to its web site.

Whatever the Chamber has in mind for Nashville's schools, you can bet that educating all of Nashville's children is not topping the agenda. The Chamber's agenda is intended first to help its member businesses and that doesn't mean being an advocate for children who live in challenging social situations and who have no options other than the city's public schools.

I have not decided whether to vote for Sharon Gentry or not, but her embeddedness with the Chamber of Commerce, which has goals not necessarily consistent with an average parent like me, does not endear her to me.  I would like to see more independence from special interests on the school board than we've seen so far, and I am concerned that all of the influence peddling is eroding any chance of getting a free-thinking, public-oriented board.

School Board Member Heavily Patronized by Wealthy Campaign Contributors, Says Woods

While her opponent in the redistricting debate, CM Jerry Maynard, has his own dubious campaign finance entanglements, Karen Y. Johnson has a history, now documented, of feeding at the trough of Chamber of Commerce finance.  According to PiTW, her campaign contributions include:

$10,500—almost two-thirds of what she raised altogether for her 2006 campaign.

Johnson took $2,500 from the Chamber of Commerce’s Success PAC, $5,000 from the Excellence for Public Education PAC and $3,000 from the Fund for Nashville Families PAC. David Fox, another key vote on the school board for the rezoning plan, took $10,000 from two of these PACs.

These PACs, despite their inspiring names, are actually merely fronts for extremely wealthy business people and convenient ways to circumvent contribution limits.

The rich guys can dump enormous, unlimited sums of cash into the PACs, which in turn give to the candidates. The law limits PAC contributions to $5,000 for each candidate, so the PACs give big donations to each other in a kind of shell game, and then they all give to the same candidates. That way, Johnson could take $10,500 from essentially the same rich guys. Health care executive Thomas Cigarran and Orrin Ingram of Ingram Industries are probably the biggest donors to these three PACs.

Given that the rezoning vote is reportedly driven by the Chamber of Commerce, Ms. Johnson's vote for rezoning looks like political patronage. If the Chamber of Commerce is driving the MNPS Board decision-making process with loads of money, why spend any more tax dollars on electing a school board to rubber stamp their initiatives?


UPDATE:  Amy Griffith reports that Johnson is not the only one making a big campaign donation haul. 

PiTW Launches into the Courthouse "Liberals"

The controversial school board rezoning vote punctuated by charges that the Chamber of Commerce masterminded the plan to move north Nashville students to the inner city Pearl Cohn cluster is blowing up into a media conflagration and now so-called "liberals" are getting heat for their silence on the issue:

there’s still been no word from any of the city’s white progressive leaders on this issue. Karl Dean, Diane Neighbors, Ronnie Steine, Megan Barry, Mike Jameson, Erik Cole—none seems to have any problem with lumping hundreds more poor, black children into the same schools in their blighted neighborhoods.

I'm not convinced that Karl Dean is progressive. He ran against Bob Clement. The better part of Nashville is liberal compared to Bob Clement. He put up some progressive window dressing in ensconcing himself in education and crime fighting, but what are Dean's liberal credentials? And Ronnie Steine? Any Council Member who would gush like Steine at a past meeting that State Parks Commissioner Jim Fyke belongs in a Metro employee hall of fame doesn't deserve to be called progressive. Diane Neighbors seems more latched to the fence than she does falling progressive.

But I won't bicker over the credentials of the rest of the list. It is sort of amazing how Council Members (with the exception of a few like Emily Evans) seem to go mum about school board issues when all the fur is flying. Keep your butt down unless you want it blown off.

Who Really Plucks the Public School Marionette Strings

After watching the proceedings of last Tuesday's controversial school board meeting, CM Emily Evans informs us that the State of Tennessee is in the driver's seat over at Metro Nashville Public Schools.  All else is mere detailing.

The Education Mayor?

Jeff Woods has some choice words for the School Board and Nashville's white progressive leadership, personified by Mayor Karl Dean et al.:

Under pressure from the Chamber of Commerce and their own white constituents a month before elections, they were obviously hell bent on ramming this through, even if it meant pissing off an entire segment of the city ....

No matter how hard the white board members try to dress up this plan, essentially the idea is to fix it so white kids in Hillwood don’t have to go to school with black kids from North Nashville. As the NAACP’s Marilyn Robinson puts it, “They want to keep all the poor, black kids together” ....

Last night’s meeting recalled the dark days of Nashville’s racially polarized past. Toward the end, I almost expected the board to turn fire hoses on the crowd. Here’s a good question: Where were the city’s so-called progressive white leaders in this fight? None felt compelled to take a public stand. Not Karl Dean, Diane Neighbors, Mike Jameson or Ronnie Steine. (Oh wait, Steine's kid goes to USN. What does he care about this?) Thanks guys. That’s leadership! ....

And later in the comments section, Woods again takes aim at Mayor Dean, whose central, winning plank was education:

Speaking of cowardly white liberals, it's particularly galling for the mayor to sit on his hands on this. After yammering incessantly about education during the entire mayoral campaign and forever afterward, he's suddenly struck mute as the school board makes this historic decision ....

I asked the mayor's office for Dean's position on the rezoning. Here's his statement: “I believe everyone involved in this process had very honorable intentions. Clearly it was a difficult decision for the Board of Education. The members of the community task force worked very hard on this plan for a number of months. It's important that we all stay focused on the goal – providing schools in which every student has a chance to succeed.”

Allow me to suggest that Mayor Dean is where he always seems to be on various issues: hiding behind empty platitudes about education that signify the absence of bold leadership.

Council Member Sees MNPS as Out of Touch on the Hillwood Cluster's Capacity for Neighborhood Schools

District 23's Emily Evans wades into the redistricting task force mess:

The school re-zoning plan indicates that neighborhoods in the Hillwood cluster are "ripe" for development that will increase the student population. MNPS folks apparently haven't been to a zoning community meeting here lately. Seriously, as I have said before, one of the biggest barriers for Hillwood schools in this district becoming neighborhood schools is the sheer lack of children. The population is older. Many people are affluent enough to afford private schools. There are a number of strong church based schools in the area.

She expects school closings rather than development in west Nashville.

School Board Approves Controversial Rezoning

According to the NashPo blog, School Board Member Karen Johnson seemingly cast the deciding vote (5-4) to pass the rezoning plan that establishes post-desegregation-era neighborhood schools without any mechanism for preventing the resegregation of Nashville public schools.  It has also been criticized for concentrating urban gangs in inner city schools.  Ms. Johnson, who has been a prolific blogger since joining the school board has not yet posted on her reasons for voting as she did.

Meanwhile, PiTW's Jeff Woods contends that the School Board may have violated state sunshine laws by lining up the votes in private.

School Cluster "Choice" = More Code for White Flight from North Nashville?

From the Sounds Great in Theory If We Had a Perfect World Department:

Mark North, the school board member who is chair of the task force, emphasized Wednesday the choice component of the plan. The plan eliminates noncontiguous zones — areas in which students are bused out of their neighborhoods into other areas to attend school — and creates choice zones instead. Under the proposed plan, for example, residents of some high-poverty neighborhoods near Metrocenter will no longer be transported out of their neighborhoods into the more affluent Hillwood cluster, unless families choose to do so.

But how is Mr. North's Task Force Plan going to prevent the resegregaton of the north and west school clusters?  Brown v. Board of Education showed that people have to be forced to do the right thing because in their identity groups and in majorities they are prone to choose the wrong thing.  How would Mr. North suggest that we guard against Pearl-Cohn and Hillwood/Hillsboro becoming separate, but equal clusters?

Not Good for the North End: New Urbanism's Variations on White Flight

According to Jeff Woods, "Chamber of Commerce types" lobbied the School Board and the Redistricting Task Force to exempt Germantown, Hope Gardens, Salemtown, and Downtown from the MNPS redistricting plan because allegedly white parents here do not want to send their kids to school with black kids. This news couldn't have come at a worse time for the neighborhoods, given that the four presidents of the neighborhoods' associations were called together by HGI President Stacy Mosley to draft a letter opposing the plan roughly about the time that the lobbying commenced at a Chamber of Commerce sponsored conference in Miami, FL. The timing sucks dry any credibility the letter might have had, in my opinion, and I have to wonder if there was some coordination between the Chamber's lobbying and the calling of the presidents together.

While I already declared my opposition to Ms. Mosley's reasons for signing the letter, I was opposed to the redistricting plan because I thought that a neighborhood school needed to be placed in the old Fehr School Building in Salemtown rather than using Buena Vista. But I would have raised all kinds of objections about SNNA President Freddie O'Connell signing the letter if I would have known at the time what was going down in Florida. To his credit, Freddie has already told us that he was signing it not for the group but as an individual. And in a June 3 letter to the association he gave his personal reasons for signing, and he was explicit in his opposition to white flight:

I will not sign my name to anything I suspect of indicating a white flight mentality. Ultimately, I believe that neighborhood schools will play a critical role in revitalizing Nashville's public school system. For the reasons I cite in this letter, however, I'm not sure that this step taken in this way at this time is the best step toward neighborhood schools.

However, it is unfortunate that Salemtown is being associated now with what looks like a new urbanist strain of white flight. I wonder how much Ms. Mosley knew about the lobbying that she didn't divulge when she called the presidents together.

Finally and for the record, despite the Woods' characterization of young white professionals in these neighborhoods, we've never referred to ourselves as "urban pioneers" (every reference to "pioneers" on Enclave since 2005 is someone else's quote). Frankly, the people that seem to like referring to urban dwellers like us as "pioneers" are the Realtors and developers who are trying to invent and market a lifestyle that doesn't exist in reality. Also, the broad generalization that white parents don't want to send their kids to school with black kids may be true of the Chamber of Commerce types lobbying against the plan, but it is not true of all of us who live in these neighborhoods.


UPDATE: Task Force sticks by its guns, but adds three additional public hearings (which should have been scheduled in the first place), including one at MetroCenter/Buena Vista's John Early Middle. I'm pretty sure that Salemtown is not in the Hillsboro cluster as Amy Griffith reports; it's in the Hillwood cluster.

Enclave Already Gives the Context Behind the Letter

The City Paper picked up the story on the school re-zoning letter signed by the North End/Downtown association presidents. Here is some context you already had before NCP publication.

According to this morning's story, Historic Germantown, Inc. Prez Stacy Mosley says:

residents of downtown neighborhoods moved there, at a risk, with the “promise” that their children could attend high-performing Hillsboro cluster schools .... 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 .... [Neighborhood schools are] not a good idea here.

Prez Mosley doesn't speak for this resident of a downtown neighborhood. I've already advocated refurbishing the Fehr School building and using it as a neighborhood school for what is still a desegregated and diverse North End. And I've advocated giving neighborhood schools like it more money than other schools. I'm opposed to the re-districting plan, but I'm also opposed to what appears to be paternalism advocated this morning.

North End/Downtown Presidents Issue Joint Letter

This crossed the Salemtown e-mail list this morning:

To the members of the Community Task Force on Student Assignment, the School Board, the Mayor's Office, and Metro Council:

As members of the leadership of some of the neighborhoods that make up Nashville's urban core, we were disappointed by the process that led to the recent rezoning proposal of our public schools by the Community Task Force on Student Assignment. The rezoning proposal, by changing the public schools our children attend, would dramatically impact our community if adopted.

In particular, a process that leads to findings released at the very end of an academic year; a process that yields a single public hearing prior to a vote by the sitting school board; a process that will be voted on by a board whose chairman will presently be replaced; and a process whose end occurs in the middle of a competitive school board election cycle while a new director of schools is being sought strike us as indicative of recent trends that seem almost calculated to break down trust between the greater Nashville community and the school board and its related instruments.

While we are glad that the task force included members of the community, when reflecting on the process used to arrive at these recommendations, we are left to wonder at striking inconsistencies in outreach. Why, for instance, were neighborhood leaders invited to participate in a focus group with a member of the firm searching for our next director of schools, but these same leaders were not contacted to participate in any of the preliminary aspects of creating the aforementioned recommendations?

One of our chief concerns is that, while the findings are vocal about the need for resources to be specially apportioned, the allowance for choice, and attempts to mitigate disruption, no specific mechanisms or methodologies are set forth to ensure that any of these ideas will be appropriately implemented. With Pearl-Cohn High School set to have its student body become 91% African-American, how can we be assured that we are not returning to an era of separate but equal schooling?

Furthermore, this 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 findings of this task force seem to ignore the urban core of Nashville as constituting a community.

We believe that the recommendations on the table serve as the basis for many important and necessary discussions. But we believe that they should not be voted on within a matter of weeks of a single public hearing under these conditions. We encourage the task force and the school board to reflect on process and to spend its summer vacation working instead on a report for the new school board indicating how the community could be better involved in and ultimately better served by its processes.

Sincerely,
Ben Bahil, President, Urban Residents Association
Stacy Mosley, President, Historic Germantown Neighborhood Association
Thomas F. O'Connell, President, Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association
Jason Powell, President, Hope Gardens Neighborhood Association

Salemtown President Freddie O'Connell added the following disclaimer:

I signed my name representing myself in my role but not as an expression of the will of our association. I'm hopeful that no one views this as an abuse of power or title. I have tried to be as communicative as possible about my thoughts and intentions given the short timeframe. I welcome all feedback, both on the letter and the propriety of signing my name to it.

As yet, no critical feedback has been given to Freddie's signing the statement. My only criticism is that SNNA is continuing to respond with support whenever the Historic Germantown, Inc. President summons without any reciprocation on her part. When will HGI do some back-scratching?

MNPS Should Look Elsewhere For Its Re-Districting Inspiration

Some answers for navigating the briar patch of re-districting Metro Nashville Public Schools may lay in those communities who, like Louisville, KY, are striving toward economic status integration:

Today at least 45 school districts are pursuing plans that emphasize socioeconomic status, sometimes in combination with race, sometimes by itself. Just since the Supreme Court's decision last year, a number of communities -- including Des Moines, Iowa; Burlington, Vermont; Beaumont, Texas; Lafayette, Louisiana, and Napa Valley Unified School District in California -- have announced plans to use economic status as a factor in student integration.

These communities, like Jefferson County [KY], are not giving up on the goal of integration. To their enduring credit, they are tackling one of the greatest sources of inequality in American schools -- the separation of poor and middle class kids. It would have been easy for Jefferson County officials to throw up their hands and revert to economically and racially segregated neighborhood schools, joining the vast majority of districts in the uphill battle to make "separate but equal" work in practice. Instead, with their emphasis on socioeconomic integration, these school districts are seeking to reinvent Brown for the twenty-first century.

Mainstreaming the shrinking middle class in all of Nashville's classrooms would make a qualitative difference in overall school performance and would accomplish the broader social responsibilities of public education. There are neighborhoods in Nashville, like Salemtown, which still have class diversity and would be great places for class-integrated, neighborhood schools.

North End/Downtown Summit Not So Hot

According to the Salemtown e-mail list, the meeting between the presidents of Historic Germantown, Inc., Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association, Hope Gardens Neighborhood Association, and the Urban Residents Association could have gone better.

The focus was on the impact of the re-districting proposal currently before Metro Nashville Public Schools. Here is the position of SNNA President, Freddie O'Connell on the re-districting proposal:

the best solution in the long run is to couple open enrollment (thereby dismantling the magnet schools but preserving specialized curricula) with community schools (thereby preserving a mechanism for strong neighborhoods to secure schools within walking/biking distance). People can then live wherever they like while having no shortage of choice. This would rely, of course, on a mayor who recognizes that "it's all connected" ensuring that transportation was available to support the choices of parents and students.If this is a NIMBY issue where West Nashville (which elected our sitting mayor) is flexing its muscle to get the poor black kids out of Hillsboro and Hillwood, I find it highly problematic. If, however, it's a community issue where a number of residents on the North End are clamoring for neighborhood schools, then I think there's room at the table for productive discussion, even if the outcome is cynically beneficial to West Nashvillians.

Sounds like Salemtown was strongly represented. I happen to believe that Metro ought to earmark the most money for existing schools and new neighborhood schools (including greater teacher incentives) within those areas that are the most integrated economically and ethnically. So, I cannot find fault with much of what Freddie argues.

More to "Silly" Zoning than Meets the Eye

PiTW's Mat Pulle spreads the misconception that zoning issues are rather trivial vis-à-vis Metro Schools:

Do we really want our council members suggesting policy at Bransford Avenue? Or do we just want them to preside over silly zoning disputes ...?

Before I started actually paying attention to the effects of zoning disputes on local communities, I believed that they were minuscule compared to things like funding our schools. Now I don't see them as so far apart from one another. In fact, I see Salemtown's zoning and access to quality public education in tandem.

But even if the two are not so close in priority, zoning influences quality of life in neighborhoods and when we minimize its influence, then the Metro Council will play down to our low expectations. (By no means am I defending the object of Pulle's criticism).

MetroCenter Magnet School Releases 5-Year-Old to Stranger

A spine-chilling blunder.

George Thompson Out of the District 1 Race

I don't know a lot about the rest of the field of candidates for our open school board seat, but I wasn't impressed with the incumbent when, at a Salemtown meeting earlier this year, he hemmed and hawed his way out of a question about re-purposing Salemtown's Fehr School Building back to an educational institution. I won't miss him.