The picture says it all. What a mess.

If Dr. Garcia has endorsed the rezoning plan back in October and the Board has passed it by the same vote, would he still be the Director of Schools?

Hey now, ain't I the face of the TN Democratic party?

I find it ironic that in the comments following a wrong-headed post by Jeff Woods yesterday, Matt Pulle admits that he needs more education about Nashville's troubled public school system, and then follows it with this utter drivel.

I'm not sure I understand how anyone can fail to see the connection between recruiting businesses to Nashville -- one of the Chamber's functions - and a viable public school system that both serves the children of people who might move to the area and provides graduates who are well educated enough to hire. Is there something wrong with the goal of graduating students who have the skills it takes to get and keep a good job? Most Metro schools are not doing that now. In fact, several of our schools are on a list of "drop-out factories," a trend that years of Dr. Garcia's leadership did nothing to stem.

Nashville's public schools are failing in large part because several board members have viewed "diversity," which they define as enough black people each school, as a greater mission than providing a sound education. The result has been to remove the diversity of class from the system, as middle-class parents of all races, colors and creeds have fled the system in droves in search of schools that provide what schools are supposed to provide: A good education, provided in good facilities, in a pleasant and disciplined environment, by good teachers, supported by good administrators and good resources.

The board's insistence that last year's poorly researched Standard School Attire program, an attempt to combat gang attire and an overt acknowledgement of the failure of most schools to enforce the sensible dress code already in place, is only one in a long series of wrong-headed moves that the school board rubberstamped under the downright mean-spirited leadership of Dr. Garcia. I supported implementation of SSA at the option of the principal at each school for the simple reason that I want teachers at all Metro Schools to be free to focus on teaching rather than acting as uniform or dress code police, and I feel like the principal at each school is the best judge of whether implementing a school uniform will help or hinder teachers' ability to do that.

Dr. Garcia was not just venal, undiplomatic and an educational bureaucrat of the worst order; worse that these, he was unsuccessful. Under his leadership, Metro schools continued to decline and lose members of the middle class, and the reason for that has absolutely nothing to do with racism and everything to do with overcrowded classrooms, poorly maintained and unattractive facilities, a poor quality of education at many schools, dwindling resources, reduced parental involvement in public schools and in the lives of the students who attend them.

Nashville's public schools are caught in a death spiral, because as parents who are capable of providing the kind of volunteer leadership and support schools need to succeed given their budget limitations, it will become even harder than it already is for the system's employees, many of whom are talented and dedicated, to accomplish the goal of providing kids a good eduction.

If the city's voters don't elect board members who will insist that the quality of education delivered at every school in the system be the first and only priority, the death spiral will continue.

Mr. Pulle, I have to ask: Do you have any children in the public school system? How many public schools have you visited? Have you used a bathroom in a public school facility? (I ask this because, when my child made the transition from a private school to a public school that's actually one of the system's few bright spots, she was warned by friends NOT to use the rest rooms in her school because of their nastiness. "Just hold it," her friends advised, and they were serious. And that's at a school that's one of the best in the system! If that doesn't tell you something about the very basic issues that kids attending public schools confront, and some of the issues driving parents who have any way at all the escape the system out of it, the cause is hopeless.

This sort of muckraking commentary is beneath even the mean-spirited, dour, poorly edited vehicle for disgusting personal ads that the Scene has become in recent years. If you're going to write about public education, be responsible enough not to take cheap shots that reflect such a desperate want of research and insight into the real issues confronting the system. It's all about learning, not politics, and the only thing proponents of diversity uber alles have succeeded in doing is driving the middle class out of the system because it hasn't focused on its real job: Educating students.

You should have pointed out that it was the chamber that propped Garcia up all those years,

Ok, and then let's point out that Garcia is GONE. Has been for months. Please, move on to current news that is relevant and stop rehashing what used to be.

Cover the school board race and the issues so you can at the very least push your agenda for what you think it should be instead of turning Pith into a personal vendetta against the people on the BOE that didn't vote the way you wanted. Used to be that defined the CP - not the Scene.

Curious to know which district(s) mom and runs live in? Yes, it is relevant and much of what you observe/experience is accurate. But a five/four vote either way is still not an achievement for the Chamber or anyone. There's never time to do it right but always time to do it over. If Mr. North has a vacation planned, then put it off four weeks instead of two. Mr. Kindall was not asking for it to start over but only more time for thoughtful consideration. If the Board doesn't have time to do that when proposals and revised proposals are presented with no real data about cost, we don't need a Board.

MNPS Mother is absolutely right that the Chamber of Commerce has a natural interest in the quality of schools. If you don't think so, Matt, you boys should interview HR people at some of Nashville's bigger companies. Interview Realtors who work with executives relocating here from other cities. I think you'll find that middle- and upper-middle class newcomers are often told that, if they have school-age children, they shouldn't even consider living in Davidson County unless they're prepared to send their kids to private schools. That's how bad the reputation of our schools has become. And it's certainly not helpful to business (as if it were helpful to anyone else). It would be exceedingly strange, not to mention a "dereliction of duty," were the Chamber NOT involved.

As to your point (if we may be generous enough for the moment to upgrade it to a "point") about the Chamber's propping of Pedro, they're guilty as charged for some (not "all") of those years. And at the time, it made sense for them to support him. Why? Because Pedro was not an unmitigated disaster, especially at first. There was, as Pedro charged, a ton of deadwood in the system when he arrived. Things were stagnant and he shook them up. He and his deputy, Sandy, who was pretty effective but much disliked (partly because she was effective, and partly because she was heavy-handed), had a fairly good track record of taking underperforming school systems and getting scores up within the first 4-5 years. By that time, they generally got hired away by another city with poor schools. And that was good for them because, like many turnaround specialists, they were on less firm footing once they got past those initial sets of improvements. They were in Nashville longer than anyone else, and found themselves in a bit of terra incognita. It got much tougher for Garcia after Sandy broke up the team and took another job. Things had reached a plateau, then began sinking. The Chamber, like many others who had, with reason, backed Garcia during his early years, began to see the problems escalating. And Garcia's abrasive, dismissive style, which in some ways had been an asset when he was battling the entrenched satraps in the system at first, now became a huge liability.

If I'm not mistaken, David Fox was among the people the Chamber supported back in 2006, and he was hardly a fan of Pedro.

By the way, you boys ought to do a little more homework on the school board candidates the chamber endorsed this time around instead of merely dismissing them as "acolytes." In two of the three districts with newcomers, the person they endorsed is African American. I have worked with Sharon Gentry enough to convince me she would be a tremendous asset to the board. In District 9, either Coverstone or Limbird would be a major upgrade over the current representative.

Finally, your brief history of the past two years sounds a little like Pravda's brief history of the Cold War. It uncritically accepts the Garcia-Kindall version of events while ignoring some inconvenient truths. The biggest ignored truth is that there were ample reasons for moving Pedro down the road -- as your own "history" inadvertently acknowledges when you claim that test scores were plummeting. (More accurate, by the way, to say they were slowly sinking rather than plummeting, but I gathered that you were indulging yourself in some inflammatory rhetoric since you all believe that the normal guidelines on journalism don't apply on these new-media blog things.) Of course, it's easier for Pedro to say that racism was at work in his buyout deal. Another overlooked bit of history is that Marcia Warden, bless her little heart, was right: Pedro had lost the confidence of a majority of the board. This was hardly news to Pedro. The contract extension he received in 2006 was a very near thing. He had already lost the confidence of many board members even then, and survived because he essentially threatened to leave if they didn't extend his deal, and the board blinked instead of calling his bluff. (That was their bad.) Pedro was enough of an inside player to understand the situation. Nobody ever said he was dumb.

I can't offer you any smoking guns as proof, but my own opinion is that Pedro realized, in the face of increasing opposition from those you describe as "white liberal good-government types," that race could become a useful wedge issue that could help him survive and control the board. It should surprise no one, really, that the two board members whose fingerprints, not to mention hand-written notes, are on the just-released Pedro memo from January are Kindall and Thompson, the two who most prominently play the race card in the board meetings.

For the record for what it's worth, David Fox was an absolute supporter of Dr. Garcia when he ran for the School Board. That was a central part of his platform. Go back and read the Scene/City Paper/ Tennessean archives.

By the way, last night I finally got to watch most of the school board meeting on Channel 3. Did the Scene actually have anyone there covering it? After watching the meeting, I had to wonder, because I got a very different picture of events from what has been portrayed on these pages. Some examples:

• As was emphasized several times during the debate, each of the 9 board members was allowed to hand-pick one person for the task force that recommended the rezoning plan. The task force voted unanimously to endorse the plan. I saw nothing about this in the Scene's coverage. Could be that I missed it. But it certainly hasn't been part of the debate here. Yet the 9-0 vote appears to have been a major factor in Karen Johnson's decision to vote for the plan, making her the maligned "swing vote." (As an aside, I noticed that Kindall engaged in a bit of cheap lawyering when he retorted to Johnson that it was the board that was tasked with voting on this plan and not the task force, which prompted Johnson angrily to tell Kindall not to put words in her mouth.)

• This exchange hints at but does not fully capture the anger and tensions that were evident in this meeting, both between board members and within the audience. Let's just say the audience was ill-mannered. At times Kindall and Warden looked they were ready to head to the octagon for a death match to settle things. Perhaps most disturbing of all to me was George Thompson, who at one point seemed to make a veiled threat that if the board did not vote as he wanted, then there would be no "peace," which could easily have been interpreted as a threat to stir up racial turmoil.

• Speaking of Thompson, the Scene reported on his motion asking that all board members who had gone on the Miami trip and had been "lobbied" recuse themselves. Thompson cited the "Scene magazine" for his information about the alleged violation of the open meetings law. Karen Johnson, the only member to respond directly to this request, said she had never been lobbied and had no intention of recusing herself. She also pointed out -- and this is where I perked up -- that she had been interviewed by the Scene and told its reporter exactly what she had just told Thompson, but that the Scene had not used her comments in its story. (Given the obvious relevance of her denial to the Scene's story, I wonder why her comments would not have been used.) At this point, and here is where the meeting descended briefly into a deeper level of farce, Marsha Warden sought clarification from Metro's legal counsel about the rules regarding recusal. Thompson cut her off, shouting (paraphrasing here), "I'm a lawyer, too, and he (the Metro lawyer) doesn't outweigh me." Warden, when she finally got a word in, pointed out that she was asking for the Metro attorney in his official capacity to explain the rules, which he finally did. Thompson came across looking like a shrill idiot.

• As I have stated elsewhere, I think it was probably reasonable, given the tensions here, to have deferred this vote for another couple of weeks or a month at most. (By the way, it was Glover and not North who said he had a prior commitment in two weeks; he did not say it was a vacation. When Kindall replied that the vote then could be deferred for 4 or 6 weeks, Glover was adamant that he would not wait, without explaining why.) As was noted above, Kindall was correct in pointing out that they had received the budget figures for the rezoning only a short time before and no one had had the chance really to study them in detail. This provided more legitimacy for the motion to postpone the vote. But it also doesn't change the fact that Kindall DID show up at the 11th hour (and 59th minute of that hour) with a new proposal that would significantly modify what the task force (which included one of his own hand-picked representatives) had spent six months working on. And as Mark North pointed out under questioning, many of the issues Kindall raised had already been considered by the task force in developing their proposal.

After watching the board meeting, I got a much better sense of perspective about why the 5 in the majority wanted no further delays. This was not a case, as some in the media have suggested, of a board simply ramming something through with no consideration for black children. As Warden pointed out, Bill Purcell during his time as mayor had "chastised" the board for not addressing the excess capacity in its facilities, and the resulting waste of tax dollars. Karl Dean has done the same. But for all those years the board proved unable to come to any tough decisions about rezoning. In fact, she said, the decision to appoint a task force was a result from this paralysis -- take the heavy lifting out of the board's hands. At one point, Thompson began ranting that the directive to the board to address this issue went back all the way to Phil Bredesen's term as mayor. Warden loudly interjected "Thank you!" She was aware, as it appeared Thompson was not, that Thompson had reinforced her point. Given all this background, I can understand the impatience on the part of some board members toward Kindall and his revised plan. Was it possible to give him some benefit of the doubt here? Sure. But I couldn't help but suspect that his move was merely another stall tactic aimed at keeping a meaningful decision from ever taking place. I got the strong impression that's what some of the other board members thought. After all, this guy has been on the board so long that he embodies the old status quo.

• Finally, I haven't seen anyone report on Kindall's behavior at the end of the meeting. The vote to consider the rezoning plan as a whole (instead of excluding Pearl-Cohn, Hillboro and Hillwood) was 5-4 and was quickly followed by the 5-4 vote to approve the rezoning plan. After both votes by show of hands, Kindall loudly said "5-4, just like Dr. Garcia said." (I couldn't help but wonder here, Jeff: If Garcia and Kindall could count the likely votes ahead of time, what that does to the suggestion that Steve Glover was making backroom deals.) Then the kicker: As soon as the final vote was registered, Kindall got up and stalked out of the room. The meeting was still clearly in session. It only strengthened my impression of him as a petulant bully.

One other thing:

I agree with a lot of what MNPS Mother had to say about diversity. I think diversity is extremely important, though I would put educational excellence first in priority. But one thing often overlooked in these discussions, as "Mother" points out, is that while most of our schools (at least the high schools and middle schools) have racial diversity, they lack socioeconomic diversity except in the magnet schools. When 70% of the kids in Metro schools qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches, that is a pretty homogeneous group. Why should MNPS not make a goal of achieving socioeconomic diversity as well as racial diversity?

Revisionist, you're no doubt right about Fox's position at the time he ran. I confess that I didn't pay any real attention to that campaign. But I did talk privately with Fox several times during his first 6-8 months on the board, and it was clear to me that, by that time, it would have been a stretch to call him a Pedro fan. I got the sense that he had been kind of shocked to discover how bad things were on that board.

It seems to me, a longtime observer and MNPS parent, that most people haven't been paying attention except when their ox is getting gored.
There is a great deal of history, passion and work reflected in this "rezoing". The steady leaving of MNPS, while initially racial, has been mostly related to a desire for consistent and predictable quality of educational opportunities, options for different learning styles and needs, and safety. This is why the magnets have been the only thing that keeps the whole system from tipping. Mr. Garcia & Co. and supporters were continually warned that they were escalating this pattern and they refused to hear what was being said. In fact, they tried to gut the gifted and magnet programs. So now we are reaping what they fertilized very well.

It might be easier if this were about race, but it's not. It's about class. Yes, there is overlap, with minorities showing higher poverty rates. But can anyone show that minorities in this town who can afford private school are sticking with the publics out of a commitment to diversity? Or that poor kids of any one race or ethnicity are better off than the poor of another? By shipping the neediest kids all over town, we slowly turn every school into a place that must put social service needs above academic imperatives. The SSA policy was a symptom of this--though one of the more innocuous symptoms. Perhaps the symbolism of it--remember all the haves v. have nots talk that dominated that debate--should have been taken more seriously. It exposed a divide between those see schools as primarily for education and those who treat schools as the place to address society's social ills, where the so-called privileged "take one for the team."

This, I truly believe, is at the heart of the middle-class flight issue at MNPS. It's why parents are more willing to stick it out in elementary school--when the educational stakes seem a little lower and where parents can have a greater direct impact because of the smaller numbers--but tend to want out by middle school and above.

Segregation by race is a corrosive problem in this town. It is not something we want our schools to exacerbate. But it is also not something that our schools can fix on their own. Furthermore, we can't continue to ignore the fact that many middle-class parents, regardless of race or ethnicity, will want to find a school that caters to their kids needs as well as the often very pressing social and economic needs of underprivileged children.

This may sound harsh to some, but it is the reality we live in. We expect our schools to operate according to a redistributionist model that we reject in almost every other aspect of our socio-political system. Is that right or wrong? I'm not sure, to be honest. But it's a fact. And that attitude is killing public education by driving those able to afford private school right out of the system.

Charter schools like KIPP get all kinds of accolades--from the Scene not least--and they are not particularly integrated racially or economically. But they are able to focus on their kids' human needs in ways that in turn foster a stronger academic learning environment. Is that so wrong? Let's tailor our resources for children in sensible ways. What's so awful about taking all that money saved on fuel and spending it on enhanced classroom activities, human resources and top-notch social workers instead? Or better, more accessible, more affordable--dare I say free--after-school programming closer to home? There is so much that could be done, but instead here we are, fighting the old battles.

We won't see discussion of these sorts of complex issues from the Scene. It doesn't make for as sensational and neatly packaged a screaming rant. As Karen Johnson pointed out, when the Scene writers talked to her and heard facts that didn't fit the story they wanted to write, they just pretended those facts didn't exist. Sadly, the last few years have shown that the Scene will just provide the same level of depth and complexity that you can find on right-wing talk radio. It's hilarious to see these guys jump all over the Tennessean.

In the past, Karen Johnson has cut and paste our stories about the board and put them on her blog, telling all her readers to make sure they checked out our coverage to get a better sense of what's happening.

So as of a few months ago, she didn't have a problem with our reporting then.

My God that's really weak Matt. What's next, "She touched me first?"

Scene editors make note: Your readers want more from you. They want something better. They want intelligent, factual, researched posts. That's what these many comments are saying - they are taking up for viewpoints not addressed. That's why when something truly important is happening in education you get so many posts. People want information and discussion that you are not providing.

Parent is right - you guys making fun of the Tennessean or CP has become an exercise of merely looking in the mirror. And that is really too bad because you could be better. It's a good thing people can get your magazine for free or you'd likely be in the same boat financially as well.

Please, step it up Scene before you lose your intelligent readers and the blog posts here are as unintelligent and shrill as the dailies.

Seems to me that a daily should be doing the current fact info and the Scene the exposé. It's hard to figure out what the elephant really looks like but maybe the State with their numbers will. They had a good start Tuesday night.

Nashville has a real journalism deficit, period. Under the self-important, committee-of-insider/chattering class, better-than-thou, superiority complex leadership of Liz Garrigan, the Scene accelerated its long, slow slide from the must-read publication with fresh voices, interesting viewpoints, occasionally excellent reporting, and indepth stories it started out offering in the early 1990s that has reached its nadir in the mean-spirited rants posted on this blog by Matt Pulle.

Mr. Pulle made some valid contributions to the Scene during his first round on the editorial staff. But since Ms. Garrigan rescued him from Dallas because he needed a change of scenery after a broken engagement, this post and his weak retorts -- with no acknowledgment that his rant was poorly targeted and written with an inadequate and inaccurate understanding of the current status of the public schools -- has been typical of his contribution to the fading paper. Perhaps Mr. Pulle would still be engaged if he could honestly and gracefully admit it when he or any of his writers are wrong or do a poor reporting job, as any woman will tell you the worst kind of guy to marry is the kind who always has to be right, especially when he's wrong.

So the upshot is that between the Scene's rants and the Tennessean's Jaime Sarrio's inane coverage -- Ms. Sarrio just doesn't get it -- she doesn't understand the issues facing the public schools and her articles are useless in helping city leaders and activist pin down and address valid issues because she focuses on minor things while ignoring the elephant in the room-- schools that are so bad the state has had to step in and the mass exodus of the middle class several other posters here have mentioned.

Finally, advertisers, why are you investing any of your hard-earned money with the Scene? An ad in today's Scene undermines your business's credibility, and it will as long as they cherish the hearty contempt for their readers and advertisers reflected in this post and its leering picture.

Was that the 1890s or the 1990s? You could get a job with the Scene, according to your criteria, because your post makes no points, gives no specifics and generally puts others down for nothing other than seemingly interpersonal dislikes.

Curious:

I made several points:

1. The quality of the Scene's content has declined in recent years.
2. Irresponsible rants accompanied by crudely sarcastic pictures -- like the one we're commenting on here -- have contributed to that decline, possibly because the Scene's editorial staff is spending time expressing opinions here that could be better spent researching substantive stories on issues affecting the community, of which education is a very important one.
3. The Tennessean's notable lack of a credible education reporter leaves an opening for good reporting the Scene could, but has not filled, especially in this post and the posts about Pedro Garcia's letter, leaked out at an opportune time by members of the board who value "diversity," which they define as enough black people in each Metro school, a ratio they want to determine, over education, because the zoning plan did not offer this ratio. The Scene's post adopted, without question, Dr. Garcia's party line, without mentioning that several Nashville high schools, most notably those serving the community Messrs. George Thompson and Ed Kindall purport to represent, have been taken over by the state because their performance is so poor, and that several Nashville high schools appeared on a national list of "dropout factories," something Dr. Garcia and Messrs. Thompson and Kindall have done nothing (that worked) to address. At this point, the new zoning plan may be the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs for a lot of the low-income kids who attend Metro schools, and middle class families have left the system in droves in recent years for the sole reason that a quality education for their children is their first, and perhaps even their only priority. The Scene had an opportunity to do a substantive story about why this has occurred that doesn't, as Messrs. Thompson and Kindall have done, play the race card as a copout when everyone knows that poor-quality schools are the real problem.

There is no excuse for my post, which was mean and which I would delete if this forum allowed for that. It does reflect my anger and disappointment in the Scene's approach to education and to many other real issues affecting the community. It's easy to stand on the sidelines throwing dirt and calling names. It's a lot harder to try to do something positive. The Scene has chosen the easier route in its comments on the zoning plan.

I decided to use my empty nest days to substitute in the Metro system. I did not want a full time classroom, but a mission of sorts. Not a religious mission, but a personal one. I have deliberately chosen to go to the inner city schools where they have a hard time getting subs and in a selfish way I thought they needed me. I get to talk to the teachers, see different administrations in action and see the students from all over the district. These schools have great teachers who are waiting with open arms to teach all of the children, no matter where they come from. The deep, dark reason schools fail is because the children lack respect for education and motivation at home. I have been spit on, kicked, cursed, had chairs thrown at me and threatened by some as young as kindergarten. The teachers cannot easily undo the influence already marking the children. You want excellence in schools? The answer has not been in diversity. A few white kids cannot carry some imagined light into any school. The minority children have to bring their own light into the school. Parents, expect excellence from them and you will get it. Doom them to failure because they attend an all black school? You will get failure. How racist is it to expect an all black high school to fail? Come on NAACP, The Scene and parents... get with it. Do something novel for a change and give some positive influence. Teach personal responsibility, support your neighborhood schools and cheer them on to success. The kids depend on you and the teachers are ready and waiting.

I can tell you are angry but the first two points are as subjective and emotional as you say the Scenes are: "quality" a relative word, and "irresponsible rants" another judgement phrase. And, thirdly, should not any news publication print, if legitimate, information received about an issue, not making judgement calls on the timing? You may not like it but it doesn't mean it's not relevant for people to know. If you are a 90s guy, and I now assume you are not 110 years old, you really don't know much, and certainly have not lived, about the painful history of segregation and desegregation and integration in Nashville and the South. How close and personal was it for you and your family? Did you get bused through the 70s and 80s and change schools each year? Or were you insulated from "diversity"? We all have stories to tell and that might be a better solution to our zoning choices than drawing lines in the sand: that was Pedro's history which he clearly once again articulated in his rambling "memo".

BTW: I do think that if more people could "tell their stories" in diverse settings throughout the city, we might find a way to make a common ground and recover the public education community. It's hard work to separate ourselves all the time: look at the ridiculous political process and the tons of money spent to differentiate voters. Would it be any more expensive in terms of time, emotion and money to find agreement?

Mr. Pulle made some valid contributions to the Scene during his first round on the editorial staff. But since Ms. Garrigan rescued him from Dallas because he needed a change of scenery after a broken engagement, this post and his weak retorts -- with no acknowledgment that his rant was poorly targeted and written with an inadequate and inaccurate understanding of the current status of the public schools -- has been typical of his contribution to the fading paper. Perhaps Mr. Pulle would still be engaged if he could honestly and gracefully admit it when he or any of his writers are wrong or do a poor reporting job, as any woman will tell you the worst kind of guy to marry is the kind who always has to be right, especially when he's wrong.

Wow, if by "insider" you mean your head is up your ass, you certainly earn the title. This stuff about Matt getting "rescued" from Dallas because of some failed relationship is total bullshit. You're entitled to your opinion about the supposed decline of the paper, but doesn't that sort of personal attack strike you as just a wee bit hypocritical? Evidently not.

I read Karen Johnson's op-ed piece in the Tennessean this morning, and she brought up a statistic I hadn't seen until now but had wondered about. According to her, Pearl-Cohn already was 88% African American. The rezoning will increase that to 91%. So the segregation that some are denouncing so vehemently was, not surprisingly, already a hallmark of the old system. I would be curious to see exactly how the racial mix would change at Hillwood and Hillsboro. So far, this citywide discussion has been mostly about perceptions and abstractions, and the media have done little to promote a more rational conversation.

Assuming every single student in N. Nashville chooses to go to Pearl-Cohn instead of Hillwood (unlikely to happen, if you ask me), then Hillwood would be 24% African American (currently, it is 49%). It would go from being 48% free and reduced lunch to 33% free and reduced lunch.

Hillsboro would actually INCREASE the number of African American students by 50. They would go from 52% African American to 54%. They would go from 37% free and reduced lunch to 39%.

Curious:

I'll address only your point about "quality" being a relative word.

According to the existing objective standards -- achievement test scores, retention rates, graduation rates -- many Metro schools are failing to provide the kids who attend them with a good education. You can also read that another way -- that the kids who attend Metro schools are failing to avail themselves of the educational opportunities they could receive at the schools available to them -- but by any measure, schools taken over by the state of Tennessee because of the poor performance of their students and/or schools designated as drop-out factories in a national study are not successful, and they're not providing a quality education.

For the record, I define a quality education as an education that succeeds in teaching all students who aren't hampered by a learning disability serious enough to necessitate special attention beyond a regular classroom basic skills during elementary school. By basic skills, I mean the alphabet, numbers, reading, a good understanding of English grammar, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, spelling, and some very rudimentary science and history in the context of learning to read and use math. Adding a foreign language -- in our case, Spanish, since we're now a bilingual country - as they do in parts of Europe and China, where elementary school students are required to take English, would be a big plus, but since we aren't succeeding in preparing students for advanced math, literature, history and science study in junior high and high school, my hopes for earlier and better exposure to a foreign language are dim at this point.

You can present excuses for the poor performance of Dr. Garcia, MNPS administrators and the school board until you're blue in the face. The fact is, we can't do anything about the past, and we need to move forward. A zoning plan that spends fewer of Metro's scarce dollars on buses and fuel and more on teachers and classroom resources -- perhaps only a wistful dream of at least one positive result of this zoning plan -- would represent a step forward.

In fact, two aspects of busing have been largely missing from this discussion. I suspect that rising fuel costs will make busing untenable at some point in the future just because it's too expensive and adds to the city's carbon emissions. It would make a lot more sense to promote neighborhood schools and make sure those in neighborhoods with fewer resources have smaller classes, more teachers and more teachers aides. Plus, it seems perniciously racist to me to say, directly or indirectly, that the only way black children can get a good education is to go to a predominantly white school. The era of "separate but equal" when the schools available to African Americans were vastly inferior is over. Sadly, the "separate but equal" has been replaced by schools that do an equally poor job by any objective performance measure. Focusing on improving the quality of the education delivered at each school -- and by quality I'm talking about insuring that students learn to read, to write a grammatically correct sentence, a solid battery of math skills, and graduate with skills that enable them to gain entrance to either college or the job market, depending on their preference - is by far the most sane strategy.

Mr. Pink:

Full disclosure: do you work for the Scene?

For at least the fifth time: yes, I work at the Scene, and my name is Jim Ridley. Let's see you make as full a disclosure.

Actually, I've never been engaged (or anything close) and came back to Nashville because I wanted to come back to Nashville.

That said, I had a pretty amazing date this weekend, so maybe my blog posts will start to improve.

OK, now I know the confusion here: My friend and I once filled out a wedding page as a joke for a few of our friends and that still remains online and accessible via google But if you actually read the page, it should be clear that this was a spoof.

So the moral of the story is that you can't believe everything you read on the internets.

Unless it's on Pith.

Guess you forgot what you wrote. My comment about quality was related to your comment about the Scene, not about our public schools. I know alot about our public schools and I doubt our fuel cost savings are going to make the difference in instructional and support services needed for children from impoverished families. There are four generations now of children who were "moved around" and this Board just did it once more. All folks want roots and we only need to look back to the 50s when the geniuses in Washington decided to run the Interstate systems through established Black neighborhoods , like our historic, wonderful North Nashville,to prevent race riots, to know what would happen. And why would anyone who knows that history and lived here, then and now, trust the Chamber to FIX it and spend the resources?!

By the way, I say the Chamber in the previous post because they pull the strings of the school board members they invested in. Don't know about the Council yet.

That picture still says it all. It's Ralph Shultz incognito.

Curious:

This thread is not about the Scene; it's about the Scene's irresponsible assertion that the Chamber of Commerce was somehow responsible for the new zoning plan, first by supporting candidates for school board, and then by "pulling strings" as you darkly suggest in your last post.

As was clearly stated in the meeting where the zoning plan was presented, each member of the school board selected a member of the task force that developed the zoning plan.

Like a lot of parents whose kids are in Metro schools or would be if Metro schools delivered a good education, I care a lot more about whether I can send my child to a Metro school with any confidence that he will get a good education in a safe and pleasant environment than I do the political issue upon which this post focuses.

I also resent the crude use of the "cracker" photo, which appears meant to imply than anyone who doesn't agree with your position is a racially prejudiced white redneck.

Finally, I don't think busing was ever a good idea, although it at least made some sense years ago, when the separate but unequal schools African Americans attended were poorly maintained and equipped with textbooks and equipment cast off from white schools. (Now, they're all poorly maintained and poorly equipped.)

One of the biggest predictors of success for kids is parents who are involved in their education at home and in their school, and low-income parents who depend on public transporation are effectively cut off from any involvement in their child's school if their child ends up at a school way across town, since taking a bus to a night PTA meeting is next to impossible and taxis in Nashville cost more than they do in New York.

I think bussing is a particularly bad idea for elementary school kids for logistical reasons. In Nashville, kids can be bussed 20 miles one way -- a long drive in city traffic -- and kids who spend more than two hours a day waiting for a riding a bus don't have much time for studying, play or extracurricular activities. As far as high school is concerned, I think the doors should be open anywhere in the system if you qualify for a program you're interested in at the school, can get there on the city bus or provide your own transporation. Not everybody WANTS to attend college, and some schools should become vocational magnets with programs design to prepare people to enter the workforce. Here's where involvement of members of the Chamber of Commerce could actually help. I don't like everything the Chamber of Commerce advocates (most of its members probably voted for Bush in the last two elections, for one thing), but I don't think it's an evil organization seeking to somehow dominant the city's educational system, as the Scene seems to think.

Finally, you and I can't do any more about what happened years ago with the interstate system than we can about what happened with the various Native American tribes throughout the United States in the 1700, 1800s and early 1900s. (Shouldn't we still have a community of Cherokees?)

There's also a steadfast refusal on the part of the African American community to step up to the plate and address an issue that has a big impact on the success of kids in school: Parental support, particularly on the part of fathers. Here's an article from the New York Times that addresses that issue.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE3DA1F3DF93AA15755C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Finally, I apologize for my slam at Matt Pulle. I think he and Jeff Woods should be sentenced to spend a week sitting in classrooms at every public schools in town designated a failure by the already low state achievement standards before they write any more about public education - what this thread is about. I also think they ought to interview interns from every non-magnet high school in town and see if they can find a candidate with the basic writing, spelling and grammar skills it takes to proofread a typical Scene article.

90s insider: Did you attend MNPS schools in the 90s and do you have children in them now? And how many minority parents with children in MNPS do you hang out with? I believe it would be to everyone's enlightenment to spend time volunteering in our schools. It was hard during Dr. Garcia and Johnson's era because they wanted control of everything but one lunch hour a week reading or tutoring would give the whole city great insights and the public schools a lot of tutoring.

Curious:

No, I didn't attend MNPS schools in the '90s or ever. I didn't grow up here.

I do have a child in MNPS schools now, and I have one child who is an MNPS graduate.

I currently volunteer at my child's school. My children have attended schools where parents are well organized and supportive, and a school where they weren't, both in the Metro system.

My plan is to volunteer at an elementary school if there are opportunities to read to children in retirement.

If there are as many or more African American students than students of other ethnithcities in the school system, who's a minority? Middle class students are now the real minorities in Metro schools.

I have absolutely no sympathy or patience with someone like Ed Kindall who has spent much of his career huffing and puffing about the Great Things Going on in Nashville Schools while doing nothing about the fact that the kids who attend them are failing and failing to graduate.

Do-nothing grandstanders like Ed Kindall haven't earned the right to complain about any measure the school board takes to address schools' failing performance or financial issues. His suggestion that Metro offer free transportation to any student who wants to go to Pearl Cohn was like the old joke about tying meat around a child's neck so his dog would like him, but less likely to work.

Being an old timer: I can predict that you live in an area of the city which is suburban and your younger child is in elementary school,your MNPS grad might be a stepchild or a child not by this marriage who attended a non-academic magnet high school, and you haven't lived here or in the South through much of the SDI(Segregation, Desegragation, Intergration) era, 1960-2000. Your education experience was private/prep or in a part of the country which was much more segregated politely than here.

We have a lot of work to do and I hope we can because the South is actually much more prepared to talk and work together given our painful history. Southerners are rural by history and family is important: it can be genetic family or locational family. It's just how it works.

Some of us enjoy telling people in other parts of the country who think we're just local yokels that we've had three mayors for almost 20 years who are Eastern educated but they figured it out. It's a great place to live and the people are wonderful, just don't tell us how much better it was/is somewhere else.

Am I right? I would love to be wrong.

Plus you could not tell the truth as you know it. An odd choice to me since I can hardly remember the truth much less some story. But that is an option: you might be a fiction writer too. Who knows?

Har! Don't quit your day job to become a psychic, Curious. I'm proud that you'd love to be wrong, because you're about as wrong as wrong could get. My spouse is Southern born & bred, lived through desegregation, never lived nor gone to school in the East, North or Northeast, would be insulted at the suggestion of Yankee heritage, does not have any children in elementary school, has been married only once, had no children to attend non-academic magnet schools, is completely a product of public schools, is proud to still have rural family, and lives in the urban core of the city. Sorry, no soup for you.

So why did Spouse not answer? You sound just like Marsha Warden. Saw you on TV.

What urban core?

BTW: If you are somehow related to MW, it's been a horrible, thankless lose-lose job. I hope you will get some peace.

Spouse, you depict your husband as a southern gentleman. I find that entertaining.