How To Diversify Metro Schools: One Candidate For Mayor Says More Buses, Other Says Cheaper Housing

You could walk into some Nashville schools, where more than 90 percent of students are African-American, and wonder if desegregation ever occurred. Both candidates for mayor identify this as a problem, but they have different ways to address the segregated status of many Nashville schools.

The answer to at-large council member Megan Barry comes in housing policy. She wants to create more mixed income neighborhoods along major corridors. She says having housing at varying price points in the same parts of town should eventually trickle into the school system.

“When you have folks from all different walks of life living in a neighborhood, then that will help your neighborhood school look like all of Nashville,” she says.

As chairman of the school board, candidate David Fox was named in a lawsuit accusing a school rezoning plan of re-segregating the district. A
federal judge found that the redrawing of school zones did increase segregation, but not on purpose. The controversial rezoning also created more school choice with what since has become an open enrollment policy.

But allowing students to choose their school doesn’t mean much if they can’t get there.

“From this point, the way we desegregate our school system is you create a larger number of high performing schools, and you provide a transportation service where anyone can get to them,” Fox says.

Metro Schools does offer MTA bus passes for middle and high school students choosing to leave their neighborhood, but the district hasn’t offered its own bus service because it would be cost prohibitive.

The Candidates, Uncut