Should we just give up?

The aftermath of last week’s School Board vote on the new student assignment plan has exposed Nashville’s deepest insecurities and revealed a yawning chasm of suspicion and distrust that has been long ignored but never exorcised.

Most of what has been written or said in these pages, in open meetings, and private conversations leads us to believe that we have already passed the tipping point. Maybe we have.

The numbers are by now familiar. While the city’s population has experienced solid growth, the growth of the public school population has lagged. African Americans now compose roughly half the public school population, whites about a third, with other groups comprising the other fifth. Concentration of poverty has already occurred in the public schools, and dropout rates are unacceptably high.

Yet, as the situation deteriorates, our divisions grow deeper. Criticism and recriminations bound, and when a few suggest talking and working together they are criticized for not taking a side. Blame is the name of the game. Everyone has a scapegoat; few offer solutions. We blame the Chamber of Commerce, the NAACP, white progressives, African-American leaders, Dr. Garcia, private school parents, public school parents, teachers, principals, and even the children.

In this environment, one group has been able to work together, battle over details, and fashion a plan that is both a workable compromise and a reasonable approach. The student assignment task force, composed of representatives from all parts of the city did not always agree and was not dominated by any narrow interest. Its work is not perfect, but no effort to bring people together ever will be. Yet, it represents a strong and unequivocal commitment to the idea that we will only improve the situation when we take seriously the job of improving our schools.

Attracting the middle class and white population back to our public schools is important if we take seriously the values of diversity and integration for the future of our city, but we need to do away with the assumption that we cannot improve the quality of our schools without demographic change. We can and we must improve the quality of our schools by focusing on the schools and providing principals, teachers, staffs, the opportunity to fashion strong school cultures with the students they have. Plenty of research on schools with high concentrations of poverty proves it can be done.
The issue is trust. Broad new commitments focused on school improvement, transportation to exercise choice, and efforts to empower parents are all part of the rezoning plan, but distrust and division threaten to keep us from implementing this plan. Experiences justify much of the distrust on all sides, but nothing justifies such a broad based resistance to conversation.

Now is the time for bold leadership. We need to be willing to talk to each other and to honor our commitments to school improvement. Can we be assured that a single plan will resolve decades of segregation, division, and distrust? No. But when fear and suspicion is voiced clearly an opportunity for reconciliation and progress exists.

The opportunity is fraught with challenge, but if we shrink from that challenge by passing blame to someone else at this point, then the tipping point will be passed.

There is no “them” but us. We are all in this together. What happens in a North Nashville school affects every resident in the Hillwood Cluster as well. This is our city, and if we are going to enjoy a common and prosperous future the time to do the hard work of building trust is now.

Anything else is giving up.