Development and growth are complicated issues - committing to the success of Nashville children is simple

The lives of our most vulnerable residents - including many children - will only improve when our whole city commits itself to this purpose.

by Bob Bernstein

The 2018 Education Report Card is 63 pages long, includes nine appendixes, has numerous charts and graphs, makes five recommendations, adds an equal number of commendations and lists four concerns.

The Committee looked at Metro Nashville Public Schools in general and Social and Emotional Learning in particular. However, one rather simple message of the Report concerned the city as a whole.

The lives of our most vulnerable residents -- including many children -- will only improve when our whole city commits itself to this purpose.

Urban school districts all over the country are struggling. In fact, it’s difficult to point to any of them as models. On top of all the well-discussed issues these districts face (high concentrations of poverty, great racial and ethnic diversity, large concentrations of immigrant populations, multiple language diversity and frequent rates of student mobility) our city has its own additional circumstances.

Nashville has changed dramatically over the past several years. While tremendous growth has created incredible opportunities and successes for many, the boom has also caused havoc for many.

Lack of affordable of housing, public transportation, immigrant services and unequal economic opportunities lead the list of issues that need to be addressed.

Our public schools are filled with students who don’t get enough to eat at home, take hours-long commutes to school, can’t speak English and are forced to move (sometimes multiple times) during the school year.

If we truly want to improve the lives of these children then we need to commit additional resources and more importantly create a long-term vision for the city that reflects this.

With this in mind, the committee recommended:

The Mayor’s Office should create an action team made up of representatives from the school district, Metro government, and the business and non-profit communities to consider the impact of the city’s growth on our youngest Nashvillians, specifically gentrification and displacement, and focuses on how services to address these issues are mindful of the needs of families with children.

The committee picked the Mayor’s Office as the place this initiative should begin for at least two big issues.

First, we believe the mayor is the one individual who represents the city as a whole. The issues facing our schools and children will take work from government, business, non-profit and community organizations. The mayor is the ideal person to gather all these groups who together can make significant change.

The committee also picked this particular mayor because he has shown an understanding of the issue and a desire to address it. Mayor David Briley met with the committee twice and each time he talked about the need to address the inequities in this city. He recently announced an initiative that will hopefully address some of this inequity. The Nashville GRAD program (Getting Results by Advancing Degrees) would provide $1 million in scholarships to first-time, full-time students at Nashville state Community College and TCAT Nashville. These funds would expand the Tennessee Promise model that gives free tuition by adding funds for books, transportation and living expenses.

“Poverty should never be an obstacle to achievement,” he was quoted in the Tennessean about this program. “Right now it is. It is a pretty clear decision for our city that if we want to have our young people in this city succeed, we need to break down this obstacle.”

The committee was excited to hear at the Report Card public release that Mayor Briley agreed to follow through with the recommendation and stands ready to assist in any way.

Development and growth are complicated issues.

Committing to making sure our children are both protected and able to benefit from the Nashville Boom is not. It’s rather simple.

Bob Bernstein (http://childfriendlynashville.com/) is a first-year member of the Education Report Card committee. A Chicago native, he is the founder of Bongo Java, Fido, Jefferson Street Cafe and other Nashville restaurants. He became interested in education issues as a reaction to his disappointment with his formal education. His two sons (12 and 10) attend a Montessori school because Bob and his wife wanted a different experience for his kids. Bob has been in Nashville for 30 years and is married to Irma Paz-Bernstein, co founder of Las Paletas.