Councilman asks school board to pull $6M for rezoning resources

The cash would come from school district reserve funds

Email | Print By Amy Griffith

Metro Council member Jerry Maynard is calling on Nashville’s Board of Education to appropriate $6 million from school district reserve funds for implementation of a controversial rezoning plan.

The plan — approved by the board in a five-to-four split vote in July — has been publicly criticized by Maynard and others. The plan stands to resegregate Metro Nashville Public Schools, Maynard has said. Plan supporters say it will provide Nashvillians with the parent and community engagement benefits of neighborhood schools.

The plan promises approximately $6 million in additional resources for schools in North Nashville’s Pearl-Cohn cluster. Some schools in that cluster stand to have their percentages of African-American and economically disadvantaged students increase.

Maynard’s letter, sent this afternoon to board members, argues that the board should immediately allocate the required $6 million from district reserve funds. Neither state law nor Metro charter would allow the current board to “guarantee” those funds be in place, year after year, he said in the letter.

“The discussions surrounding the recently-adopted Student Assignment Plan have been filled with promises by certain Board of Education members as justification for supporting the plan,” Maynard writes in the letter. “As the term for two current Board of Education members comes to an end, I feel it is important that the sitting Board take the necessary action to ensure that these promises are fulfilled.”

Maynard asks in the letter that the funds be appropriated at the board’s next regular meeting, on Aug. 12 — the last meeting before two newly elected board members are sworn in.

Click here to read the letter.