By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — There is a quiet revolution going on in Metro schools regarding discipline. To keep kids from getting suspended Hillsboro High School is using conflict resolution and Fall-Hamilton Elementary is using stress reduction techniques. “If there is not a safe trusting environment for kids to come to school in, they are not going to learn,” said Lorraine Stallworth from MNPS Student Services. She said a sense of community provides a safe learning space. District Teachers, administrators, and students echoed that sentiment at a meeting around school discipline and racial disparities in MNPS November 16. “We…
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By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN -— Paying a bail bond gets you out of jail until your court date. It’s supposed to guarantee you will show up in court to face charges. If you don’t, the bail bondsman forfeits his money. He’s already got yours and you won’t ever get it back. Most people show up in court anyway whether they posted a bond or not. “There is zero empirical evidence that shows money bail actually does what they are using it to do. Zero. So why are they still using it?” asks attorney Jerry Gonzalez. “It’s all about money,”…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — A small group of Fisk University students and activists from the Peoples’ Alliance For Transit, Housing, and Employment (PATHE) held a funeral procession Thursday for Nashville’s gentrified neighborhoods. Holding cardboard gravestones they marched down Jefferson Street to TSU’s Elliott Hall where an Open House for Mayor Megan Barry’s transit plan was being held. Organizer Khem Plata grew up in New York where he said urban planners built highways over people in the South Bronx and Harlem. “So people move to the suburbs and are able to come in and make the money, spend the…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — Two groups are suing Metro government to stop development of 21 acres at Fort Negley Park. Director of Finance Talia Lomax-O’dneal, (African American) Purchasing Agent Michelle Lane, (African American) and Steve Barry, Director of the Division of Property are named in the suit that claims Metro broke the law when it put the Greer Stadium site out to bid without declaring it surplus property. “We are doing this because we have no other choice. There is no other way to challenge what the Metro Government is doing with our parks,” said Attorney Jim Roberts.…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – Metro General Government spent $623 million in 2015. One hundred seventy million, about 27%, went to minority subcontractors. In 2016, Metro government spent $624.5 million and minority firms got much less, $30.9 million, or about 5%. “We are going in the wrong direction,” said Alex Coure. He is co-chair of the NAACP Nashville Economic Development Committee. After waiting seven months, Metro Procurement finally released a 2016 Benchmark Report last week. For Nashville’s minority business community it’s déjà vu all over again. Biennial benchmark reports track Metro’s contracts in construction, professional, and non-professional services. The…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – Pretty soon it adds up to real money. The Metro Council is going to vote on three expensive projects City Hall wants but which will add $2.9 billion in debt to a city that is already shouldering $250 million in debt service payments. By 2024 those payments will increase $100 million to $350 million, according to the 2018 Treasurer’s Report. Missing from these calculations is a $1.5 billion backlog of capital spending already approved and waiting to be added to the city’s current reported debt of about $3 billion. City debt is actually closer…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — Like a poke in the eye, Confederate monuments and statues have been bothering African Americans here for more than a century. There are about sixty of them in Tennessee. The first was a wall erected by Confederate soldiers in 1863 at Stones River in Murfreesboro. The newest is a monument to Freeman’s Battery of Nathan Forrest’s First Artillery in Parker’s Crossroads erected in 2002. Only recently have people called for the removal of Confederate statues from parks and public spaces. In 2013, the Memphis City Council changed the names of three parks from Confederate…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — The Finance Appeals Board voted 5-0 last week to uphold the dismissal of the protest by the only minority-led team in the bidding to develop Fort Negley. The award, worth about $200 million, was given to a political ally of Mayor Megan Barry, Bert Mathews. “They already had their minds made up,” said Devinder Sandhu. “I raised enough questions that there should have been at least one Doubting Thomas on that board who would have said ‘Wait a minute. There are some valid points being raised here’.” Sandhu is the man behind the Adventure…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — If you look for Edgehill on Google Maps you won’t find it. The late British writer Jessica Mitford said something similar about Oakland, the city across the bay from San Francisco. “There is no ‘there’ there,” she said. Many residents of Edgehill feel that way about their neighborhood. “You can build what you want but after it’s built people won’t stay because they don’t feel connected to the larger community,” said Pearl Sims, a Metro Planning Commissioner. Sims was with a group of about thirty Edgehill residents and she was talking to Jeff Hall,…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — NASHVILLE, TN – Belmont University wants to put an indoor batting cage and some offices in a public park they already have dibs on for baseball and track and field events. Belmont signed a lease in 2007 that gave the school first choice on using the fields in E. S. Rose Park for $4000 a month. Belmont paid for a $9 million renovation of the 24-acre park in 2010-11. It is has 2 outdoor baseball fields, a big soccer and track & field stadium, tennis courts and basketball courts. It is a very nice…