NASHVILLE, Tenn. (TN Tribune) — Opportunity Nashville, a nonprofit advocacy organization, has hired Tanaka Vercher to serve as its first executive director. She is charged with leading an effort to elevate Nashville’s sense of urgency to improve educational equity.
Vercher, who is also a two-term Metro Council Member serving Antioch’s District 28 and a veteran of the U.S. Navy, has spent much of her professional career working as an administrator in higher education at the Tennessee Student Assistance Corporation and Tennessee State University, supporting college-bound students.
“Nashville has a thriving, diverse economy, full of opportunities. But those opportunities are out of reach for too many of our local students who aren’t adequately prepared to succeed in college or career after high school,” Vercher said. “Access to a high-quality education is Nashville’s most pervasive social justice issue. For decades, access to a high-quality public school in Nashville has largely been determined by a family’s zip code. Our city must focus on ending the systemic inequities that have existed in our public schools, so all students are provided the opportunity to succeed in life.”
As evidence of this, Vercher pointed to the low percentage of Metro Nashville Public Schools students who are considered by the state to be a “Ready Graduate,” meaning they have a 21 on the ACT or they’ve completed coursework that will prepare them to go directly into the workforce.
“Only 30% of MNPS students are Ready Graduates, meaning less than one-third of our youth are well positioned for success after high school. The percentage is even smaller for students of color (21%) and students who are economically disadvantaged (18.9%). Nashville is growing, but we’re still a small enough city that we can fix this, if we make it a priority,” Vercher said.
Vercher will oversee the work of Opportunity Nashville to drive improvement in educational equity through three areas of focus: public conversation, democratic participation, and elected representation.
One of the organization’s first efforts will be to facilitate a series of public listening sessions during the 2022 school board race. By partnering with other established community organizations, Opportunity Nashville will host a meeting in each of the four even-numbered school board districts, all of which will be on the ballot in August.
The format of the listening sessions will be the reverse of the typical political forum where candidates share their ideas. Instead, the meetings will be designed to gather input from parents and voters about what the school board needs to do to ensure there’s a great school in every neighborhood.
“The power to make positive change in our school system ultimately sits with our elected school board. But it takes the entire community getting involved to create the vision of what we want our schools to look like and elect the candidates who are committed to making change,” Vercher said.
