In The City Paper, Pierce Greenberg and Jerome Boettcher address the effect of the so-called "all-comers" debate on two of the university's major concerns: athletics and fundraising. It's something of a sore spot, according to the authors, as Vanderbilt has the second-largest athletic endowment in the SEC but ranks "dead last" in annual giving. Now, as the university faces at least $35 million in "big ticket" improvements, Greenberg and Boettcher look into reports that some dissatisfied alums are withholding donations in protest of what they see as impingement upon campus groups' religious freedom:

[Vice Chancellor of University Affairs and Athletics David] Williams said he, personally, hasn’t witnessed any athletic fundraising blowback from the all-comers discussion.

“I’m not saying that there may not be people who are out there, but we haven’t encountered anybody who has made [all-comers] an issue at all,” Williams said.

At least one donor says that’s just not true.

The City Paper spoke with a longtime supporter, who asked to remain anonymous, who said his family was prepared to make a six-figure donation toward the new multipurpose facility — if Vanderbilt made an exception for religious groups in the nondiscrimination policy. The donor said he met with Franklin and Williams outside of Nashville.

“We expressed ... that we would like to be able to give, we believe in what Coach Franklin’s doing, but we just can’t do that knowing what we know about what’s happening to the religious groups there,” he said.

Similarly, longtime Commodore Club member Tom Singleton has been outspoken about his disdain for the Vanderbilt policy and the school’s enforcement of it. He appears in a video, along with Brentwood’s vice mayor (and a VU alum) Rod Freeman, that denounces the policy’s nondiscrimination mandate for leadership positions.

“The reason this is so objectionable to me is that they are [opening up leadership positions in Christian groups] for non-Christians. But they are allowing fraternities and sororities to discriminate based on gender,” Singleton said. “I can’t, in good conscience, continue to be associated with them.”

One of the oft-heard complaints about Occupy Wall Street and its various offshoots was that the movement's goals and vision were vaguely defined. But the Occupy Vanderbilt movement has a very specific goal: to encourage the university's Office of Investments to develop some basic guidelines for ethical investing. In particular, the group hopes to pressure Vanderbilt to divest from HEI Hospitality, which has a been at the center of some sticky labor relations issues.

Occupy Vanderbilt recently gave Pith a copy of the letter they sent to Matthew Wright, Vanderbilt's vice chancellor for investments.

Open Letter To:

Matthew Wright, Office of Investments

On Thursday, May 3, we took down our Occupy Vanderbilt tent encampment, which had kept an around the-clock vigil on the lawn of Kirkland Hall for 45 days. Hundreds of students, faculty, and staff participated in our opening rally on March 19th and our final rally on May 1. Thousands more participated in the movement for ethical investment by producing, showing, and sharing media, and hosting dozens of teach-ins including a march on the board of trust in November and a teach-in with over 50 faculty and students at the Chancellor's office in February.

The City Paper's Joey Garrison has a big piece this morning on a neighborhood controversy with broader implications for the city: the concerns of parents at Green Hills' Julia Green Elementary School that long-range plans for the respected school's expansion guarantee a future of overcrowding and neighborhood congestion:

“Julia Green is an amazing school,” said Haley Dale, the parent of a Julia Green kindergartner, citing satisfaction with the school’s parental participation, teachers and curriculum.

But parents like Dale are questioning Metro Nashville Public Schools’ long-term plan to expand the school through the construction of 12 additional classrooms to address Julia Green’s rapid growth, a scenario many learned about at a March meeting with school district officials. Though the projected $2.8 million building addition isn’t finalized or appropriated, the subject has nonetheless dominated chatter there.

In short time, Julia Green has mushroomed from a student body of 412 just four years ago to a projected enrollment of 626 next school year. Five portable classrooms are currently used to handle the overflow, and one more will be utilized next year. The growth trajectory is only expected to continue, a trend that would follow the Hillsboro cluster’s overall projected increase of 1,200 elementary school students over the next seven years.

On the surface, expansion might seem logical.

Stephanie Edwards, parent of a rising third-grader and a kindergartner, however, called the plan a “Band-Aid approach.” On top of a host of other concerns about a future addition — ranging from snarled traffic to diminished educational quality — many parents worry that the expansion wouldn’t actually solve the problem, based on estimates of future enrollment.

“Twelve classrooms — they could finish that construction, and we would still need portables if those numbers held true,” said Mary Pierce, who heads the school’s parent-teacher organization. “It’s been a tough issue within the Julia Green community.”

In this upscale area — where the rate of public-versus-private schooling runs about 50-50 among children — parents are looking for other solutions to overcrowded schools. They’re frustrated. Some fear future zoning and student assignment changes. And many have their eyes on a proposed Metro charter school called Great Hearts Academies, subject to school board approval later this month. Taking advantage of the state’s new open enrollment law, the school would act as Metro’s first charter to cater to Green Hills students.

In the end, the unrest at Julia Green is likely just the beginning of a process to grapple with growth within the Hillsboro cluster, which includes Julia Green, and another challenge: satisfying a part of the county that often turns away from the public schools system in favor of private education.

Read the whole story here.

With Nashville evidently placing its chips on charter schools as the future of the city's education system, The City Paper's Joey Garrison details the behind-the-scenes politicking that's becoming a factor in the process of developing — and situating — new charters:

Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, multiple sources have told The City Paper, has on more than one occasion conveyed to Metro school officials his desire for school-board approval of one of Nashville’s newly proposed charter hopefuls: Great Hearts Academies, an Arizona-based charter organization, which has proposed an initial K-12 liberal arts charter school in Nashville, along with a long-term plan for a network of five countywide.

Backed by political heavyweights and the source of considerable buzz, Great Hearts would fill a new niche here. The school, as its application states, would take advantage of the state’s new open enrollment law –– thus it wouldn’t just welcome economically disadvantaged students, whom Nashville charters have historically served, but those from affluent families as well. There’s a clear audience: parents of students who struck out in the district’s magnet lottery, are unenthused about traditional public schools, and are thus teetering on the edge of opting for private schooling.

Huffman’s push for Great Hearts in Nashville may seem like a stretch from his role as the head of the state education department. But in a prepared statement, he said part of his job is to recruit talent to Tennessee, adding that he spends a “fair amount of time talking to great leaders in other states including those of the top-performing charter schools.”

In a segment that aired during Channel 5's OpenLine program, Metro schools director Jesse Register appears to have said — while he believed he was off-air for a commercial break — that MNPS employees feel "entitlement." Here's the quote:

"I don't guess I'll say this publicly, but it's really a culture change. It's going from a system where people really felt entitlement. ... Uh, I don't know whether I'll say that on the air or not, but that's what it is, isn't it?" Another voice can be heard interjecting, "I wouldn't say that on the air."

Register is likely referring to his decision to unilaterally institute a new Support Staff Handbook, scrapping a 12-year-old "memoranda of understanding" policy with support staff unions.

The video above is the only one posted so far by YouTube user NashvilleCanDoBetter — who doesn't take kindly to Register's remarks, noting the difference between Register's salary and the salary of other MNPS employees, and the differences in the ways their contracts are structured.

(HT: Joey Garrison.)

Charter school advocates see a broken public-education system in need of flexible methods but increased academic rigor. They hope not only to serve low-income families, but also to re-engage upper-class parents who've opted for exclusive private academies — or bolted to the sprawling subdivisions of Williamson County.

Critics, however, worry that the sudden push for charters is coming at the cost of thorough scrutiny. They point to shaky early experiments in Nashville's school system, and voice the concern that future charters may find ways to distance themselves — literally and figuratively — from poor neighborhoods. The result, they argue, would be essentially to offer well-off kids a private-school education on the public's dime and resegregate the city into pockets of privilege — while leaving the rest of Middle Tennessee's students to languish in already struggling public schools.

These days, it seems like nearly all public policy debates fall along party lines. But the charter school debate is an exception, with advocates and critics on both sides of the aisle, and in every field of expertise. Ultimately, the argument is no longer whether or not to have charter schools, but how to ensure that they serve the best interest of the city. (And of course, how you define the best interest of the city is quite subjective.)

So where do you stand on charter schools? Will they be a boon for the education system? Will they encourage or stymie diversity in our schools?

A standing-room-only crowd of 150-plus parents gathered last night at the Cohn Adult Learning Center to learn about a new charter school that could open in Nashville.

The City Paper's Joey Garrison has the details:

Representatives of Great Hearts Academies, a charter network that manages 12 publicly financed, privately operated charters in Arizona, delivered a 45-minute presentation Wednesday at the Cohn Adult Learning Center detailing the liberal arts, classical curriculum of schools that apparently have long wait lists in Arizona. Great Hearts schools, which produce an impressive average ACT scores of 27.9, rely on the Socratic Seminar approach to facilitate dialogue and debate.

“We’re producing lawyers, philosophers, scholars,” Dan Scoggin, the founding CEO of Great Hearts, told onlookers.

Great Hearts will hold another informational meeting tonight at 6:30 at the Martin Professional Development Center, where Mayor Karl Dean is expected to show up and plug the West Nashville effort. As Garrison notes, in the interest of disclosure:

Nashville’s Great Hearts momentum enjoys help from some influential Nashvillians led by Bill DeLoache, a local investor and trustee of the Joe. C. Davis Foundation. DeLoache is the cousin of Anne Davis, the mayor’s wife. DeLoache has received assistance from Townes Duncan, managing partner of Solidus Company, who serves on the board of KIPP Academy, a Nashville charter. Duncan is also chairman of the board of directors for SouthComm, the parent company of The City Paper [and the Nashville Scene].