There was an overflow crowd at Tuesday's Metro Nashville Board of Education meeting: A large number of them were there to speak about whether the district should relocate Hillwood High School to a spot in Bellevue — along with a mix of parents and former students advocating for LEAD Charter Schools contract renewal and a few Nashville Rise parents there to explain why they want more high quality choices or why they liked their charter school.
There are still a couple community input sessions before the board takes its final vote on whether to rebuild Hillwood on its current plot of land or relocate to a Bellevue as part of its capital needs budget on Jan. 24, but Tuesday's speakers mostly favored a relocation over using the current plot of land.
A handful of people who want the school to stay where it is cite a report released in summer of 2016 that said moving the school would have and adverse affect on diversity at the school.
Despite the findings of that report, District 9 school board member Amy Frogge said she doesn't think moving the school would hurt Hillwood's diversity — and former longtime school board member and current Metro councilman Ed Kindall said he thought the move might even have a positive affect on diversity.
"When schools are supported by the community, all boats rise," Frogge said, pointing to the multitude of speakers there to support moving the school.
District 7 board member Will Pinkston also asked the board to look at creating a lobbyist registration process for Metro Schools — one similar to that used by the Tennessee General Assembly or Metro Council. After a December meeting where Pinkston says the Chamber of Commerce, Project Renaissance and charter supporters "deluged" the community with misinformation about his proposed charter moratorium, he says he found the board did not have a registration process for lobbyists.
"It suddenly dawned on me that all the special interests who are constantly lobbying this board and the administration on various issues are not required to register as lobbyists the same way they’re required to do when lobbying the Metro Council, the Mayor, and general government," Pinkston says.
As Pinkston gave his comments, Wendy Tucker, the co-CEO of Project Renaissance and a Tennessee State Board of Education member, scowled a bit from her seat in the audience.
The board also passed a motion asking Shawn Joseph, the director of schools, to begin a feasibility study on putting seat belts in school buses in the district. After the fatal school bus crash in Chattanooga, Metro Council passed a unanimous resolution recommending that the district require school buses to have seat belts — though it's not necessarily a matter of anyone rejecting seat belts as much as trying to figure out where the money will come from to either buy a new fleet of buses or retrofit old ones.
