A Reckoning

The Promise

Nashville Public Radio

Society & Culture

4.9 • 777 Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2020

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last fall, parents from Lockeland Elementary held a community meeting to talk about the elephant in the room: Despite the diversity of the neighborhood, their school was the whitest school in the entire district.

Some white parents in the neighborhood simply didn’t see any problem. Others did and wanted the district to find a solution that would bring more children of color to their school. But there was a time, not that long ago, when an idea was floated that could have changed the makeup of Lockeland’s student body — and it did not go well.

In this episode, white parents start to realize that their choices, and the choices of their neighbors, created this problem.

The Promise is written and produced Meribah Knight, with additional reporting by Samantha Max. Edited by Emily Siner, with additional editing by Anita Bugg, Tony Gonzalez, Samantha Max, Sergio Martinez-Beltran and Damon Mitchell. Fact-checking and research by Sam Zern. Advising for this season by Savala Nolan Trepczynski and Alex Kotlowitz. Mixing by Jakob Lewis of Great Feeling Studios. The music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Previously on The Promise.
0:04.8	You know, I've had instances on the playground with neighborhood people.
0:09.8	Oh, our kids are zoned for there.
0:11.5	We will, I will never send my kids to that school.
0:14.8	I'm a big believer in taking all the excuses off the table.
0:18.9	So if you're not choosing it for another reason,
0:22.4	let's just have an honest conversation.
0:24.3	Are we selling it to these kids, the kids that are here now?
0:29.9	Or are we selling it to the parents that are coming in
0:34.6	that we want to recruit their child to be here.
0:45.3	It's a rainy evening in late January, and parents, most of them, from Lachland Elementary,
0:51.0	file into a meeting room at a community center.
0:53.7	It's just a mile down the road
0:55.0	from Loughlin, the nearly all-white elementary school in the neighborhood, and a stone's
0:59.7	throw from the city's largest public housing complex, the James Casey Holmes.
1:05.5	Clap once if you can hear me. Clap twice if you can hear me. We didn't even have to make it to three.
1:10.8	This is perfect.
1:11.8	Well, they're here along with some community folks and a bunch of school district employees
1:17.3	to talk about that elephant in the classroom.
1:20.7	The fact that there are almost no black children at their school, Lockland Elementary.
1:25.6	I think we really need to stretch ourselves.
1:28.6	It all started from a very small group of concerned parents a few years ago, but the
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -1637 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nashville Public Radio, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Nashville Public Radio and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.