Nashville has received $15 million to help out some of its public magnet schools. The U.S. Department of Education grant will get distributed among five elementary schools with large Hispanic or African American populations.
District chief of staff Jana Carlisle says the district’s goal is to reduce what is known as ”
minority group isolation” and attract more families from the gentrifying neighborhoods around the schools, many of whom are white.
“The purpose of a magnet grant is to help desegregate, to diversify the population in those schools,” she told reporters Wednesday.
The money will be used to fund a coordinator who will focus on recruiting new students, and employees at each school who will develop curricula.
One of the schools, Warner Elementary, will focus on performing arts, which officials are hoping to be a feeder for Nashville School of the Arts. The others will spend more time on science, technology and math, in an effort to align with the city’s middle schools, which are also focusing on those subjects.
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