Siting

Locations for the new Schools

The overall goal for siting of the new downtown schools is to create a convenient accessible location that will benefit all who attend. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 13% of children walk to school today compared with 66% in 1970. Placing schools in a downtown area where an urban population exists within a mile of each location will dramatically increase walking to school. This will also decrease obesity rates in Nashville. Siting schools within communities will create a healthier student as well as a more productive student. Studies show that students who engage in physical activity have better academic performance and test scores. Parental involvement also improves student’s achievement levels. Having schools closer to the family’s residences will naturally increase parental participation.

Siting these schools in areas that are easily accessible to the communities will reduce emissions from private automobiles and school busses. Inconsistent fuel prices make transportation budgeting difficult. More students walking and biking will alleviate stress in an already tight education budget.

School placement should take advantage of existing amenities such as parks and gyms as well as other infrastructure like bikeways, roads, sewers and water. Using standing features can strengthen the link with the school, making each school a pillar of its community. Schools in downtown Nashville will noticeably increase property values as well as bring new population to the city. The Nashville Civic Design Center proposes a new magnet elementary school in the Lafayette neighborhood and a magnet arts school in the Sulphur Dell neighborhood. The schools would share an axial relationship, as their sites are flanked by 4th and 5th Avenues (Avenue of the Arts). These locations would provide the schools with close proximity to downtown art and science museums, as well as many other educational institutions throughout the city. Additionally, the locational advantage of the proposed schools addresses goals from the city’s Schools Strategic Plan, namely “to market and promote relevant and engaging extracurricular activities for students at risk of dropout”, and to “select and use technology in developmentally appropriate ways to promote active learning, improve student engagement and individualize instruction.”

Both structures would be a departure from the typical Nashville school, usually imagined as a wide, one story building set atop massive swaths of land. Typically, this type of campus is constructed due to zoning regulations within neighborhoods that require a minimum of five acres, with an additional one acre per 100 students. For a campus of 600 students, zoning would require a minimum of eleven acres devoted to school grounds. However, as both proposed school sites fall within the area under zoning rules of the newly adopted Downtown Code, the schools could be as vertical as necessary. As imagined by a planner for the city of Nashville, “a school could be in any existing downtown building, or in a new, very urban building.”

Map of downtown showing existing schools (stars), Avenue of the Arts and school sites (red), relevant businesses, galleries, cultural and government institutions and museums (blue), and parks (green)