The Nashville Civic Design Center, our School's "think tank" and 19-year partnership, two years ago urged us to conduct an outreach engagement and service-learning urban design study to focus advocacy for a “Teachers Village” in Metro Nashville. This began with a conversation that emerged in the Office of the Mayor regarding the desirability of a public/private initiative for affordable housing to help stabilize the Metro Nashville Public School’s (MNPS) teaching workforce.
Young teachers, and thereby children and their parents, are subject to a problematic level of attrition. These undercompensated “everyday heroes” have high turnover rates in staffing, as they are able to find lower costs of living outside the county, though unfortunately with lengthy commutes and estrangement from the local communities in which they teach. Many find higher levels of compensation in outer suburban or rural schools systems and leave the MNPS within their first four years of teaching, with some leaving mid-year, or even mid-semester, from their K-12 classroom assignments. This can be very disruptive to classroom morale and curriculum advancement.
The site is now a city-owned school bus depot facility located on public transit. The topography is something of an “acropolis”, featuring excellent views of the downtown skyline.
I will show and discuss the various design projects proposed by my students and I. We were recently excited to learn that the current Mayor has been persuaded to issue an RFP to relocate the bus depot, followed by the development of the site as a Teachers Village.
