Bugg Stories vol. 9

bill wise began his career in nashville at a time when there were black schools and white schools he says he doesn't even like to think about the dual system now after all he never understood the separate but equal philosophy that even as a child growing up in tiny petersburg tennessee i lived in the country and their closest family was an african american family and the oldest son of the family was my age and we would walk through the bush when the bus stopped and sometimes his bus would come first and some time i would comfort and what to screw no more than a mile apart and then it got back to the bus stop an afternoon for me he waited and we're going to get just a mixed history when metro hired wise as an assistant superintendent thirty one years ago he found a federal court order for busing lying on his desk his first day it was his job to implement it their national didn't experience of violence other cities did with desegregation wise remembers the boycotts of nineteen seventy one the white flight from

public schools the racial tension and the threats he received for twenty years metro struggled to find a workable solution one of the plaintiffs would agree to to end by saying that finally came in september of nineteen ninety eight in the courtroom and us district judge tom wiseman and sony's he pronounced as you know to get it from the bitch is a matter that the first layer courtenay was surely this city will close its doors and celebrate this event but it didn't have all to myself for the missing this has to be the most important day in the history of the city and then it occurred to me unless you knew how it was before you could not appreciate how it would be after you do steps and so i guess there are only a few of us right number wise says the plan that peacefully into the lawsuit created more options for children

kept them closer to the schools and make sure they only attended three schools and their kindergarten through twelfth grade career most of all he says it led to more trust in the school system for years wise has been towed if you'd only in passing we'd come to support schools he says he thinks that might actually be happening now as usual in the middle which is the keystone of the three tier system when a published and oliver grades stayed stable there's no other reason for that except five hundred more students are in our public schools that would've been the other was that they were here they would have been attending private school but because we're putting new middle school i met up for your medals and as we complete that plan i think mostly through the same thing we please have your ear with public trust as high as he's ever seen it wise says his goal for his final seven months on the job is to push for full funding for schools it would mean that every school would have a counter to do with young children

and families are so it would mean that a risk and would hurl they need technology in the classroom at the teacher's desk and the repression and let's go to another one and the most important one is having the ability to attract and maintain the very highest quality classroom teacher who is the most important person in the learning process without that we may have to do some things differently in order to compete for a declining group teachers this country was believes they fully funded system would be twenty to twenty five percent above better schools current four hundred seven billion dollar budget a figure nearer to five hundred million that don't wise is also a real estate man talk more with him and he'll say improved funding is critical he would he says like to hand the new superintendent to fix the of the keys to my successor and saying here's the keys to a pretty good school

system and second grade bill wise retires in june and this week the metro board of education agreed to hire a search term to find his replacement the first foundation has donated two hundred thousand dollars to help fund that search for national public radio i'm anita but just remember that he's

written