Hundreds of properties impacted by audit
Plus, an award-winning teacher's allegation and a landfill transformation
Good morning, Nashville! It’s Thursday, August 13 — almost to the weekend!
⚡ Quick hits
Weather: 🌦️ Another heat advisory as the heat builds! High: 100 with heat index around 112. Low: 77.
A property codes audit is sweeping through Antioch and Southeast Nashville with hundreds of properties impacted.
After Metro Schools reported a 55% decrease in students being removed from class for disciplinary issues, a “Blue Ribbon” award-winning teacher told the school board teachers are “banned” from reporting behavioral issues, “forcing us to keep disruptive students in the classroom” and skewing statistics “to protect the district, not our children.”
What’s new in Nashville’s neighborhoods, including a potential transformation for a landfill property, cockroaches in a restaurant kitchen, a scaled back skyscraper, and more density on Dickerson Pike.
Get nash.news delivered straight to your inbox for free every weekday morning by entering your email. You can also support my work to simplify Nashville by sharing with a friend. Thank you!
⚠️ Hundreds of properties impacted by audit
A property codes audit is sweeping through Antioch and Southeast Nashville.
In one of the databases I review every day for this newsletter, I kept noticing alleged property standards violations that mentioned an audit, and nearly all of them were in Antioch and Southeast Nashville. As of yesterday, the data showed about 280 cases since the start of July. Here’s a heat map of where it’s happening:
Metro Council member Tasha Ellis said she asked for an audit of her district.
“For 34 months I have driven this district on weekends reporting illegal dumping, junk and debris, and property standard violations,” Ellis wrote. “Metro Codes is built to be reactive” by responding to complaints, she said, so she asked the department for a blanket audit of her district after another council member did the same.
I used the AI platform Claude to analyze the audit data. More than 40% of cases were tied to junk, trash, and other debris, its analysis said, followed by high weeds and parking on the grass.
“The point is not to penalize people,” Ellis said. “There is a story behind almost every situation, and plenty of them involve a fixed income, a health issue, or a house that got away from someone after a loss. Abatement notices that go out will include information on resources available, where applicable, to help property owners come into compliance at little to no cost.”
I reached out to Metro Codes multiple times for this story, but I didn’t get a response.
🍎 Disruptive students kept in the classroom?
A “Blue Ribbon” award-winning teacher told Metro’s School Board this week that teachers are “banned” from reporting behavioral issues, “forcing us to keep disruptive students in the classroom.”
Samira Hardcastle says she resigned from John F. Kennedy Middle School in Antioch in May. Her state teaching license is still active, according to a state database, with no record of license suspensions or revocations.
“The news reports that behavioral issues are down. They are not,” Hardcastle said.
District leadership said in June that “exclusionary discipline” incidents — meaning a student had to be removed from the classroom — dropped 55% over three years.
“Around behavior, it has been about really focusing on those restorative practices,” Dr. Elissa Norris, the district’s Chief of Student Support Services, told the school board in June. “This is a reflection of [the students] feeling welcomed, of them making different choices, and by extension we are seeing that in the data.”
“Statistics are being skewed to protect the district, not our children,” Hardcastle told the board this week.
I wanted to know whether her concerns were isolated, so I called JC Bowman, Professional Educators of Tennessee’s executive director.
“We’re hearing the discipline [in Metro Schools] is a continual problem and it hasn’t diminished,” Bowman told me. He’s heard other cases of teachers “being urged to not report things.”
I emailed and called district spokesperson Sean Braisted to ask whether he disputes Hardcastle’s allegation. He did not respond. I’ll update you if he does.
🏠 What’s new in Nashville’s neighborhoods
Bellevue
Transforming a landfill: the Buzzard Hollow landfill, which was abandoned in the 1970s, could become a new convenience center (among other possibilities), Metro Council member Sheri Weiner said in her newsletter. She invited the public to a community meeting at the Bellevue Community Center on August 24 at 5 p.m.
Germantown
Oracle’s pedestrian bridge spanning the Cumberland River from Germantown to the River North neighborhood is now in the hands of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for permitting. A spokesperson for the East Bank Development Authority tells me he’s checking on when construction could start. I’ll let you know when I get an update.
East Nashville
More density on Dickerson Pike: I just reported on a mixed-use project, including apartments, on Dickerson Pike on Monday and now another project is moving forward. Just a one-minute drive away at 1411 Dickerson Pike, developers applied for a permit to build the shell of three apartment buildings with a total of more than 200 units, along with some retail.
Downtown(ish)
A health inspector said they found “three live cockroaches” in the kitchen and multiple food temperature issues at Giovanni (909 20th Avenue South). The restaurant received a 71. You can read its inspection here. And click here for all of the other restaurant inspections.
A proposed tower in the Nashville Yards development is being scaled back from 43 stories to 36 stories, according to a filing with Nashville’s Downtown Code Design Review Committee, which will review the project today. The skyscraper will be between the Amazon towers and the new Pinnacle tower.
Wedgewood-Houston
Opening soon near the Fairgrounds and soccer stadium: Asulon Collective Coffee Shop will open later this month, replacing Barista Parlor after it closed multiple locations, according to Dirk Melton with MarketStreet Enterprises. He also said a sports bar called Voodoo Brewery is set to open in October, and a “fitness concept” has signed paperwork to open.
📰 A few final headlines…
At Nashville’s Riverbend prison, the state is scheduled to execute Darrell Hines, a man convicted of stabbing a hotel maid to death, at 10 a.m. today. Another execution was halted in May after a doctor unsuccessfully tried for more than an hour to place an IV line, but the governor declined to intervene in this case.
The state is investigating why TSA systems can’t read some Tennessee driver licenses at airport security. Anyone whose license isn’t working can get a free replacement license at a driver services center. (WSMV)
“Right turns would be banned at red lights in downtown, in school zones and on busy transit corridors under an amended plan from Metro Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda,” Axios reports. I reported on Monday that multiple council members said they would not support Sepulveda’s original proposal to ban right turns across much of the county.
A father and daughter who claim she was wrongfully expelled from Antioch High School for doing the right thing — turning in a threatening note she found in the school’s bathroom — asked Metro’s school board again to reverse her expulsion. The family has spoken at school board meetings for months, and they said a handwriting expert hired by them concluded she did not write the note, but the district has refused to reverse its decision.
“DC Blox Sues Metro Over New Regulations Delaying Data Center Near Nashville Zoo” (Nashville Banner)
Housing market slowdown? The typical home for sale in Nashville spent six more days on the market compared to last year, one of the biggest increases in the country, according to Redfin. The median time on market is 78 days.
🍔 MAP: click here for restaurant inspections across Nashville
Thank you for reading nash.news! Just reply to this email if you have a correction, story idea, concerns about my coverage, or anything else. You can also email me at ryan@nash.news. I’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow! - Ryan