School boards can promote diversity
By Del Stover
3/08 -- Several myths have been circulating about last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on the race-conscious student assignment plans in Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky., Anurima Bhargava, director of the education group at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, told urban school leaders Feb. 2.
Contrary to some widely disseminated opinions, school boards can still take race into account when developing student assignment plans and can take steps to promote diversity and address racial isolation in their schools, Bhargava told the audience at the Council of Urban Boards of Education 2008 Issues Forum in Washington, D.C.
The high court’s majority opinion reaffirmed the principle that public schools have a “compelling interest” in promoting the educational benefits associated with student diversity, Bhargava said. But the ruling also “took tools away from community efforts to provide high-quality, integrated schools.”
The Seattle and Jefferson County school boards are working on new assignment plans that they hope will survive any future court challenges.
Bernard Minnis, Jefferson County’s assistant superintendent for diversity, equity, and poverty programs, said demographic data on the 98,000-student school system confirms what most expected: There is a strong correlation between a neighborhood’s average family income and race.
So district officials plan to divide the school system into a multitude of geographic areas based on a variety of demographic data, he said. Then schools would draw their students from a number of areas -- perhaps contiguous, perhaps not. This would mean pupil assignments would not be based on any individual’s race, a policy in which the justices had expressed some objections.
The district is seeking public input on these ideas, with the hope of phasing in a new assignment plan by 2009.
Seattle also hopes to have a new plan in place by 2009, said Gary Ikeda, the district’s general counsel.
Seattle had an “open choice” plan for student assignments, but it was challenged because race was used as a tiebreaker in deciding who could attend the city’s more popular schools. Ikeda said the city still uses that plan without the race-based tiebreaker.
The district is considering a plan that would address a common complaint among families thinking of moving into Seattle, Ikeda said.
Even among those wanting to take advantage of the choice plan, parents keep asking that a school be designated for their neighborhood so they have some guarantees about the quality of school their children might attend.
So plans call for providing students with a guaranteed assignment to a school near their home, he said. But to promote diversity, the system also plans to add or expand theme and enrichment programs to encourage students to take advantage of choice options.
School boundaries also might be redrawn with consideration to broadening the student demographics for each school.
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