Articulo en USA Today: Case key to magnet schools' future (Discriminacion contra estudiante (por ser anglo e hispana))
SPAM*@home.com Luis G. García Iturrino
http://www.usatoday.com/news/acovmon.htm
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Case key to magnet schools' future
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - In April 1996, 6-year-old Christina
Capacchione was denied admittance to first grade at Olde
Providence Elementary School because of the color of her
skin.
Cristina, who is half Hispanic, half Anglo, was turned
down at Olde Providence, a top-notch public magnet
school, even though the school had vacancies. Those
unclaimed desks were reserved for black children as part
of a court-ordered effort to achieve racial balance.
Cristina's name was placed on a waiting list with those of
more than 100 other "non-black" students.
She never got in.
Cristina's father, Bill, sued, saying his daughter was a
victim of racial discrimination in violation of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964.
His suit, since joined by other white parents, has grown into a wide-ranging
legal case that is
expected to set a national precedent on what role, if any, race may
play in public school systems.
The trial, which begins today, will be crucial in determining the future
of magnet schools,
race-based pupil assignments and desegregation plans in general.
With the courts cutting back on the use of race as a factor in everything
from government
contracting to law school admissions, many see this case as a vehicle
that could reverse three
decades of enforcing integration through the close monitoring of the
racial makeup of public
schools.
The nation's 4,200 magnet schools and their 1.5 million students could
be profoundly affected.
Magnet schools, designed to encourage voluntary mixing of the races,
have also been included in
some court orders. Such programs have lured white students to schools
in black neighborhoods
and vice versa with the promise of extra resources, an enriched curricula
and experienced
teachers.
Many magnet schools specialize in science, math, computers, drama, or
fine arts. Some stress
"fundamental" subjects such as reading and arithmetic, and a few offer
more esoteric programs
that prepare high school students for careers in medicine or communications
or business.
Whatever the schools' emphasis, many districts, like Charlotte, enforce
racial balance at magnet
schools.
"I represent parents who are tired of being discriminated against on
account of race," says lawyer
Thomas Ashcraft, a former U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration
who represents some of
the white families suing the Charlotte school district. Some black
families then filed a separate
suit, asking the district to keep race as a factor in admissions.
The two suits actually reopened a 33-year-old case that has historical
resonance: Swann vs. the
Charlotte-Mecklenburg County School System, the second most important
desegregation case in
U.S. history.
The Supreme Court used the Swann case in 1971 to give federal judges
broad powers to
desegregate schools. It is sometimes called simply "the busing case,"
a reference to the most
controversial remedy the high court authorized.
In the annals of desegregation law, only Brown vs. the Board of Education,
the 1954 case that
outlawed segregated schools, is more important.
Although the Supreme Court handed down the Swann ruling 28 years ago,
the U.S. district court
here has retained jurisdiction since as Charlotte and surrounding Mecklenburg
County grappled
with the nuts and bolts of desegregating the schools. The magnet schools
were set up as part of
that process, and children were bused to those schools and others to
bring enrollment at each in
line with the district's racial makeup, now 40% black and 60% white
and other "non-blacks."
"It would be a tragedy if this case that opened the door for black children
to get an equal education
was turned around 30 years later and used to deny black children that
opportunity," says lawyer
James Ferguson II. His law office was burned down in 1970 after he
and law partner Julius
Chambers won a lower court decision in the Swann case. Today, Ferguson
represents the black
families that have sued to maintain the racial balance in magnet schools.
The Swann case had been dormant for more than a decade until the Capacchiones
made their
complaint.
"This case is simple," says Bill James, a Mecklenburg County commissioner
who votes on the
school system's budget and is an ally of the white plaintiffs. "For
30 years, we've had a social
experiment where white liberals said blacks had to sit next to whites
to get a good education. But
blacks are doing as bad as they were 30 years ago, and whites aren't
doing any better. No one
wants to return to the old days of separate but unequal, but we're
not going to allow our children
to be pawns in a failed social experiment. We want our children to
go to neighborhood schools."
But civil rights advocates say this case didn't start when Cristina
Capacchione was turned down at
Olde Providence. It began, they say, generations ago with racism and
segregation, whose effects
linger today.
"Let's be honest: 'Neighborhood schools' is a code word for going back
to segregated schools,"
says school board chairman Arthur Griffin. "They just can't say it
outright because the media
would hammer them. But that's what we're talking about.
"Whites already have neighborhood schools. It's the black kids who are
bused. These people are
upset because they don't want black kids in their neighborhood," Griffin
says.
Nearly all the 12,000 students subject to forced busing in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg
County
School System are black students, bused from urban to suburban white
schools.
"They didn't mind busing when it was used to segregate the schools,"
says Griffin, a 1966
graduate of all-black Second Ward High School. During his 2-mile walk
to school, Griffin would
see white students being bused past his high school to the all-white
Myers Park High School in an
affluent part of town.
"But now that busing and consideration of race are used to let black
kids enjoy new schools with
computers and experienced teachers, well, now it's a problem," Griffin
says.
Without busing and an enforced racial balance, black students might
be returned to old, rundown
schools lacking experienced teachers who prefer to work in nicer suburban
schools, Griffin says.
The school system, now being sued by both blacks and whites, agrees
that it has failed to invest
adequately in schools in black neighborhoods.
Since 1971, 27 new schools have been built in the fast-growing predominantly
white areas.
During that time, only one new school has been built in a predominantly
black neighborhood: an
elementary school in 1994.
The school system estimates it would cost $1.3 billion over 10 years
to make schools in black
neighborhoods physically comparable to those in white neighborhoods.
It would cost millions
more annually to make the schools comparable in teacher quality and
equipment, such as
computers.
"We've made progress since 1971, but we still have a long way to go,"
says Superintendent Eric
Smith.
John Lassiter, a Republican school board member who supports neighborhood
schools, agrees
that a massive investment is needed in black neighborhoods. "This is
not a scare request. To be
afraid to commit these resources is playing politics with children,"
Lassiter says.
The 100,000-student school system, the nation's 23rd largest, has an
annual budget of about
$700 million. The county commission has indicated it is reluctant to
spend the large amount of
money the school system says it needs for equitable schools.
James, the county commissioner, calls the request for such a large amount
of money "a ploy" to
strengthen the school system's legal case that vestiges of segregation
remain.
The school system has asked that it be allowed to use race in school
assignments and magnet
school admissions for another five years, until the system can be made
equitable in black and
white neighborhoods.
The white families suing the school system have asked that race be eliminated
as a factor
immediately. The black families suing the school system want to keep
race as a factor as long as it
is needed.
Presiding over the trial will be Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Potter, a Reagan appointee.
A public opponent of busing before his appointment to the bench, Potter
unsettled black parents
during a court hearing last month. He said, on his own initiative,
that he would consider releasing
the school system from all court supervision if he found that the lingering
effects of segregation
are gone. His announcement was unusual because none of the parties
had requested such action.
Other school districts - including those in Denver, Cleveland, and Norfolk,
Va. - have been freed
from court supervision after federal judges found that they had dispelled
the final effects of
segregation and were operating a so-called "unitary" system that offered
equal opportunities to
blacks and whites.
The Supreme Court, in the original Swann ruling, held out the prospect
that Charlotte and other
districts would not have to remain under court-ordered desegregation
forever, only until they were
running such "unitary" systems. The high court has since spelled out
some of the criteria that
could be used in judging whether a district was "unitary."
What is odd in the Charlotte case is that the school system doesn't
claim that it's a unitary system.
In fact, school lawyers argue that the district is still in violation
of an earlier desegregation order
and needs to remain under court supervision.
No matter who loses here, all sides expect the case to be appealed to
the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 4th Circuit. After that, it could conceivably go to the Supreme
Court, where the case has a
good chance of being heard because it deals head-on with the unanswered
question of what role
race can play in public school assignments.
The latest round of litigation has cost at least $2 million. The white
families' legal effort is being
financed with $200,000 raised locally, plus help from national conservative
legal groups. The
black families' suit has been funded partly by the NAACP Legal Defense
Fund. The school
system has spent $1.6 million on the case so far, much of it on studies
by expert witnesses.
Away from the courtroom, the 744 students of Old Providence Elementary
School - 60% white,
40% black - are getting an excellent education. The magnet school specializes
in communications
skills and rigorous academics. It is one of only 11 of 137 schools
in the district in which at least
85% of the students read at or above their grade level. The disparity
in reading levels between
blacks and whites is less than half the system-wide average.
On a recent day, the kids, black and white, sat next to each other in
a modern computer lab
creating maps of North Carolina. In a spacious library, a black girl
and a white boy discussed a
book on bugs. In the sparkling cafeteria, black and white children
shared tables, seemingly
without regard to race. And when principal Martha Carpenter, who is
white, walked down the
hall, black students and white students broke out of line on several
occasions to give her
spontaneous hugs.
But when the school day is over, the black children file onto 14 school
buses to begin the journey
home, some trips lasting 90 minutes. Seventy-five percent of the white
students walk home.
When Cristina Capacchione was turned down in the lottery to get into
Olde Providence, she went
to her neighborhood public school. Her family moved to California last
year after her father, a
financial consultant, got a better job.
--
Saludos,
Luis García
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Luis G. García Iturrino
lg...@home.com
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JRV
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