Though District Judge William Orrick didn’t sign off on lifting San Francisco schools’ race caps until Tuesday, the policy has already had an effect at the city’s premier Lowell High School: a 65 percent decline in African American representation among accepted freshman applicants.

Less than 2 percent of the 864 freshmen it has offered admission to this fall are black, and only 5.4 percent are Latino, compared with 5.6 percent of blacks and 11.4 percent of Latinos among the 789 admitted last year. Admission of Chinese American students, on the other hand, increased under race-blind policies, from 39.5 percent in 1998-‘99 to 45.6 percent in 1999-2000.

Such discrepancies helped fuel a protest Tuesday outside Orrick’s courtroom as demonstrators sought to persuade him at the last minute from officially signing off on the agreement he brokered two months ago to settle a suit by Chinese American parents.

“We think the resegregation of American education, which is taking place and which this settlement represents, is a tremendous setback for this whole society,” said Shanta Driver of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary.

She and the mostly African American protesters said they weren’t satisfied that the Ho v. SFUSD settlement, which largely supersedes the 1983 decree that set race caps at San Francisco public schools for 16 years, could ensure diversity through looking at geographic or economic factors rather than racial ones.

Lowell’s entering freshman class next year “will have only eight black students out of 640 some students,” Driver said. “We think that is a public disgrace, and a policy that must be fought.”

The district said that number is actually 17, not eight, but Driver likely would not change her mind. Nor would Lowell senior Jamaal Marshal, who was among nine of the 10 people testifying before Orrick who urged him not to approve the settlement.

“Chinese American families feel their sons and daughters are mistreated? Come walk in our shoes,” he said. “Try being the only African American in your classes. Try being the only African American when you walk down the halls.”

“Orrick said he shared these concerns but that this “portion of the settlement was not so faulty to warrant rejection of the entire settlement.” He ended up giving final approval to the pact that puts an end not only to race caps, but also most likely to the $37 million in federal and state money that the district has been getting to enforce that policy and other desegregation measures.

The judge’s decision to let the 1983 decree officially expire in 2002, rather than continue indefinitely, is a big reason Gordon Chin, the Rev. Harry Chuck, and representatives from Chinese for Affirmative Action, Chinese Progressive Association and the Chinatown Youth Center opposed the Ho v. SFUSD settlement. Though they agree that the new pact all but guts its 16-year-old predecessor, its termination will all but guarantee that most of the desegregation funding will cease.

Last month, the district got an unwelcome preview of what might happen when the funding dries up when the state declined to reimburse it $18 million in desegregation costs that the district had incurred in the early 1990s, saying San Francisco officials had overspent despite being warned not to. If Gov. Gray Davis does not sign a bill restoring much of that funding, the district faces severe cutbacks within months in class offerings, staffing and other areas.

Diane Chin of Chinese for Affirmative Action worries that those cuts and the bigger ones looming on the horizon will hurt all students, especially those who speak little English. “The proposed settlement will only exacerbate the problems faced by these children by reducing resources available for their education,” she predicted.

A third of the district’s 61,954 students speak little or no English. They include nearly 3 of 4 students at Gordon Lau Elementary School in Chinatown and 40 percent of those at Galileo High, both of which have more than 40 percent Chinese American enrollment.

“People think that all Chinese American children are doing well,” Chin said. “But data from the school district shows that limited-English proficient (LEP) Chinese American children are near the bottom in terms of grades and test scores.”

Asian Americans themselves remain split over what to do now. They have been ever since Carl Ho, Charlene Loen, and Jane Chen brought their suit to court five years ago, alleging that the district’s 40 to 45 percent enrollment cap on Chinese Americans at any one school meant their kids were unfairly kept out of neighborhood schools and out of Lowell High School, which until 1995 imposed a higher test-score cutoff on Chinese Americans than on anyone else.

The new consent degree abolishes such guidelines, and Lowell itself did away with the cutoffs years ago. Over the next three years, the district is supposed to collect data on each school’s ethnic composition to determine whether any is too racially homogenous—and if so, the settlement could be modified.

Orrick on Tuesday reiterated that the court would be vigilant in making sure feasible diversity plans are submitted for the 2000-2001 school year and in overseeing reports from the new settlement’s monitors. “If vestiges of discrimination are not eliminated by December 31, 2002, the consent decree will not be terminated,” he promised.

However, data to determine whether and where segregation lurks will be hard to come by, given that the settlement bars the district from requiring parents to identify students by race or ethnicity.

“No party can justify this aspect of the settlement,” said Chin, who added that it “goes far beyond anything required by law and seriously threatens our community’s ability to monitor our academic achievements and determine whether discrimination is occurring.”