SFUSD Assignment Plan Omits Race
Staff and Wire Reports

The San Francisco Unified School District last Friday announced a plan for assigning students to schools in the 2000-01 school year without using race as a factor. The action came in response to a ruling in which U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Dec. 17 rejected the district’s previous attempt at an enrollment plan for next year and gave the school system until today to come up with a new plan.

The district announced that it will use the student assignment plan that has been in effect for the current school year. That plan omits racial enrollment limits for individual schools and eliminates priorities for African American and Latino students.

It uses several other factors in assignments, including siblings, special programs, school attendance areas, zip codes, and use of public housing.

The district’s original plan for next year was to assign children to schools on the basis of a “diversity index” that included race as one of four factors along with family income, student reading and math achievement and proficiency in English. A computer program would have been used to assign students who would add the most diversity to a given school according to the four factors.

Orrick said on Dec. 17 that the use of race in the index violated both the equal protection requirement of the Constitution and a settlement of a lawsuit by Chinese-American families that had challenged racial enrollments.

The judge gave the district the choice of either reverting to this year’s approach or using the diversity index without the factor of race.

“I am very disappointed that the court gave us such limited choices,” School Board President Juanita Owens said. “I do not want history to repeat itself. I do not want schools to resegregate. I am confident that this district will meet the challenge set by the court.”

The district said it will continue to study the potential future use of some sort of diversity index as part of the assignment process.

The plan affects primarily students entering elementary, middle or high school -- students in kindergarten, 6th or 9th grade -- and those who wish to change schools.

The district had originally last Friday as the deadline for parents to hand in forms to register or change schools. District officials said that parents who filed an application by that deadline and wish to amend it as a result of this change may do so until Jan. 31.

School Superintendent Linda Davis said, “Our belief in the value of a pluralist learning environment has not diminished. We will continue to work towards diversity, to value parent choice, to pursue excellence for all our children, and to comply with all other provisions of the consent decree.”

Under the previous racial enrollment limits, no racial or ethnic group could make up more than 40 or 45 percent of the student population in an individual school. The limits were set in the 1983 settlement of a desegregation lawsuit filed against the district by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1978.

But Orrick reopened consideration of the desegregation program after the Chinese-American families filed their 1994 lawsuit claiming that the limits unconstitutionally restricted their educational opportunities. That case was settled last year.

Orrick said last month that the law set by the U.S. Supreme Court has changed over the past two decades. The current doctrine established by the high court is that race can be a factor in government actions only when the use of that factor is part of a “narrowly tailored” plan to meet a “compelling government interest.”

The school district failed to prove that its original proposal met that standard, the judge said.

Jason Ma contributed to this report