It is a tangle of rules, a piercing of the public's comfort zone, an awkward child of litigation and compromise.
If anyone loves it, they haven't said so. If anyone fully understands it, they're in the minority. Yet people want and need it to work.
School choice is the biggest change to hit Pinellas public schools in 32 years, and a high-stakes leap of faith.
It debuts this week with a community crossing its fingers.
The hope is for a trouble-free start, followed by a future of better schools and of classrooms that are racially mixed by preference, not force.
"I wasn't for it, but I hope it works," said Mary Brown, who last year became the first African-American elected to the Pinellas School Board. Having taken office two years after the choice plan was set in motion, she says the switch to a new system was premature and not well executed.
"I'm hoping that this will be everything that the board that voted it in hoped it would be," she said. "I hope their judgment on it was good."
For the first day of school on Tuesday, the major concerns are practical. After an overhaul of the way students are assigned to schools, getting all 112,000 of them in the right seats will be like turning an ocean liner on a dime.
District officials predict problems from last-minute enrollments and other glitches, but not much more than in a normal year.
They point to the fact that choice appears to have given most families what they wanted: About 96 percent of students got the schools they sought, either by electing to stay in their current school or getting their first or second choice.
"There will be some problems," superintendent Howard Hinesley said Friday after a hectic day of pep talks and last-minute school visits. "But I think everybody's ready."
Long term, the concerns are considerably more profound.
Choice replaces three decades of court-ordered busing for desegregation with a system that is supposed to encourage voluntary integration in schools. Part of a federal court settlement between Pinellas schools and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, it requires the district to keep improving its service to black students.
Among its mandates: that the district close the gap in academic achievement between white and minority children, and that it make every effort to hire more black teachers and administrators.
But the task of integrating schools without force remains the largest and most vexing job.
A question mark
The district's challenge is plain to see in a Times analysis that shows how little housing patterns have changed despite three decades of school integration.
The county's black population more than doubled over the last 30 years to more than 82,000. Yet black families scarcely ventured beyond the area south of Central Avenue where they had historically concentrated, hemmed in by economics, discriminatory lending practices and racist Realtors.
In 1970, 66 percent of the county's black residents lived south of Ninth Avenue N in St. Petersburg. Three decades later, it is 63 percent.
While the initial goal of school desegregation was to fairly spread resources among the races, hopes swelled for something more. Many expected that years of black and white kids sharing classrooms would somehow integrate the world at large.
In some ways it did. Less than 1 percent of Pinellas' census tracts are all-white today, compared with 33 percent in 1970. More African-Americans have succeeded in business, politics and social circles.
But across the county, the continued segregation in housing is striking, with black families continuing to concentrate in St. Petersburg, Clearwater's Greenwood area and a pocket of Tarpon Springs.
"No kidding," said Poul Hornsleth, a Gulfport real estate executive and one of three white members on the Executive Committee of the St. Petersburg NAACP.
When Hornsleth moved to Gulfport in the 1970s, he said he encountered "a conspiracy" of white Realtors. Black people who happened into real estate offices in white St. Petersburg were steered to homes south of Central Avenue, Hornsleth said.
While such practices have been outlawed, Hornsleth said they continue in coded conversations between Realtors and white buyers.
"There's a subtle discussion that goes on," he said, drawing from the reports of his white sales people. "It's tougher to root this out when it's just one-on-one."
Brown, the School Board member, sums up the lack of black migration in one word: "Economics."
Whatever the causes, the separation of the races drove the legal negotiations that led to school choice. And it's what makes its success such a question mark.
A balancing act
During the first four years of choice, enrollment will be controlled to ensure no school is more than 42 percent black. But beginning in the 2007-08 school year, controls on race will disappear.
In their absence, the choice plan will rely on magnet, fundamental and "attractor" schools with special programs to entice white students into schools in black neighborhoods. Similarly, schools in predominantly white neighborhoods will be working to attract black families.
The theory is that an overall improvement in schools will compel families to put educational goals over geography.
So far, that hasn't happened. In the first year of choice, black families chose their neighborhood schools overwhelmingly.
"I don't care how much money they spend, how many special magnet programs they have ... I'm concerned that you'll get to a certain percent and the balance will tip and you'll go to resegregation very rapidly," Hornsleth said.
He was referring to a general, if regrettable, rule of thumb among those who have studied desegregation: The closer a school gets to 50 percent black, the less likely white families will attend.
However, Hinesley points to the recent success of three new schools in predominantly black neighborhoods - Douglas L. Jamerson Jr. Elementary, James Sanderlin Elementary and Thurgood Marshall Fundamental Middle School.
After a slow start attracting white students early this year, all three schools have seen their enrollments surge in recent weeks as word spread about their programs. Much of the demand is thought to be from white students previously registered in private schools.
"That tells me that those attractors are working," Hinesley said.
Jamerson has a math and engineering theme and National Board certified teachers.
Sanderlin offers a "primary years" International Baccalaureate program with "a focus on higher order thinking."
Marshall offers the popular fundamental school program, which concentrates on the basics and mandated parent involvement.
Hinesley predicted those schools will remain popular with white families after the race ratios expire. But, he added: "That's assuming you don't do something to tip the balance."
Achieving diversity is a delicate chore, he said.
The district must resist the pressure in later years to open magnet schools in predominantly white areas farther north, he said. Doing so without broad demand could tear away the white families needed to maintain voluntary integration, he said.
Future school leaders must hew to the original goals, said Hinesley, who retires next year.
A "compelling interest'
But the success of the settlement that spawned choice also will be measured by how well the district tackles the "achievement gap."
Last year in Pinellas, 50 percent of black elementary students who took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, scored at or below Level 2 in the math portion - essentially a D or worse. Less than 18 percent of nonblack students scored in that range.
A similar disparity occurred in the reading portion of the test, and among middle and high school students.
The problem is hardly unique to Pinellas, nor is it new. But the court-ordered settlement has district officials attacking the gap with aggressive measures, including targeting students before they fall behind.
For those who want the gap to close, change can't come soon enough. They expect improvement whether choice works or not.
"We've sent the children together, but what happens in the school when they get there?" asked Lou Brown, a black St. Petersburg Realtor and civic leader. "I would rather have a 100 percent (black) school and a situation where the kids are learning than diversity and our kids being left behind."
School Board member Mary Brown said diversity is a must if children are to develop into well-rounded, productive adults.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor made the same point this summer, writing the court's landmark opinion upholding the consideration of race in university admissions
"These benefits are not theoretical but real," the justice wrote, "as major American businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas and viewpoints."
Brown has yet another reason. Every time segregation occurs, "somehow the equity is not there," she said. "History has shown that it never works."
She said of the achievement gap: "I'm looking for things to move up, not excuses. ... I don't think we're trying hard enough."
The effort appears to be there on the front lines of choice.
Officials are contending with thousands of late-comers who have jammed the district's two registration centers in recent days.
Hundreds more will show up Tuesday, confused about their school assignments.
Some parents who registered their kids will never show. Others will show, not having registered.
About 300 students a day appeal their school assignments.
The constant flux threatens to mar the new system's startup. But district officials expect a relatively smooth first day.
Then, less than a month into the new year, it will be time to apply for the second year of choice. But a breather is in order first, Hinesley said.
"We're definitely going to sit down and see what we can improve on."
- Times staff writer Matthew Waite contributed to this report.
