'Change has to come'

Pinellas' school choice plan needs an overhaul, and this time the School Board is seeking the advice of the county's families and educators.

Two years into a legally negotiated choice plan that has turned student assignment upside down, Pinellas County School Board members have taken a remarkable step. Sitting around a conference table last week with not a single attorney in sight, they talked with candor about sleepy students, crowded buses and disoriented families.

"The board knows," said member Mary Brown, "that change has to come."

That admission was no doubt made easier by a new superintendent and the departure of a stubborn attorney, but it is critical to the work ahead. The way Pinellas currently assigns students to schools defies educational logic, and the choice plan needs an overhaul.

Next spring, families will apply for choice assignments for the last time under a negotiated settlement that ended 32 years of court-ordered desegregation. The following year, the legal obligations end. So board members, following the advice of superintendent Clayton Wilcox, are planning something that was conspicuously absent when the district abolished school zones for a choice plan that severed the connection between communities and their schools. The board is going to seek the advice of families and educators.

Wilcox already has begun the transformation, taking administrative steps to make choice easier on families next year. He wants to move the application period to the spring so that families have more time to decide, and he plans to streamline and automate applications so that many families can avoid the lines at overcrowded family education centers. Says Wilcox: "The families I talk with don't want shorter lines. They want no lines at all."

These are welcome improvements, but the larger task will be considerably more challenging. Toward that end, the board is planning a series of public meetings and a 30-member, broad-based community task force. The core question is a vexing one: How can the district rebuild ties between neighborhoods and schools while maintaining racial integration in Pinellas schools?

There are no easy answers here. The negotiated court order says "all racial ratio requirements shall be eliminated" in 2007-08, but courts in other jurisdictions have allowed districts to use some race-based policies in pursuit of racial diversity. As Al Kauffman, senior legal associate for the Harvard Civil Rights Project, puts it: "School districts have the authority to set their attendance zones to meet their interests, including racial diversity. . . . I don't think it is credible to argue that a district can never consider race."

The perverse twist about the current choice plan is that it is producing less integration even as it increases the burden on all students. Under choice, families can't readily plan for where their children will attend schools, new students are disenfranchised, and some students are often shuffled from one school to another with no effect on racial diversity. Under choice, high school students begin their day at 7:05 a.m., busing costs have jumped $11.7-million in two years, and a $23-million special reserve account will be depleted by next year.

Something is terribly wrong with the design of Pinellas' choice plan, and, over the course of the next year, board members are likely to hear some consistent themes in the community. Families want more certainty about their school assignments. They can't fathom a plan that gives them virtually no guarantees about schools in their own back yards. They don't understand how a School Board that demanded an end to court-ordered busing is now busing more students than ever before.

The current plan was written mostly by lawyers. This time, parents and educators deserve a chance.

[Last modified May 8, 2005, 00:45:19]