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Schools

A grand vision for schools

A citizens panel's preliminary report recommends more magnet schools, sweeping diversity and shorter bus rides.

By THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published May 3, 2006

After nine months of meetings and a half-dozen public forums, a citizen task force is recommending dramatic changes to the school system.

In a preliminary report that won't be final for months, the 47-member panel calls for many more magnet schools, shorter bus rides and a broader definition of what constitutes a diversely populated school. The group was commissioned by the School Board in August to help remake the school choice plan.

For over 30 years in Pinellas County, diversity has been measured by the number of black students in a school, the result of a 1964 federal desegregation lawsuit by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund that remains in play today. The task force suggests broadening that definition to include other ethnic groups, including Hispanic and Asian students. It also suggests assigning students to schools based on their family income and even how well they perform academically.

Magnet schools, the group said, should be plentiful enough to meet the high demand, which now causes the district to place thousands of students on waiting lists each year. Magnets also should be more evenly distributed across the county, the panel said.

The district has 10 high school magnet programs, two magnet middle schools and nine elementary magnets - almost all of them concentrated in black neighborhoods in St. Petersburg.

In a related move Tuesday, the district said it is applying for federal grants to add as many as three new magnet schools starting with the 2007-08 academic year. Officials are expected to determine this month which schools would become magnets.

The popular schools, which attract white families, are seen as a key ingredient as the district plans for the 2007-08 school year, when it no longer will be required to assign students to schools based on race.

But while a 2000 settlement with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund calls for an end to race ratios, it also requires the district to keep trying to achieve diversity in schools.

The task force also recommends several steps that would shorten bus rides and reduce the crippling cost of transportation in the district. It suggests smaller and more numerous "attendance areas," the zones families must stay within as they choose schools. It also suggests measures to prevent students from making multiple transfers among schools as well as tweaking the choice computer lottery system to get more students into their neighborhood schools.

The recommendation is littered with caveats such as "still a work in progress'' and "for discussion purposes only.'' The group still plans to do a community survey in August and does not plan to issue final recommendations until January.

"These are preliminary,'' Jim Madden, the district official in charge of the choice plan, told School Board members Tuesday. "The task force still has a lot of work to do."

Nevertheless, the report offers a telling glimpse of where the district may be headed as it retools for the next generation.

Superintendent Clayton Wilcox described the report as a collection of "well-informed first thoughts'' on the complex issue of how to voluntarily desegregate a large school district with segregated housing patterns.

"There are lots of neat pieces in it, but I have to sit back and see how the whole thing fits together,'' he said. "I think their final recommendation will be powerful."

Most board members had not fully absorbed the report, which became available late last week.

School Board chairwoman Carol Cook said she likes some of the recommendations in theory, but feared they would be unworkable as a package.

For example, the group's call for more magnet schools and shorter bus rides are not, on the surface, compatible, she said. That's because magnet schools typically are available to students across the county, which requires more bus service - not less.

She added that keeping schools diverse in a county where racially integrated neighborhoods are few would appear to require more bus service.

In a brief discussion about the report, Cook and board member Jane Gallucci said they favored the broader definition of diversity recommended by the task force. Gallucci noted that the district must address a growing population of Hispanic students in Clearwater.

"In this day and age nationally,'' Gallucci said, "when they talk about minorities, they mean all minorities."

But School Board Attorney Jim Robinson warned the board that the settlement in the 1964 desegregation case still requires the district to take special care to meet the needs of black students in particular.

[Last modified May 3, 2006, 05:57:38]