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Schools

No easy path to school choice

Pinellas is soon due to shift away from race controls, but so many questions about a new system remain unanswered.

By THOM AS C. TOBIN
Published September 19, 2006

Fall of 2007 was supposed to mark a historic turning point for Pinellas County, the first time in 35 years its students would be placed in schools without any consideration of race.

The district's 4-year-old choice plan would shed its strict race controls and become a more subtle tool for voluntary desegregation.

But now it appears the district could enter the 2007-08 school year without a fully developed plan for the next phase of school choice. Just four months before parents begin to choose schools for next year, officials have no clear idea how those schools or the system might change.

The School Board has enlisted a citizen task force to help it sort through the issue, but the group now says it will not have a recommendation ready for the board until February.

By then, the district should be well on its way to accepting applications for the 2007-08 school year - and many parents will want to know the district's plans for the choice system before they apply.

One solution being discussed by school officials would temporarily retain the ratios that keep the number of black students capped at 42 percent in any school. That would give the district another year to come up with a plan.

But the ratios are a product of a federal court settlement and any extension would have to be approved by a federal judge, said School Board attorney Jim Robinson.

Keeping the ratios in place also continues the massive cost of busing children under choice for another year, and essentially breaks a pledge to the public.

On the other hand, giving the district more time to work is "probably wiser in the long-term interests of this community," said school superintendent Clayton Wilcox. "I would rather incur the short-term frustration of some and create something that more people buy into than to rush judgment and perhaps not get it right."

Among the other ideas discussed by school officials:

- Allowing the ratios to expire as planned but keeping the current choice system otherwise intact. The downside: Schools could start to resegregate. That has happened recently in Hillsborough County.

- Accept the task force recommendation in February and work quickly to have a plan in place by the fall. Parents, however, would not get the benefit of knowing the details before they apply.

And the School Board generally does not work that quickly. Board members would need time to devise a plan and run it by the public before voting.

- Move the application period to later in the spring. The problem is the current period, which stretches from early February to early April, is designed to give the school bus system time to devise routes so parents have bus stop information in July.

One complicating factor is the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to hear the arguments soon of school districts in Seattle and rural Kentucky, both of which want to retain systems that use race in setting enrollments.

The court's ruling is expected to have broad implications for school districts nationwide. But how will it rule? And when?

Some members of the Pinellas task force are advancing the idea of using systems that might achieve racial balance in schools without actually considering race. An example: using family income as a factor when assigning students to schools, an idea tried with mixed success in other districts.

The School Board could make that idea part of its plan for the future of choice, only to have it nullified by the court.

"I'm not anxious to do something only to find out we have to go back and revamp it," said School Board Chairwoman Carol Cook.

So does the board wait for the court to rule or press ahead?

Said Cook: "I don't want to sit in limbo for another five years, either."

The choice plan and its race ratios were devised as part of a settlement between the school district and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

A system of "controlled choice" started at the beginning of the 2003 school year, replacing decades of busing for desegregation. Controlled choice employs the ratios to keep schools racially balanced and was designed as a four-year buffer between the old and new.

Controlled choice is supposed to give way to a regular choice system without race ratios starting with the 2007-08 school year. The settlement also obligates the district to continue to promote diversity in its schools but is not specific about how it should be done.

Enrique Escarraz, the St. Petersburg lawyer representing the interests of Pinellas black residents in the case, said he and his clients are more focused on black student achievement than on the racial makeup of schools after 2007.

Many black families, though not all, have come to feel that the quality of schools is a more pressing issue than the ratios, he said.

The Legal Defense Fund in recent months has been in a formal mediation process with school officials to work out differences over whether the system is adequately serving black students.

The choice task force, composed of about 40 people, has been working since August 2005. The group plans to conclude its effort next month with a random survey of Pinellas public school parents.

The survey will be mailed to a sampling of 2,000 to 5,000 households.

If the survey results give a clear picture of what the public wants, it may help the School Board come to a quicker decision, said board member Nancy Bostock.

She said she supports the idea of entering the next school year with the choice plan still in place but without the ratios. The district, she said, could take minor steps to help prevent resegregation and work on a more comprehensive plan for the following year.

She said it has always been her impression that 2007 would be a transition year and that 2008-09 would be the year the district came forth with a full-fledged plan for the future.

However, such a timetable could not be found anywhere in the choice plan's legal documents.

"I really, really had hoped we would have had a concrete plan for 2007-08," said board member Jane Gallucci. "I'm still holding out hope, because we've been building up to this."

Board member Mary Brown said she doesn't see any way the board could get the choice task force recommendation in February and be done in time for next school year.

The board will need to work through a maze of complicated issues, including bus transportation and what people mean when they push for "neighborhood schools" instead of race-based school assignments, she said.

She favors asking the federal court to extend the ratios another year to give the board more time.

"There are many things that we have not discussed yet," Brown said. "There are so many questions that need to be answered."

[Last modified September 19, 2006, 06:03:06]