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School board's focus turns to black pupils

A student-assignment plan must help all, the School Board's Brown tells black activists.

By DONNA WINCHESTER, Times Staff Writer
Published October 4, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG -- The Pinellas School Board's only black member told a group of African-American community leaders Wednesday she believes the district should put the brakes on implementing its new student-assignment plan.

Mary Brown, the board's chairwoman, acknowledged that the plan, scheduled for approval Nov. 13, has been in the works for more than two years. But now that it's close to "coming to the table," Brown told members of Concerned Organizations for Quality Education for Black Students that more thought needs to be put into some key components.

"If I buy a car, I want to make sure it works," Brown said. "If I'm buying a new student-assignment plan, I want to see that all of its parts are working."

Brown told COQEBS members it was obvious at a series of community meetings held over the past two weeks that parents have many concerns about the proposed plan, scheduled to take effect next year. Among them, she said, is which students will receive busing and how siblings will be assigned to schools.

Many parents also expressed concern that the district isn't doing all it can to maintain diversity in schools, something that has bothered her from the outset, Brown said.

"Our children have to hit the floor running," she said. "I believe that in order for our children to move forward, we must work no matter how hard it is to keep some diversity in our schools."

The new plan would create a neighborhood school system, replacing the 4-year-old choice plan that came on the heels of 32 years of busing for desegregation. Since housing patterns generally fall along racial lines, the plan would concentrate large numbers of black and other minority students in less-diverse schools with poorer populations and lower test scores.

The board has wrestled with the question of how to maintain diversity while crafting a plan that would allow children to go to school close to home, something parents have said they want. The question has also been on the minds of COQEBS members, who have been monitoring the district's efforts to educate black students since 1998.

In recent years, the group has been at the forefront of two court cases, one involving the settlement of the suit that led to the school district earning unitary status, and another, still pending against the district, concerning closing the achievement gap between white and black students.

COQEBS member and retired New Jersey school superintendent Henry Oliver agreed with Brown that the plan needs more discussion.

"I'm not going to say we can't survive if schools are resegregated," Oliver said. "But there will be tremendous challenges if we end up going back to a high level of segregated schools."

It's incumbent upon the black community, Oliver said, to make sure the district does not return to a system that is "separate but unequal," with students in predominantly black schools receiving fewer resources than students in more affluent areas.

With that in mind, COQEBS members voted at Wednesday's meeting to send a letter to School Board members requesting that the district include in the new assignment plan the method it will use to make sure "adequate human and material resources" will be provided to schools and students with the greatest needs.

The group also will ask the district to consider setting aside 40 percent of the seats in countywide magnet and fundamental schools for neighborhood children.

"Magnets were built in south Pinellas to aid diversity," said COQEBS member and former Pinellas school administrator Robert Safransky. "That is being overlooked by a lot of people."

[Last modified October 4, 2007, 00:47:01]