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A Times Editorial
In Hillsborough: The school district's proposal is promising, but it has deficiencies. And it would be a mistake to hastily embrace the plan without a substantive public debate.
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 28, 2000
Hillsborough County's school choice plan is an ambitious if incomplete proposal that could, with the right tinkering, end a half-century of mixed success with federally imposed efforts to integrate the races in the classroom. The question is not whether the plan will shepherd the return of majority-black or white schools -- that already is happening, and the trend could accelerate under any scheme to succeed federal court supervision, which inevitably will end. The question, instead, is whether Hillsborough's plan offers the best chance to improve educational opportunities for black and white students alike, using a variety of tools that foster integration, expand school choice and correct decades of discriminatory practices without putting quality academics at risk of racially driven legal attacks.
The plan itself is a morass of what-ifs. On paper, at least, any student could attend any school in Hillsborough, under certain conditions. The county would divide into seven regions; students could attend the school to which they're currently assigned or apply to any within their region. A lottery would decide the winners if too many apply. Students also could apply to schools outside their region, though local residents have first dibs. Parents living in Tampa's inner city would have even greater choice. They could choose a school every year, instead of only at kindergarten, sixth and ninth grades.
The school district has proposed a thoughtful concept that would likely be the framework of any voluntary integration plan acceptable to the federal courts. Choice offers the district legal cover to expand race-based programs; Hillsborough would increase black enrollment in intensive "magnet" schools to 27 percent, from 24 percent. Expanding choice corrects the underlying complaint in Brown vs. Board of Education -- that blacks were consigned as a matter of policy to inferior schools. The district also would dismantle barriers to integration by expanding the number and types of magnet programs, repairing schools in poor neighborhoods and increasing the capacity at modern suburban schools.
Even lacking key details, the plan appears to meet the minimum U.S. District Court Judge Elizabeth A. Kovachevich wanted to see before releasing Hillsborough from federal court supervision. Kovachevich wanted evidence the district was serious about eliminating the vestiges of discrimination. This proposal goes far, but serious deficiencies exist and many questions remain. If the board leaves them unanswered, there is the risk of recreating a dual school system.
The board should be clear before moving ahead on the curricula of magnet and attractor programs and on the support and flexibility the district will provide for school choice. Will transportation be available for all students to attend their preferred schools? Will needy students be grandfathered in, or will the plan's residency requirements bump them from their current schools?
The board also must commit to building new inner-city schools. Otherwise, choice will likely spur a brain-drain from downtown schools to the suburbs, leaving schools in the poorest neighborhoods to languish with low academic achievement, parental involvement and political support. A failure by the board to confront the realities of economics and voluntary integration may give the court doubts about Hillsborough's commitment to eliminate the "vestiges" of discrimination.
The worst thing the district could do would be to rush and embrace the proposal without a substantive public debate. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which brought the case in 1958, needs to be heard, and all parents deserve an opportunity to see how their families could be affected. The board should not insist on deciding by June, when many families are away on summer vacation, how to resolve a case that has lasted 40 years. The plan may be a way to buy time, moderate the race ratios and protect the magnets long enough to blunt the resegregation that choice typically brings, especially once the umbrella of court protection is gone. But we should, at the outset, be reasonable in our expectations.