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Grandfather option may sell Pinellas school plan
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 23, 2000 Howard Hinesley, the superintendent of schools in Pinellas County, always seems to me to be suffering when he is explaining things to his bosses on the School Board. Impatient, maybe. Put upon. Certainly, Hinesley seemed frustrated last week while trying to sell his plan for "school choice" to the seven-member board. In his mind, the question of how Pinellas will assign its kids to schools in the future is obvious. So Hinesley sat at the large meeting table in white shirt sleeves and red tie, peering over wire-rimmed glasses. His aides handed out a colorful, crisply printed booklet explaining how he hopes the board will vote Tuesday. He launched into his minute-by-minute, daylong agenda ("9:35-9:50 a.m.: Discussion of process.") Two aides, standing beside twin easels with large notepads, wrote in magic marker a summary of each thing said. They alternated colors. Hinesley seemed surprised when the School Board members, especially Linda Lerner, interrupted him to ask for 15 minutes to read the booklet they had been handed. This was not on the agenda. It sort of threw things off. One of the aides wrote on the easel pad: "15 minutes reading time." At least no one had to raise one or two fingers in the air. Much of the rest of the day's discussion consisted of board members acting shocked at learning something. You mean, kids have to ride more buses? Yes, Hinesley said impatiently, you already know that. You mean, not everybody gets to go to the school of their choice? "Look on Page 5!" he answered. I have been hired help all my life and usually know better than to talk to my bosses like they are dummies. On the other hand, the School Board was playing a little fake-dumb. This new plan for assigning schools is a hot potato. Parents are scared and mad. Hinesley knows this. It is why, Tuesday he also is giving the School Board the option to "grandfather" all existing students in their current schools when this starts in 2003. It would be a new plan nobody had to follow yet. Sitting just behind Hinesley was Rick Escarraz, lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the plaintiff in the schools' 30-year-old desegregation lawsuit. He shook his head at the talk of exempting everybody. It helps white students a lot more than blacks. Only last year did Pinellas get a federal judge's permission to start phasing out court-ordered busing in 2003 -- provided it develops a system of "choice" that does not re-segregate the schools. Choice, in theory, is good. The county would be divvied up into large areas, and parents could choose within that area. Each school would develop its own "attractor," a special program or activity, as a selling point. We would stay integrated voluntarily. But it is choice, in practice, that has parents worried. At least at first, parents will overwhelmingly cling to their kid's closest or current school. That means some -- how many? who knows? -- will still be forced to other schools. The new bus routes required, by themselves, are enough to kill the idea. And as for a central part of the plan -- each school's "attractor" -- the details are nonexistent. So is any money for them. (The only money identified in the plan is for more buses.) The school system and the Legal Defense Fund settled on "choice" as the way to settle their old battle. But now the School Board realizes, belatedly, the customers have to be persuaded too. This is why the temptation is strong to exempt everybody in school in 2003. It is the parents of children entering in 2004 and after who would then be affected by choice, and a lot of them aren't paying attention yet. Heck, a lot of them aren't even parents yet. Sneaky.
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