Seattle parents, NAACP cry racism over school closures

This from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Local parents and a civil rights organization are calling for a federal investigation into school closures announced by the Seattle School Board earlier this year.

The parents and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People claim the school board's decisions had racist roots.

One month ago, the school board voted to close five schools and end or change eight programs to help close a $24-million funding gap in next year's budget. The school board said it chose to close underutilized schools and schools with academic problems.
The news crushed the hopes of many students and parents who had been struggling to keep alive their hope while campaigning to keep their schools open.

A month has passed since the decision was announced, but that anger hasn't diminished. And on Thursday, it hit the streets.

Some 50 people marched to the Federal Office Building in downtown Seattle, chanting ,"Our School Board is racist. Closures are racist." ...

...And the protesters" anger went beyond their march. Some 200 people have signed complaints alleging that the school board's decision is not just unfair but also illegal. Those complaints alleging discrimination are now in the hands of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education as a part of the NAACP's request for a federal investigation.

Readin’, ‘Ritin’, ‘Rithmetic, and Responsibility

The first book in the 97th volume of the Kentucky Law Journal is now available for purchase.

In this edition Sarah Sloan Wilson has written -

"Readin’, ‘Ritin’, ‘Rithmetic, and Responsibility: Advocating for the Development of Controlled-Choice Student-Assignment Plans after Parents Involved."

As one public-school board member has remarked, “student assignment is not pleasant.” After the Supreme Court’s decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, in which the court struck down Seattle Public Schools and Jefferson County Public Schools’ use of individual racial classifications, student assignment has become an even more unpleasant task for board members, especially those faced with evidence of rising racial isolation in their districts.

In "Readin’, ‘Ritin’, ‘Rithmetic, and Responsibility: Advocating for the Development of Controlled-Choice Student-Assignment Plans after Parents Involved," Wilson, a former middle and high school English teacher, proposes a controlled-choice student-assignment plan that will comply with Parents Involved while, at the same time, work toward a district’s goal of providing an equal and excellent education for all students, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or residential location.

Since 1913, the Kentucky Law Journal has published scholarly works of general interest to the legal community and is the 10th oldest law school journal in the country. It is produced by students of the University of Kentucky College of Law under the direction of an 11-person editorial board and with the advice of a faculty member. The Kentucky Law Journal is published quarterly by the College of Law.

Hat Tip to Kentucky Law Review.

NAACP Objects to Ed Department Letter on Race

The Department of Education provides occasional guidance to school districts in the form of "Dear Colleague" letters.

A recent letter, the office for civil rights opined on the issue of race in student assignment under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Meredith v Jefferson County Board of Education (combined with Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District).

The NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund quickly disputed the Bush Administration's legal analysis saying the Department of Education's "interpretation of the decision is inaccurate in a number of respects."

In Parents Involved, a majority of the Supreme Court justices (the four Justices who would have upheld the student assignment plans from Seattle and Louisville at issue in the case, and Justice Kennedy, who found some aspects of those plans unacceptable but approved of their purpose) recognized that school districts have compelling interests in promoting student diversity and avoiding racial isolation in elementary and secondary school settings.

The majority agreed that, in Justice Kennedy's words, a school district can, in its "discretion and expertise", take affirmative steps to avoid racial isolation and to achieve a diverse student population, Parents Involved, 127 S.Ct. at 2797, and that school officials may "consider the racial makeup of schools and adopt general policies to encourage a diverse student body, one aspect of which is its racial composition." Parents Involved, 127 S.Ct. at 2792.

But the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights focused only the court's race-neutral language.

In the two page “Dear colleague” letter dated Aug. 28 the OCR says:

“The Department of Education strongly encourages the use of race-neutral methods for assigning students to elementary and secondary schools.”

“Genuinely race-neutral measures” such as those based on a student’s socioeconomic status would not trigger the highest level of court scrutiny, the office says.

As Mark Walsh over at the School Law Blog points out,

"The letter takes no notice of the key concurring opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in the cases from Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky."

Anurima Bhargava, the director of the civil rights group’s education practice, said the letter “is very limited in its reading” of the high court decision. “It’s as if Kennedy hadn’t written,” she said.

The court ruled 5-4 in June of last year that assignment plans in the two districts that and sometimes relied on race-based assignments to achieve diversity in individual schools, violated the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

But Justice Kennedy wrote that while those districts used race in an unconstitutional manner, it would be permissible for districts to take race into account under certain circumstances, such as when choosing sites for new schools, drawing attendance zones based on neighborhood demographics, or allocating resources for special programs.