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Legal Defense Team Stuck In Time Warp

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 16, 2007

Back in 2000, the Pinellas County School Board and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund reached an agreement on a school-choice plan that signaled the end to a requirement that schools have a set ratio of black to white students.

"Although it's not perfect, we believe it's in the best interest of all the children of Pinellas County," Enrique Escarraz, the fund's St. Petersburg lawyer, said at the time.

Seven years later, Escarraz and the Legal Defense Fund want to renege on the deal.

After the Pinellas school board revealed a new student-assignment plan the other day, Escarraz threatened to return to court because the proposal "totally disregards diversity and promotes segregation."

The new plan would allow students to pick a school close to home, apply to a magnet school or attend a career academy. But the Legal Defense Fund fears that if too many black children choose a neighborhood school, some schools will become predominately black.

And the problem with that is what?

Apparently Escarraz didn't read the U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that said that school districts, no matter their good intentions, may not assign students to schools based solely or primarily on race.

Many educators and civil rights organizations see a majority-black school as a return to the bad old days, or "resegregation." Such thinking ignores the difference between forced segregation and a voluntary decision to choose a neighborhood school.

That some schools may again be dominated by a single race leads some to conclude that we are regressing from the goals of desegregation. We are not.

Today Hillsborough's school district, like many across the nation, is free of federal oversight. An appeals court decided in 2002 that the last vestiges of the old segregated system had been removed.

Of all the concerns parents have about their kids' schools, racial percentages are low on the list. The legal team should let the district's student-assignment plan proceed.

More good comes from a well-rounded education than racial head counts.

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