Thursday, 4:30 PM
Supreme Court ruling could impact 20 school desegregation plans in Massachusetts
By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff
The Supreme Court ruled today that race cannot be used to decide where students go to school except in limited circumstances, a decision that advocates fear could jeopardize roughly 20 voluntary desegregation plans in Massachusetts.
By a 5-4 vote, the court struck down voluntary programs adopted in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., to attain racial diversity in public school classrooms.
In Massachusetts, advocates fear that the ruling will also impact the Lynn public schools' longstanding plan, which won a challenge in federal court only two years ago. Others fear the decision could also harm the 32 greater Boston communities that participate in the Metco program, which buses minority students voluntarily from Boston to mostly white suburbs that boast higher test scores and college-going rates.
In the Lynn case, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled, 3-2, in June 2005 that Lynn could use race as a factor in deciding student transfers. The plaintiffs appealed to the US Supreme Court, but the justices declined in December 2005 to hear the case.
Instead, the high court selected Seattle schools and Jefferson County public schools in Louisville for its test cases.
Seattle uses race as a tie-breaker to decide which students should attend schools that are in high demand, with the goal of keeping the schools close to the district's average racial and ethnic makeup. In Louisville, officials use their policy to keep the black student enrollment between 15 percent and 50 percent at most schools.
Teachers, administrators, and others who favor using race as a factor in student assignments say students benefit socially by interacting with diverse classmates and academically, because minority students are less likely to be in highly segregated and often low-performing schools. They said the school systems' plans are narrowly tailored enough to provide a benefit without harming wide swaths of students.
But opponents of the plans, including some minority parents who have been denied transfers, say the plans are outdated and discriminatory. They say school officials should not deny students their choice of schools simply because of their skin color.
Lynn's plan has been in place since 1989 and denies students transfers from one school to another if the move would intensify segregation at either school. The district is now 30 percent white, 42 percent Hispanic, and 13 percent black, and many schools already are segregated. But district officials argued that regulating transfers has kept many schools more diverse than they otherwise would be.
