School panel nears proposal on busing

The panel charged with overhauling Boston's 30-year-old busing policy has settled on two possible approaches for assigning students, the first sign that the group is reaching consensus after months of heated debate.

Panel members would not disclose details of the two plans, but they have previously said they strongly favor either keeping the present system of three attendance areas or dividing the city into six zones, so that more students can attend school closer to home. They have ruled out creating a system of all neighborhood schools and one that allows students to attend school anywhere in the city.

The task force, which originally considered eight proposals, plans to present its final recommendation to the Boston School Committee and Mayor Thomas M. Menino in September. The group plans to give school and city leaders at least one, but probably two recommendations to consider, said Helen Dajer, cochairwoman of the task force.

"Things are getting smoother and easier," Dajer said. "We tried our best to listen to the public and convey their wishes, but everything is a compromise. We hope our compromise is an acceptable one."

If the school system decides upon an overhaul, it would be the first major change in the city's student assignment policy since the 1970s, when a federal judge ordered busing for desegregation. The task force, a group of educators and parents, first began meeting seven months ago to design a new assignment policy that would help reduce transportation costs and respond to some parents' requests for more neighborhood schools. The 60,000-student school system is now 85 percent minority, so the challenges are to maintain some racial balance and create more neighborhood schools when some areas don't have enough.

The task force was expected to deliver a final recommendation in June. But in May, the group's members said they needed more time to collect parental input and delayed a decision until September, which Boston school leaders opposed. The school system, which had to spend $59 million on transportation during the past school year, had hoped to put a new assignment policy in place for the 2005-06 school year.

Members of the student assignment task force have been meeting privately for the last two months.

"We're reaching the end of making our recommendation, and we want to keep things under wraps until we are done," said Lisa Gonsalves, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a task force member. "We've been debating which models to recommend -- and it was certainly a civil debate -- but we really got stuck in some places with just differing opinions."

Last week, both sides met privately to discuss the new timeline for the decision and the criteria under which final recommendations will be examined, said Elizabeth Reilinger, School Committee chairwoman.

In addition, the meeting also helped alleviate some task force members' suspicions about the School Department's motives. Some have said they were worried that the School Committee already had a plan in mind and that the community forums and task force meetings were just to appease the public.

The task force left the meeting satisfied, Gonsalves said.

"We got the sense from them that they are going to take our recommendations seriously and it wasn't just for show," she said. "We just wanted to make sure there weren't any ulterior motives, and I think we all came to see that it's a genuine process. But what happens when our recommendations get in their hands is the real indicator."

During the meeting, Reilinger said, she and Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant told task force members that they will only consider their final recommendation if it withstands legal reviews, meets the school system's goal of giving all children the same access to good-quality schools, and is affordable. "We had to make it clear that we cannot take on anything that requires more dollars," Reilinger said.

The road for the task force, a mayorally selected panel, has been rocky ever since it first gathered community input in January and crafted eight proposals for changing student assignments. The proposals ranged from a system of all neighborhood schools to allowing students to pick from any school in the city. While many parents and community leaders applauded the group's efforts, they also said the bulky stacks of maps and statistics caused confusion.

Currently, the school system is divided into three geographic zones, and the families within each zone compete for schools through a lottery.

"I definitely am eager to see what they are deciding as soon as possible, because it affects our children," said Karen Wontan of Mattapan, who has one child attending a public school in Dorchester. "The bottom line is still quality. Will children have more or less access to quality schools?"