Seattle Press on Line - Race Tie-breaker Ruling Appealed

Teacher Ted

Race Tie-breaker Ruling Appealed

By Ted Lockery

Apr 25, 2002 -- The Seattle School Board is right to appeal the recent court ruling that would prevent the District's current practice of considering race when assigning students to area high schools.

When the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Parents Involved in Community Schools they ruled in favor of a privileged few who, for reasons of self-interest, used the anti-affirmative action initiative, I-200, now Washington State Law, to their personal advantage and to the detriment of racial balance within Seattle Public Schools. Defined as "a nonprofit corporation founded by parents whose children have been or may be denied admission to the high school of their choosing solely because of race," Parents Involved in Community Schools convinced the Ninth Circuit panel that the School District's efforts to bring or to maintain racial diversity in its ten high schools constituted unfair, preferential treatment.

Enrollment in Seattle Public Schools works this way: Students apply to any of the ten area high schools, ranking them in order of preference. If their first-choice school is full they are offered their second-choice school; if their second-choice school is full they are offered their third-choice school.

How a school is determined to be "full," or "oversubscribed," involves a sort of ranking of applicants, using a series of tiebreakers. The first tiebreaker gives priority to students who have a sibling already attending their school of choice (15 - 20 percent of placements are determined in this way).

The second factor considered is race. In an effort to have individual schools reflect the racial composition of Seattle students city-wide (60 percent non-white; 40 percent white, according to briefs submitted to the court), priority is given in the second tie-breaker to either white or non-white students whose admission to a particular school would balance or maintain a racial composition of 60 percent non-white; 40 percent white. The District current allows a racial imbalance in either direction of 15 percent (i.e. 45 percent non-white, 55 percent white). Approximately ten percent of high school placements are determined by racial tiebreakers.

The intent of the Seattle Public Schools in using race as the second tiebreaker is not only reasonable but laudable. Students being educated to become participants in a pluralistic democracy benefit by working and maturing within the very pluralistic and racially diverse society they will come to lead, and in which they will find meaning. Even the Washington State Constitution has the foresight to grant the state (school districts) the authority "to provide...racially integrated schools." The Constitution also proclaims that education is the State's primary responsibility, and therein lies the rub.

Behind this lawsuit is the fact that we live in a geographically segregated city, with a public school system that is attempting to balance what our political democracy has thus far failed to achieve: social, political, and economic opportunity for all people--and in this case, all schools.

Sixty-six percent of the School District's white students live in North Seattle whereas 77 percent of non-white students live in South Seattle, including 84 percent of all African American students, 74 percent of all Asian students, and 65 percent of all Hispanic students. Of the School District's "oversubscribed" high schools, where racial tiebreakers are, for the "squeaky wheels," contentious, three are located in the North End (Ballard, Nathan Hale, and Roosevelt), one in the Central Area (Garfield), and one in the South End (Franklin). The dynamics at play here are hard to miss.

What is not hard to miss is the fact that without ensuring racial diversity within our schools, Seattle is in danger of falling back to a time when neighborhood schools reflected only the faces of those living around them.

Whether it requires an appeal of the Ninth Circuit ruling, or a repeal of Initiative 200, the future of a diverse Seattle Public Schools of our political democracy are well worth the fight.

Ted Lockery is a teacher at Nathan Hale High School. He can be contacted by e-mail at teacherted@seattlepress.com.

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