Unmasking the school re-zoning process: Race and class in a Northern Colorado community
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Unmasking the school re-zoning process: Race and class in a N o r t h e r n Col o ra d o c o m m u n i t y
B rad l e y B a r te l s a n d R u b ´ e n Donato * University of Colorado, Boulder, CO. E-mails: [email protected], [email protected] *Corresponding author.
Abstract In 2007, the US Supreme Court struck down two student school assignment plans, one in Seattle and the other in Jefferson County, Kentucky, which specifically relied on racial classification. School districts can no longer use racespecific criteria to assign students to schools. Accordingly, school districts will have to use alternative methods to diversify their schools. Justice Anthony Kennedy, however, endorsed ‘‘race conscious’’ mechanisms that allow school districts to devise student attendance zones that encompass racially segregated neighborhoods, the building of new schools in mixed neighborhoods and the development of programs in order to integrate schools. We present a case study of a school district in northern Colorado that redrew its attendance zones because it constructed a new middle school in an affluent White neighborhood. We argue that school districts that seek to implement such plans will most likely be challenged, even where physical distance to schools does not present hardships for parents, and where minority and poverty rates are low enough to carry out such goals. School authorities need to be cognizant of the limits and possibilities of race-conscious economic integration plans, and mindful of their potential adverse effects. Latino Studies (2009) 7, 222–249. doi:10.1057/lst.2009.9 Keywords: school re-zoning; economic integration; Latinos; school–community relations
Introduc ti on In Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the United States Supreme Court recently struck down two student school assignment plans, one in Seattle and the other in Jefferson County, Kentucky, r 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1476-3435 Latino Studies www.palgrave-journals.com/lst/
Vol. 7, 2, 222–249
Unmasking the school re-zoning process
which relied on race-specific classifications to assign students to certain schools. This decision, in essence, eliminated an important way to reduce racial isolation in American public schools. It ruled that remedying past effects of discrimination, or providing greater student diversity, could not serve as a compelling interest to justify a school board’s use of racial classification in student school assignments. Justice John Roberts, in fact, concluded that the ‘‘way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.’’1 The plurality opinion indicates that at least four of the Justices supported the position that school districts cannot establish attendance zones by taking race into account under any circumstances. But in a vigorous dissenting opinion, joined by three other Justices, Justice Stephen Breyer argued that the decision announced legal rules that ‘‘will obstruct efforts by state and local governments to dea
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