New York federal court lifts 1974 desegregation order
A federal judge on Friday lifted a 1974 desegregation order for a Brooklyn middle school, effectively eliminating racial quotas that had been in place at Mark Twain Intermediate School for more than three decades. The order was imposed when the district, No. 21, was largely white and the Federal District Court in Brooklyn ruled that it was steering white, middle-class students away from the school, deliberately segregating it. The order stated that the school had to reflect the basic makeup of the district. At the time, about 30 percent of the students were from minority groups and 70 percent were white. After the court order, Mark Twain was converted to a selective school for gifted students, and it is now highly respected. The neighborhood has also changed, with the proportion of white students in the area steadily decreasing. The result has been that because of the court order and the demographic changes, minority students are now being turned away from the school in favor of whites. Earlier this year, an Indian-American family filed a lawsuit against the school district, charging that their daughter had been unfairly discriminated against and rejected from the school because of the policy. Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein asked the court to overturn the original ruling. Debra Wexler, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said that the admissions policy would be changed for the 2008-09 school year to become “race neutral.” A sharply divided United States Supreme Court ruled in June that public school systems could not seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures that explicitly take into account a student’s race. But in Friday’s ruling, Judge Weinstein wrote that the Supreme Court opinion would not have changed the court order in 1974, because there was, in fact, segregation. Judge Weinstein also requested a letter from the chancellor or the mayor assuring him that students who are enrolled in the school will be allowed to remain there and graduate on time.
Source: New York Times, 2/23/08, By Jennifer Medina
[Editor’s Note: The Supreme Court decision is summarized below.]
NSBA School Law pages on PICS v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No 1