Cincinnati Public Schools to remove race as a factor in magnet school enrollment
A decision by the Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) school board to end a 32-year-old integration policy by removing race as a factor in magnet school enrollment decisions will have relatively little tangible effect, district officials insist, despite concerns by parents that the decision could eat away at diversity. As always, schools will continue to fill open slots in the district’s 20 magnet programs with siblings of current students and the first qualified students to apply once the enrollment periods begin. But after the board’s decision, students who don’t get admitted will no longer be placed on waiting lists separated into black and non-black students, as well as by boys and girls. Some veteran magnet school parents contend those lists served an important role in neutralizing the natural advantage higher-income parents have when it comes to being first in line. Now, they say, it will become even more important to get in line early. CPS administrators, board members, and parent groups all said keeping school buildings racially and economically mixed is critical to a well-rounded education. And the magnet schools, as a whole, perform much better on state-mandated testing than traditional neighborhood schools. But the administration said the impact will be minor because the district’s 20 magnet programs fall into one of two categories: less popular schools that usually don’t have a waiting list, or the high-demand Montessori programs and Fairview German Language School, where very few open spots are available in the first place. Roughly 8,300 students are enrolled in magnet programs this year, about a quarter of CPS’s overall enrollment.
School board member Catherine Ingram said it’s too soon to say whether the "first-come, first-serve" waiting list will change the racial makeup of schools. If all families have truly equal access to getting on the list, it’s fair, she said. But if the administration inadvertently gives some families a head start—by relying on e-mail in impoverished neighborhoods, or scheduling enrollment only during work hours, for example—then it may need to be changed, she said. Some critics complained that CPS should have tried harder to find a more creative solution in response to the U.S. Supreme court ruling from June that held race-based admissions in Seattle and Louisville unconstitutional. The ruling left open the possibility that a district could still create a multi-factored list of enrollment criteria that doesn’t mention race specifically but still creates a diverse student body. "The school board basically said they were not willing to fight, that’s what I took out of it," said Christopher Smitherman, president of the Cincinnati Chapter of the NAACP. CPS spokeswoman Janet Walsh said the district is leaving the door open to take that step in future years, but doing so now would have been a complicated, expensive process that could have ended up as a legal dispute. Tom Hutton, a senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Association, said many schools are playing it safe as they re-evaluate racial policies. In deciding whether to test the limits of the court’s complicated ruling, a district needs to weigh whether standing by its integration programs is worth a substantial strategic, financial and legal risk of a lawsuit, Mr. Hutton said. A district with other large issues on its plate might decide it’s not worth it, he said. Pam Green, board chairwoman of the local chapter of Parents for Public Schools, said in a statement that CPS did the right thing in following a regrettable Supreme Court decision. "I don’t see that the district had much choice, and we certainly don’t have the financial resources to engage in a legal battle," she said.
Cincinnati Enquirer By Ben Fischer
[Editor’s Note: The Education Week article excerpted at the link below describes the impact of the Court’s decision in PICS v. Seattle School District No. 1 on magnet school programs. More information on how the decision is playing out, as well as NSBA guidance on the ruling, is available starting from that link.
NSBA School Law pages on magnet school admissions