California district’s schools divided along racial lines
The Los Angeles Times reports that the racial makeup of San Juan Capistrano’s schools is either predominantly white or Latino, even where schools are separated by a distance no longer than athletic field. Although Kinoshita and Del Obispo elementary schools are located on the edge of a middle-class, mostly white neighborhood, Del Obispo's students are about 55% white, and Kinoshita's enrollment is about 95% Latino. Fifty-four years after Brown vs. Board of Education integrated public schools in the United States and 62 years after Mendez vs. Westminster School District outlawed “Mexican schools” in California, segregated schools are still a fact of life in the state. A 2004 study by the University of California All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (UC ACCORD) found that 75% of Latino and 70% of African American students attended predominantly minority schools. Race has long been an explosive issue in San Juan Capistrano and its school district. Tensions were exacerbated in 2005, when parents complained that the attendance boundary for a new high school would draw students from Latino neighborhoods and hurt test scores. The parents followed up with a lawsuit. Although school board officials argued that the boundaries were necessary to avoid segregated schools, they settled the suit by agreeing to eliminate references to race in the boundary policy and delay indefinitely a decision on who would attend the school.
Newly elected board member Ken Maddox said Latinos have reason to complain. “I, too, would be greatly troubled to learn my school district engaged in segregation based on ethnicity,” he said. “But there is no easy solution to the problem.” District officials say any attempt to redraw attendance boundaries would spark a backlash from parents, and that Latino and white parents don't want their kids bused to schools across town to achieve integration. They say they cannot influence where poor kids live, which is a crucial point when considering that the district's policy is to maintain neighborhood schools. American Civil Liberties Union attorney Hector Villagra, who filed a legal motion in 2005 supporting the redrawing of boundaries to integrate San Juan Hills High School, is unsympathetic. “The school district chose to put the attendance boundary where they put it and chose to keep it there despite the clear segregative effect,” he said. “It's no excuse to say segregation results from attendance boundaries.” According to UCLA education professor Gary Orfield, more often than not, poverty and "political choices" dictate attendance boundaries. Capistrano Deputy Supt. Sherine Smith agreed that “poverty is an impediment to learning” and said school officials are “trying very hard to overcome” the problem. She said the district uses federal funds “to try to close the gap” in opportunities available to students at predominatly Latino schools and also offers a dual immersion program—classroom instruction in English and Spanish at San Juan elementary—as an incentive to draw English-speaking students from outside the school's attendance boundary.
Source: Los Angeles Times, 9/2/08, By H.G. Reza
[Editor’s Note: For background on Capistrano’s settlement of the parents’ lawsuit, see the first link below. The UC ACCORD 2004 study is at the second link.]
NSBA School Law pages on Capistrano lawsuit
UC ACCORD study