Posted on 12/10/2005 9:42:58 AM PST by SmithL
SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. - When Michael Winsten and his wife, Cheryl, moved here four years ago, they expected their young children eventually would attend the high school down the hill, about a 3 1/2-mile bike ride from their home.
Since then, relentless growth in this Orange County community has forced a school district building boom, and the Winstens' five children will have take a bus to a new school farther away.
The Winstens say the real reason for moving their children is to ensure there are enough white students at the new school. They are suing Capistrano Unified School District over the attendance boundaries, claiming the school board put racial balance ahead of safety and neighborhood cohesion.
"I think the stupidest factor is using skin color and test scores," Michael Winsten said.
The case highlights a predicament faced across the country 51 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school children cannot be segregated by race: How to create integrated schools without violating anti-discrimination laws.
At issue in the Capistrano case is Proposition 209, a measure California voters approved in 1996 that bars discrimination or preferential treatment based on race or ethnicity.
The Winsten's lawsuit is dividing a community that has long prided itself on its racial harmony.
Peter Ditto, a father of three teenage girls who supports the school district's changes, said he understands why people are upset, but he believes bringing up race is the wrong approach.
"Our kids have to live in a diverse world," Ditto said. "I think recognizing that people are different, dealing with different cultural issues, are important lessons."
The new attendance boundaries would send the Winstens' oldest daughter, now a seventh-grader, to San Juan Hills High School, a $100 million school being built near what Michael Winsten calls one of the busiest highways in Orange County.
School district attorney David Larsen said race was used only at the end of the boundary-drawing process to ensure that none of the schools would be segregated.
"There's a strong desire for one school not to be known as the school in the hills and one as the school in the valley, so to speak," he said.
Larsen said parents, administrators and community members spent months working on attendance options. District memos show officials wanted to create high schools with about 2,500 students each and a racial composition as close as possible to 65 percent white and 35 percent minority to resemble the district's ethnic makeup.
The courts have given mixed signals to schools.
Federal appeals courts have allowed the Seattle school district to use race as a tie-breaking factor in high-school admissions and upheld a similar plan used by the school district of Lynn, Mass. And in a pair of 2003 rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed the University of Michigan could use race in its admissions criteria.
But in August 2002, the California 4th District Court of Appeals struck down Huntington Beach Unified's policy of using race in approving high school transfers, saying it violated the U.S. Constitution.
The courts have never said children have a right to go to a particular school, only that they have a right to an equal education, said Jack Boger, deputy director of the University of North Carolina's Legal Center for Civil Rights.
"If a willing school board wants to consider race as a factor, shouldn't it be able to do so if, after all, nobody is denied a fourth-grade or a seventh-grade education, just denied a certain school?" Boger said. "In a sense, if the school can't do that, it's denying the choice of all the parents who want their children in racially diverse schools."
That's what the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups tried to argue in seeking intervener status in the lawsuit against the school district. An Orange County judge denied their motion last month.
Parent Tareef Nashashibi also lent his name to the lawsuit. He said his son and daughter benefited from the diversity at their Capistrano school. His son, 19, graduated last year familiar with five languages, he said.
"We speak Arabic at home, they took Spanish and he picked up Farsi and Cantonese Mandarin from his friends," Nashashibi said. "It's like the United Nations of teenagers. People pay money to have this, and we're getting it for free."
But that's why people pay wheelbarrows of money to move to the hills you idiot. They want their kids to go to a good school!
Parents here that want the best for their kids try to get them into a school that will challenge them to push themselves. The discussion that I have had with fellow parents here has indicated that predominantly caucasion, Asian, Jew, Indian (plus some others) schools have more motivated students that tend to challenge their peers - getting an A+ is cool. Some predominantly minority schools for whatever reason often have a culture where underachieving is cool. Diversity is secondary - I want my kids to push themselves.
If I still had children of school age I would home school, get the government out of our schools!
2. A Public School belongs to ALL who live in a given district/county. Its one thing if they were bussing kids to/from LA County, but in this case, who cares? Schools don't belong to "the neighborhood," but to all inhabitants of the given county/district. If you don't like the rules that go with public schools, put your kids in private schools.
The "neighborhood schools" crowd are a bunch of morons that don't understand that once you embrace socialism (public schools) you must accept its consequences.
No one, it's free!!
"It's like the United Nations of teenagers. People pay money to have this, and we're getting it for free."
I would think that these people have not embraced socialism, that is why the law suit. The people who want thier kids to go to the school in the neighborhood they live in are right, you are wrong. They don't need to be busing children all over the state, county etc. Most people don't embrace socialism, and f**k the school district and their rules. They work for us not the other way around.
Interesting isn't it? In S. CA living in or even close to the "hills" is highly desirable.
The high ground sure costs the big bucks.
My advice: If you don't like what your local school board does, either elect new reps or, better yet, PULL YOUR KIDS OUT OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM!
Public schools are a form of socialism. You accept socialism, you live with its consequences.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Cantonese and Mandarin are different dialects of the Chinese language.
Except for a small number of linguistically-inclined people, it is very hard to "pick up" so many other languages informally without immersion or lessons. Maybe it's easier to learn Farsi since the child already knows Arabic, but Chinese languages are very different. My guess is that his child knows a few basic sentences in the other languages but can't really hold a conversation or read/write.
There was a wall street journal article recently (and several follow ups from other media) regarding asians and schools in california and the "new white flight".
I'm not sure, but this article bares some similarities to it.
I'm not sure if its related, but their seems to be some stuff that overlaps...including the O.C.
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