Iowa: School district's diversity plan makes few changes to open-enrollment policy

[Harold Schiffman]

School district's diversity plan makes few changes to open-enrollment policy
by Sara Sedlacek · February 06, 2008

Despite a Supreme Court ruling last summer, the West Liberty Community
School District's desegregation plan will see very few changes,
according to Superintendent Becky Rodocker. The school district's new
Diversity Plan was discussed at last month's regular meeting of the
WLCSD Board of Education and Rodocker explained to the board that,
though race will still be allowed to determine whether or not a
student can open-enroll, the WLCSD will not need to use it as a factor
anymore.

The Supreme Court ruling came from a court case involving two public
schools - one in Louisville, Ky. and one in Seattle - which used
voluntary desegregation plans. Parents of white children challenged
the plans and in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the
plans violated the students' equal protection rights. Shortly
thereafter, the Iowa Department of Education began examining West
Liberty's desegregation plan, as well as five others like it across
the state. West Liberty's plan, which has been in place since June of
2004, involves a four-step approach that includes: 1. Affirmative
Action policies for hiring staff; 2. An equity plan reflective of the
values and aspirations of the community; 3. Placement of students into
appropriate courses and classrooms; and 4. The ability to determine
open-enrollment ratios.

The current plan was put in place to keep the number of students
open-enrolling into other districts down and allows such programs as
blended Head-Start, which gives the district the ability to identify
all four-year olds in the district, screen them and place them into
the classroom by gender, socio-economic status and race. The plan also
gives school officials the authority to deny open-enrollment requests
if it is found that the release or enrollment of a student will
"adversely affect the district's existing minority/non-minority
student ratio," according to the plan.

The new diversity plan will still bear the same four approaches of the
desegregation plan with minor changes, but, as recommended by the
school's attorney, new factors have been added in determining
placement and open-enrollment options. According to a memo from
Attorney Brian Gruhn, an acceptable policy using racial classification
as a factor would have to include certain elements. These elements are
"a precise explanation of how classifications are to be used, who
makes the determination regarding classification, what oversight is
employed for decisions, precise circumstances in which classification
decisions are to be used, and/or how similar situated students are
treated involving race-based decisions," according to the memo. Gruhn
explained to the board in his memo that Justice Anthony Kennedy, the
Supreme Court's swing voter, said school boards may track statistics
by race but individual race classifications employed may be considered
legitimate only if they are a last resort.

In response to that, Gruhn made recommendations to the board in
regards to addressing open-enrollment and flight from the schools. He
recommended removing all racial classification from the school
district's open-enrollment policy and replace it with socio-economic
factors. He also recommended amendments to a handful of rules
including the definitions of "minority student" and "voluntary or
court-ordered desegregation plan" and rules defining the eligibility
of a school district to adopt such a plan.

The amendments Gruhn recommended would change the way the school
district defines a "minority student." Race could still be a
characteristic used in defining a "minority student" but it could not
be the sole or determinative characteristsic. Other defining
characteristics could be used as the sole and determinative
characteristics. They include socioeconomic status, English language
learner status and ethnicity/national origin.

According to Rodocker, the board decided to do away with race as a
factor all together.

"We've decided we don't need to use it," she said. "We've got three
big factors, we don't need it."

Those "big" factors are the number of students on the free and reduced
lunch plan, students who speak a language other than English at home
and the ELL population. According to the 2007-08 district snapshot
taken in October, 39 percent of students in the district speak a
language other than English at home and more than 30 percent of
students are learning English as a second language. Rodocker explained
open-enrollment would be allowed only if the student coming in or
going out would make those numbers lower.

"If we're to use our funding appropriately, we have to provide
adequate programs for all our students," said Rodocker.
"Open-enrollment in and out can artificially distort those numbers."

In addition to redefining "minority student," an amendment to the rule
determining eligibility of the school district to adopt a diversity
plan has been proposed. A school district is currently an eligible
school if at least 20 percent of the students are minority students.
The amendment states that a school district is eligible if and only if
"the percentage of minority students in the district exceeds the
percentage of minority students in the state by at least 20 percentage
points." Currently, the minority ratio of the state of Iowa is about
15 percent, West Liberty exceeds that by almost 35 percent.

"This is actually easier than what we do now," Rodocker said.
Currently, the district has a one-in, one-out policy. This means that
if a student wants to open-enroll into the school, there must be a
student open-enrolling out of the school. There has to be a match. The
new plan does not require a match, making the process much easier.
Students could open-enroll in and out regardless of what other
students are doing, as long as the district snapshot is not set off by
the open-enrollment either way of the student. The district snapshot
is done each October to show the school district's statistics which
include language and socio-economic status.

After reviewing the changes to the plan, the board sent the Diversity
Plan to Gruhn. Gruhn and Rodocker met to finalize the rough draft
Tuesday. Rodocker said her goal was to come up with a three to four
paragraph summation to present to the board at its special meeting
Wednesday, Feb. 6. The board will then approve the rough draft
Wednesday and send it to the Iowa Department of Education by March 1.
The Department of Education has 10 days to get back to the board with
the potential changes. During the time the board is making the changes
suggested by the Department of Education, the plan may remain in place
until the finalized plan is approved. All of this will happen before
June 30. After it is approved by both the board and the Department of
Education, the plan will go into effect for the 2008-09 school year.


http://westlibertyindex.com/article.php?viewID=1397
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