Anonymous wrote:The transit system is not effective. That's the point. You want kids rolling into class 30 minutes late once a week?
jsteele wrote:Anonymous wrote:jsteele wrote:Anonymous wrote:
The Supreme Court's PICS (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007)) ruling might have fundamentally altered the landscape here.
If the boundaries of Deal or Wilson are redrawn to preserve AA enrollment a the expense of non-AA kids who live closer to the schools, those boundaries can and should be challenged by neighborhood families, and those families will likely prevail.
While the PICS case certainly makes things more complicated, I am not sure that I come to the came conclusion you have. A majority of the court recognized that the state has a compelling interest in seeking diversity in schools. However, the court ruled that plans to promote diversity have to be narrowly tailored. In the case of Deal and Wilson, a narrowly-tailered solution that preserves diversity would be fairly easy to develop. Defending a solution that did not preserve diversity, on the other hand, would be difficult given the compelling state interest in promoting diversity.
That's not how it works. The government has no affirmative obligation to "preserve diversity." In fact, the Court reaffirmed that, "the Constitution is not violated by racial imbalance in the schools, without more." That there is a compelling state interest in diversity simply means that the government can act to remedy a lack of diversity IF the remedies withstand strict scrutiny (in other words, are narrowly tailored). Applied here, there is no obligation to preserve diversity at Deal/Wilson. If they want to do so, fine - as long as the solution is narrowly tailored. But they certainly don't have to (absent some other court-imposed requirement).
Well, let's wait and see. I can assure you that District officials are concerned enough about the threat of legal action that I am pretty confident there will be no proposal that significantly reduces diversity at either Deal or Wilson.