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SJUSD board commits to desegregation policies
Attorney for families says the commitment is necessary to show district's 'good faith'
By Kate Carter
San Jose Unified School District's board last week voted unanimously in support of a resolution of commitment to the principles of the district's desegregation policies.
District Superintendent Dr. Linda Murray told The Resident the board adopted the resolution at its Nov. 16 meeting to clarify its support for the federally mandated desegregation efforts to members of the community.
"It was motivated by a desire on the part of the board to make a very public statement about desegregation," she said."
The school board put in writing that it supports the two goals of the desegregation order--reducing racial isolation in the district's schools and raising achievement for Hispanic students.
It also reaffirmed the school choice program as the district's approach to desegregation, and recommitted to a long-term evaluation of the program, which is already under way.
Carol Myers, board trustee for the district's area 3 that includes Willow Glen, was addressed by several members of the public at the meeting.
They expressed concern at statements she made at a Nov. 1 community meeting at Willow Glen High School that criticized the district's desegregation policies.
At that meeting, Myers said the district's magnet program, which allows parents to choose the middle and high schools their children attend, creates an unfair inequity among the schools for receiving the desegregation funding.
Myers and others at the Nov. 1 meeting said the district's choice program for achieving desegregation was underfunding Willow Glen schools, and driving neighborhood students to other schools that could afford attractive programs, such as Castillero Middle School, Lincoln High School and San Jose High Academy.
Myers also said the district's schools in Willow Glen had among the highest populations of Hispanic students of any schools in the district.
She said these often under-achieving students were not getting the help they needed because the majority of the desegregation money was spent on over-funded magnet programs that actually benefited higher-achieving white students.
At last week's school board meeting, Francisco García-Rodríguez, the attorney for the Hispanic families affected by the desegregation order, said that Myers' public criticism of the choice program could be legally interpreted as a lack of support by the school district for desegregation.
He said that he could use her public statements, as a school board member, as evidence of the board's bad faith in implementing the requirements of the consent decree.
"If you persist, I will show that as a lack of good faith [toward the consent decree] which you are obligated to implement," García-Rodríguez said.
Added García-Rodríguez: "Then we're going to have a real mess on our hands."
García-Rodríguez encouraged the board to pass the resolution to "make clear that you support the objectives of the consent decree."
In 1984, a federal court found that the school district was intentionally racially segregated and mandated that it implement programs to desegregate its schools and improve the academic achievement of its Hispanic students.
The district receives $30 million of state funds to comply with the court's decision. It uses that money to create attractive programs in schools where there are an overabundance of either white or Hispanic students.
The point of these programs, said Murray, is to get students to move and equalize the student racial population in the schools that need it most.
Willow Glen High and Middle schools were determined to be "naturally desegregated," however, and thus do not qualify for much of the desegregation funds or for the magnet programs those funds pay for.
In the spring, the school district began a two-year evaluation of the way desegregation money is used and apportioned, Murray said.
She said they evaluate the desegregation program in each school every year, but that this longer-term investigation is "to intensely review what's been done since 1985.
This is an attempt to go one step further and look at the San Jose Unified School District as a whole."
Murray also said that last year's evaluation showed that WGHS had a number of Hispanic students that were under-performing, as shown by their performance on the SAT 9 standardized test.
Because of that, the district allocated an additional $220,000 this year to help increase Hispanic student achievement at WGHS.
At the school board meeting, two groups, representing Latino and Hispanic interests, in the district read letters to the school board and Myers, expressing concern about the Nov. 1 meeting.
Their specific concerns were that Latino families were not present at the meeting, that a quote by Myers in The Resident could be interpreted as racist and that Myers was not adequately representing the interests of all the students in her trustee area, the majority of whom are Latino.
Myers responded that the district had failed to inform the Latino families about the Nov. 1 meeting, that many of the students in Willow Glen schools were Hispanic and needed more help than the schools could afford, and that she and others at the community meeting were advocating for the needs of Hispanic students.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
