At its Aug. 21 meeting, the San Jose Unified School District board of education unanimously passed a resolution opposing Proposition 54, an initiative that would restrict the state in collecting data on race, ethnicity and national origin.

Under Proposition 54, school districts would be prohibited from collecting such data unless required by the federal government.

Advocates of the proposition, also known as the "Racial Privacy Initiative," say it will create a truly "colorblind" government, in addition to significantly reducing state spending.

Opponents have stated that the proposition would hinder efforts to serve minorities and work toward equality.

"There's an assumption by the initiative's advocates that all things are now resolved and all opportunities are equal," said Deputy Superintendent Don Iglesias at the meeting. "But we're not there yet."

If the initiative passes, he said, "we would lose part of the picture of who we are and how we're doing."

Since the 1980s, when a federal court found the school district guilty of voluntarily segregating its schools, racial data has been used to achieve desegregation. Though the court's order for desegregation was replaced Aug. 22 by a district-engineered voluntary integration plan using socioeconomic information on students, the district still plans to use racial data to help close the achievement gap between minority and white students.

Proposition 54 is on the ballot for Oct. 7, along with the recall vote.