E-Mail This Article to a Friend SCHOOL REPORT High-grade tensions BY ADAM REILLY

On Wednesday, after the Phoenix went to press, the task force charged with examining the Boston Public Schools’ student-assignment plan offered two proposals to the Boston School Committee. One reportedly involves keeping the current three-zone framework for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, while another would create six zones — closer to a true neighborhood-schools format, but not as close as some would like.

The School Committee plans to hold four public forums on the proposals and to take a vote by November, which would allow any changes to be implemented in the 2005-’06 academic year. In the meantime, two groups on opposite sides of the assignment-plan issue are already girding for battle — no surprise, since the debate is sure to be heated (see "Bus Stop," News and Features, February 13). The members of Walk 2 School favor the neighborhood-schools plan championed by District Six city councilor John Tobin, who chairs the council’s Education Committee, and who is white. The members of Work 4 Quality Schools oppose making any changes until the quality of Boston’s schools is improved (higher test scores and graduation rates, smaller class sizes, better facilities); they’re led by District Seven city councilor Chuck Turner, whom Tobin replaced as Education Committee chair, and who is black.

At a City Hall press conference Tuesday, Work 4 Quality Schools fired a pre-emptive salvo. Some of its members were aggressive, like Mike Heichman, a retired public-school teacher from Dorchester, who described the Boston Public Schools in damning terms. "What we have in the Boston Public Schools is a system of institutionalized child abuse and neglect," he said. "Our children and their schools are abused by ... MCAS — the ‘Massachusetts Child Abuse System’ — and the national policy of No Low-Income Child Left Unharmed." Heichman, who is white, also ascribed nefarious motives to neighborhood-schools backers, saying they "do not perceive the diversity of our school population — 86 percent nonwhite — as a beauty to embrace. Instead, they view it as a curse to escape from. They wish to create small islands where their white, privileged children can survive and thrive."

Sandra McIntosh, one of four task-force members participating in Turner’s group, was more measured. "I went into this process with an open mind," she said. "And what I heard personally was the need of parents to talk about wanting quality Boston public schools for our children. We heard that not just in Roxbury, but we heard it in Dorchester, we heard it in Mattapan, we heard it in South Boston, we heard it from parents in West Roxbury.... Even though the Walk 2 School group is working on a different issue, I would ask that they join us in our effort to work on quality." (McIntosh closed by calling for a task force on school quality, something the assignment-plan task force was expected to suggest Wednesday.)

On the whole, though, aggressiveness carried the day. Nadine Cohen, an attorney from the Boston Bar Association’s Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, issued this ominous warning: "Any change in the student assignment plan that would knowingly result in fewer educational opportunities for students of color ... and would disproportionately benefit the 15 percent of white students in the system raises serious legal concerns for all of us." Meanwhile, Leonard Alkins of the Boston NAACP cautioned that the city was on the verge of revisiting the busing crisis of the 1970s. "There’s a saying that if you don’t remember your history, you’re doomed to repeat it," he said. "Once again, Boston is moving toward that direction. We’re moving back toward segregated schools. We’re moving back to the poor and disenfranchised [not receiving] a fair and equitable education."

Here’s hoping he’s wrong.