E-Mail This Article to a Friend Bus stop With the scars of the 1970s school-desegregation battle barely healed, plans to revise the Boston Public Schools student-assignment system threaten to re-open old wounds BY ADAM REILLY
	School-assignment plans 101 IN BOSTON’S current student-assignment plan, high-school students are free to attend any school in the city. The city’s elementary and middle schools, however, are broken down into three zones under a "controlled choice" plan implemented in 1989, after the court-imposed plan ordered by Judge Arthur Garrity in 1975 had been lifted. Under controlled choice, most of the city’s elementary- and middle-school students must attend a school in whatever zone they happen to live in. Fifty percent of the seats in each school are reserved for students who live within walking distance — one mile for elementary students, one and a half miles for middle-school students. The other 50 percent of seats are open to students from the entire zone. Every year, parents identify their top choices for their children’s schools, students receive a lottery number that increases or decreases their chances of receiving their top choice, and assignments are meted out by computer. Students with one or more siblings at a particular school are more likely to be assigned to that school if their parents identify it as a top choice. Academic performance isn’t a factor in the assignment process. Neither is race, which was considered under the original controlled-choice plan but has since been dropped as a consideration. Proponents of a shift back to a neighborhood-schools-type plan — which could, for example, involve increasing the number of zones from three to nine — argue that the existing plan is costly (this year, Boston’s schools will spend approximately $50 million on busing) and limits parental involvement and community cohesion. They also say the current plan can create situations in which a child who lives across the street from a school is bused miles away after receiving a low lottery number. While a number of local politicians advocate shifting back to a neighborhood-schools-type framework, however, few if any believe a full-fledged neighborhood system is currently possible. The task force reviewing the current assignment plan is about to complete its first stage of activity, which involves public meetings throughout Boston to solicit community input regarding the plan’s strengths and weaknesses. The group plans to spend the rest of February and March pondering its findings and generating a series of recommendations. In April, the task force will present these recommendations at another series of citywide community forums. After this second stage of meetings concludes, the task force will meet again and present one or more comprehensive proposals to the School Committee, probably by the end of May. The School Committee will then vote on the task force’s final recommendations. If the task force proposes that the current assignment plan be amended, and if the committee votes to act on this recommendation, no changes will be implemented until the beginning of the 2005-’06 academic year. — Adam Reilly

THE PHRASE THAT best captures the atmosphere surrounding attempts to change student school assignments in the Boston Public Schools is a cliché, but it fits: the more things change, the more they stay the same. A move to change the current assignment plan, which is a modification of the school-desegregation plan put in place in 1975, is raising specters from the past. White politicians — Mayor Tom Menino and Boston City Council president Michael Flaherty — are leading the charge to change the plan in favor of one that would see more Boston public-elementary-school students attend schools closer to home. Politicians of color — District Seven councilor Chuck Turner, District Four councilor Charles Yancey, and at-large councilor Felix Arroyo — are saying, in short, not so fast.

Last week, Flaherty replaced Turner as chair of the city council’s Education Committee with District Six councilor John Tobin, a white politician from West Roxbury who favors a return to neighborhood schools. (In addition, Flaherty named District Three councilor Maureen Feeney, who is also white, as the committee’s vice-chair.) Turner’s ouster prompted him to compare Flaherty with Louise Day Hicks, who won notoriety in the 1970s for her opposition to court-ordered busing and who, like Flaherty, was from South Boston. Look out the window and you’ll see that it’s definitely 2004. But listen to what’s going on in the current debate about where Boston’s students go to school, and it sounds a little bit like 1975. And things have the potential to get uglier fast.

CITY COUNCIL president Flaherty, who’s taken a leadership role in reforming the school-assignment process and revamping the city’s deals with school-busing companies (in the 2003-’04 school year, he saved the city $10 million by restructuring contracts), has made a return to neighborhood schools into something of a signature issue. The talented politician, often touted as a potentially formidable mayoral candidate, has a lot to lose if the school-reassignment process devolves too far into racial politics. His reputation as the model for the New Boston Politician — a white guy from Southie who knows how to reach out to African-Americans, Latinos, gay men, and lesbians — has already been tarnished by last year’s clashes with city-council progressives, including the council’s three members of color (see "The Year of Living Dangerously," News and Features, December 5, 2003).

Turner, a long-time council progressive, was a frequent adversary during Flaherty’s rough 2003. Even so, the latter’s decision to boot Turner off the Education Committee left many political insiders baffled. "This thing could have been handled so much more diplomatically than it was," one said. "I don’t get it," another said simply. (See "Unintended Consequences," next page.)

Then again, it’s impossible to take seriously Turner’s comparison of Flaherty with Hicks. Hicks, a former school committeewoman, city councilor, and US representative who made two unsuccessful mayoral bids, represented the ugliest political face of 1970s race politics. She was known for the catch phrase "You know where I stand" — a not-too-coded reference to the desire to keep Boston’s public schools segregated. As a School Committee member, she routinely approved budgets that shortchanged predominantly minority districts — a policy that led directly to court-imposed busing to end inequities in the city’s schools.

"If that’s what’s on his mind, I suppose he has a right to say it, but I think it’s very unfortunate," says Larry DiCara, who served with Hicks on the council, of Turner’s remarks. "The last time Louise Day Hicks won election was almost 30 years ago, when Michael Flaherty was just emerging from diapers. The city’s come a long way since then."

But noting that only 15 percent of Boston public-school students are white, Turner says: "So the fact that [Flaherty] appointed two whites, and two people who are proponents of neighborhood schools [to the council Education Committee], at a time when communities of color don’t have enough [school capacity] to have that neighborhood-school option be real — it’s discriminatory on its face. And while probably a majority of people in my community would prefer neighborhood schools at this point, the reality is that’s not an option. Our children are going to be on buses, so the key issue is uniform quality throughout the city."

Flaherty, for his part, counters by noting that he doubled the representation of councilors of color on the Education Committee by appointing both Yancey and Arroyo to the board. He also rejects the notion that Tobin will not be an effective advocate for Boston’s minorities. "I don’t subscribe to the theory that only a councilor from the communities of color can be an effective education chair." (If Flaherty was dissatisfied with Turner, appointing Arroyo, a former School Committee president, to chair the Education Committee would have been an obvious option. But Arroyo says he made it clear to Flaherty that he had no interest in taking Turner’s place.)

But while none of this will help Flaherty’s standing among Boston’s minority voters, it’s Menino who has the most to lose politically if the school-reassignment process continues on its downward spiral. During last month’s State of the City speech, the mayor made clear his desire to change the current policy. "For three decades, court orders and mandates have dictated where our kids go to school," he said. "But it is time for a fresh look at this outdated system of assigning students." In the same speech, Menino announced that Ted Landsmark, an African-American who is president of the Boston Architectural Center, would lead a task force charged with soliciting public input on how the assignment plan might be improved. It was an inspired bit of symbolism on Menino’s part: in 1976, as he was crossing City Hall Plaza, Landsmark was famously assaulted by a white anti-busing protester who threatened to impale him on the staff of an American flag. A photograph of the incident became an iconic image of Boston’s busing crisis.

In theory, changing the school-assignment plan is a good idea. Elementary-school students wouldn’t have to spend an hour or more on a bus each day. On weekends and during the summer, they’d be able to socialize more easily with their classmates. If parents could walk to school meetings instead of fighting their way across town by car or mass transit during the rush-hour crush, parental involvement would grow. And more parents who currently send their children to parochial or private schools might decide to enroll them in the public schools instead. (See "School-Assignment Plans 101," previous page.)

But many are wary of the move toward a neighborhood-school-based system. For one thing, as Turner’s remarks emphasize, there simply aren’t enough elementary schools around the city to support a wholesale return to assigning students to schools in their home neighborhoods. (This is one of the few points on which everyone involved in the debate agrees. This week, in fact, Flaherty proposed filling the gap by buying up some of the parochial-school buildings soon to be closed by the Boston archdiocese.) Meanwhile, plenty of politicians, parents, and activists see any change in the current policy as likely to limit parental choice in where their child attends school. There’s no question that some parents appreciate the opportunity to send their child to a school across town — because they believe the school is a good one.