In 1971, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district was the site of the precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, requiring local schools to achieve racial diversity, even if it meant busing students. Today, the same district lies on the opposite end of the dispute over race-based school assignments.
While the school district awaits a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals trial, stakeholders are speculating whether the judicial system will now reverse years of busing-and, some would say, significant steps toward integration.
Meanwhile, residents of North Carolina are considering the way to address diversity in the state's public schools.
In a case brought by seven white parents, U.S. District Judge Robert Potter ruled in September that the district cannot continue busing. The ruling found that, although disparities between schools still existed, that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system had achieved "unitary status" and no longer discriminated based on race.
The school system appealed the case to the 4th Circuit, while two more parents joined the original seven. The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments this June.
Arthur Griffin, chair of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, insists that the 1971 Supreme Court ruling still applies to the school district because conditions have not progressed far enough in the past 30 years.
"I can still see the vestiges of a dual system...," he said. "The injunction against race is precedent-setting in this [current] case. No judge has ever gone so far as to say that you can't [use race as a criterion for school assignment]."
Potter wrote in his decision that, "the school system is... resisting the removal of the desegregation order because it now wishes to use that order as a pretext to pursue race-conscious, diversity-enhancing policies in perpetuity."
Jim Puckett, a Board of Education member who voted against the board's 6-3 decision to appeal Potter's injunction, agreed, saying the board's focus should be educating low-income students regardless of race. "If I can close the educational gap [between rich and poor neighborhoods], then I can figure out how to deal with diversity on the other side of the road," he said.
Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief with the 4th Circuit last month, arguing that Potter had not sufficiently examined whether the schools remained segregated. The brief took no stance on Potter's final decision.
Because of its rulings in similar cases, experts say the notoriously conservative court may confirm Potter's ruling against race-based assignment.
"I would not be surprised to see them uphold the decision," said Harry Wilson, the legal advisor to the North Carolina Board of Education.
Indeed, the court ruled against race-based assignment in two related cases last year.
The court upheld an Arlington, Va., district court ruling that race could not be used as a factor in magnet school admissions and overturned a Montgomery County, Md., decision allowing schools to reject race-based transfer requests.
The decision in this case will not significantly affect Durham schools, where assignments are decided by attendance zones in the vicinity of each school. A random lottery among applicants determines magnet school admissions.
"If somebody came in and said, `We want to do the same thing [Potter called for],'-already been done," said David Holdzkom, assistant superintendent for research, development and accountability for Durham Public Schools.
But until two years ago, the magnet school lottery gave minorities a greater chance of being chosen, Holdzkom said. School officials moved away from this system because of court trends to reject race-based school assignment policies.
"It was pretty clear that we should modify the policy rather than waiting to be sued," said Kathryn Meyers, chair of the Durham Public School Board of Education.
Although Meyers stressed that she valued school diversity, she added that there were limits on the school system's right to engineer this diversity.
Even if the 4th Circuit ruled in favor of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, she added, she would not advocate returning to a race-based assignment policy.
"I think we've set a path, and we should stay with our path and... focus on making sure that all schools are strong schools," Meyers said.
He also said the school system was trying to offer a wider variety of choices to parents, citing public charter and magnet schools as a way to do this.
The North Carolina Board of Education takes no stance on the issue of race-based assignment, which falls under the jurisdiction of local school systems.
Still, NCBOE Chair Phillip Kirk said that while race-based school assignment was necessary in 1971, it is no longer needed today.
"Things have changed since 30 years ago," he said. "I'm not for segregation, but I'm not for wide-scale busing and quotas either."
Kirk instead called for local school boards to focus on improving conditions in all existing schools, regardless of location.
Griffin, the chair of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, maintained that eliminating race-based assignment could have severe consequences. "When schools are 50 percent poor or higher, it becomes exceedingly difficult to get the resources [students need]," he said.
Based on a December plan devised to comply with Potter's decision, up to 60,000 of the district's 100,000 students would have to be reassigned based on geographic location. If the plan were enacted, about one-third of the district's 140 schools would become "poverty schools," he said.
John Deem, director of public information for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, said the school system hoped to have a plan to deal with Potter's ruling by May 1.
Deem said a citizen task force had made several broad recommendations at a meeting last week, including the idea of assigning students to schools based on socio-economic status.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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