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238 The supreme Court has been drawn into the struggles over the use of choice in desegregation plans on several occasions. in 1968 it rejected most choice plans as inadequate to achieve real desegregation in Green v. New Kent County.1 it approved limits on choice that were part of almost all desegregation plans, for example prohibiting transfers that would increase segregation. it forbade splitting up districts in ways that would foster segregation. in 2006, however, a group of parents from louisville came into court claiming that their rights had been violated because the choice system was giving preference to the applications of parents whose children would increase integration in the school. A locally elected school board had adopted the plan in louisville (seattle had a similar plan), and surveys showed that a substantial majority of adults and students in the community supported it. in June 2007, the supreme Court handed down its judgment in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the first case relating to public school desegregation it had considered in more than a decade. Jefferson County (louisville and most of its suburbs), Kentucky, was one of the two school districts whose student assignment plans the 5–4 decision ruled unconstitutional, overturning earlier precedents and giving individual choice a higher priority than desegregation or local control. The court held that while integration of the schools was in fact a compelling governmental interest, the districts were using impermissible policies to achieve their goals. in particular, it deemed unconstitutional the use of racial/ethnic classification to determine whether a student would receive his or her school choice. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s controlling opinion authorized school districts to pursue integration but outlawed most of 11 Experiencing integration in louisville Attitudes on Choice and Diversity in a Changing Legal Environment Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg Experiencing Integration in Louisville 239 the existing voluntary plans. Kennedy suggested some other approaches, which had typically been ineffective in urban areas in the past.2 Prior to being declared unitary—meaning that the district’s former dual system of segregated schools no longer existed—and formally released from court supervision of its desegregation efforts, Jefferson County had designed a desegregation plan that relied on parental preferences about where their child attended school but included integration guidelines that, along with capacity, determined whether parents’ choices were granted. The district also had other choice options, such as magnet schools. After being released, it continued to implement the plan, largely without change, to voluntarily pursue racially diverse schools. Assuming space was available, parents’ choices were granted unless that would result in the chosen school having a black percentage of less than 15 or more than 50 percent of the total enrollment. Jefferson County Public schools (JCPs) had vigorously defended its desegregation plan up to the supreme Court. After it lost, local leaders were committed to finding a way to preserve diversity within the parameters of the Parents Involved decision. The district began an intensive planning process to determine how to continue many aspects of the plan that had been popular—such as parental choice and diverse schools—while also complying with the new legal restrictions. The basic plan was to divide the county into Area A and Area B, which were defined by their income levels, parental educational attainment, and racial composition . in fall 2009, JCPs began to implement its new student assignment plan. This plan’s geographic boundaries were fundamentally different and meant that many students were transferred to new schools. The changes caused considerable turmoil for the incoming first grade class during the first week of school in the first two years of implementation (fall 2009 and 2010), and grandfathering all students already in the system under the old plan created an extremely complex transportation system. The vast majority of parents who applied by the deadline received their first choice under the new system (more than 80 percent in 2010– 11), but complaints of long bus rides were common, and the number of students requesting transfers to schools other than where they were initially assigned rose. There were 2,054 transfer requests for fall 2010. Despite the headlines, however, all of the incumbent school board members up for reelection won in november 2010.3 tension rose in the state legislature, where, in January 2011 and again in spring 2012, the House considered a bill that would require school districts to allow students to attend the school closest to their home. Although this...

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