www.csua.org/u/igd -> www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/11/BAGKMP6G311.DTL&hw=Berkeley&sn=001&sc=1000
Google Bookmarks Georgia (default) Verdana Times New Roman Arial New! Berkeley's public schools, the first in the nation to desegregate voluntarily, can consider the racial composition of a student's neighborhood in an enrollment system designed to keep each campus racially diverse, an Alameda County judge has ruled. The decision by Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith could lead to the first California appellate ruling on a school district's ability to maintain a voluntary integration program under Proposition 209, the 1996 initiative that banned race and sex preferences in public education, employment and contracting. The case may also be affected by a pending US Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of school integration plans. Even if the nation's high court allows some form of race-based integration, however, Prop. In several cases not dealing with schools, state courts have interpreted the initiative as an absolute ban on racial classifications. She said she will appeal the ruling, which the judge issued Friday, on behalf of an anti-affirmative action group created by Prop. But attorney Diana Tate of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, representing parents who sided with the district, said the ruling shows that Prop. San Francisco took students' race into account under a court-supervised desegregation program from 1983 until 2001, when a judge ordered elimination of racial criteria in response to a suit by Chinese American parents. The 9,000-student Berkeley Unified School District has taken measures since 1968 to promote racial balance between schools in the largely minority flatlands and the mostly white hillside and UC Berkeley neighborhoods. Its current plan, adopted in 2004, gives each neighborhood of four to eight blocks a diversity rating, based on parents' income and educational levels and the students' racial composition. The district uses that rating to promote balance at the city's 11 elementary schools and in special academic programs at Berkeley High School. In her ruling, Smith said the enrollment system does not violate Prop. "The district simply takes racial diversity into account, along with other diversity indicators, as a means of achieving its goals of integration of its schools,'' the judge said. She refused, however, to dismiss one part of the lawsuit, challenging a Berkeley High tutorial program called the Academic Pathways Project. The lawsuit claimed that the program is reserved for minorities as well as low-income students, an arrangement that may violate Prop.
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