Week in Review : EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN THE NEWS : SCHOOLS : Demographic Changes Lead to Concerns on Integration

The complex and sensitive issue of the racial complexion of public schools in Orange County, which once were overwhelmingly white and middle class, is formally on the agenda.

School officials note that as the county’s minority population has greatly expanded over the past 15 years--by Latinos concentrated in Santa Ana and Asians in Westminster and Garden Grove--the white birth rate has slowed. As a result, schools are changing, and those changes have attracted the attention of state education officials.

No school district in the county is considered “segregated” by any standard, state and county officials say.

“There are no state criteria to determine racial isolation or segregation, but we suggest to districts that their policy have criteria that are measurable,” said Reuben Burton, manager of the state Education Department’s Office of Inter-Group Relations.

Gil Martinez, assistant superintendent for the county Department of Education, said, “We don’t have any problems with segregated schools, and we don’t anticipate any.”

There is, however, concern about a phenomenon known as “tipping,” when more than half the student body are minority students, setting off “white flight.”

In Santa Ana Unified, whites are already the minority. This school year, the district has 71% Latino students, 13% white, 11% Asian, 4% black and 1% Pacific Islanders.

In Westminster, 22% of the student body is Asian. School officials, at the state’s urging, are considering a policy that would define as “segregated” any school with an ethnic enrollment more than 25% above the average ethnic percentage for the district.

According to Tony Lam, head of the Orange County Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, the prospect of busing Asian students from neighborhood schools is “ridiculous.”