Balancing Act in Vista

Vista’s school board members put themselves on the right track in 1979 when they adopted a policy designed to maintain racial and ethnic balance in the city’s schools.

Now rapid growth is putting their commitment to that policy on the line.

The number of minority students is increasing at schools in the older, densely populated part of the Vista Unified School District, while schools in the newer areas are predominantly Anglo.

At issue is one school in central Vista where 56% of the students are from racial or ethnic minorities. The districtwide average is 32%, and the board policy says that no school’s minority population should be more than 20% above or below the average.

The district’s goals are reasonable and commendable. We agree with the school officials who say that all of the district’s children benefit from being educated in well-integrated schools.

In addition, teachers at the school in question, Santa Fe-California Elementary, say the high percentage of minorities creates an educational burden because many of the students are from disadvantaged families. The school has the lowest reading-achievement scores in the district.

The district started wrestling with the ethnic balance problem last year. Busing was suggested, but it met with such parent protest, as it does everywhere, that the idea was scrapped. The scenario was repeated this month, and now it seems that fear of backlash against an anticipated school construction bond measure is outweighing the board’s resolve for integration.

But that solution cannot be easily dismissed in the Vista district, which is only 39 square miles and where 45% of the students are already bused an average of 25 to 30 minutes for other reasons.

We sympathize with parents who want neighborhood schools, and we applaud the district’s willingness to look at other solutions. But, while change may be unsettling and inconvenient, school boundary changes, which may mean busing, are unavoidable in a school district that is growing by about 1,500 students a year. And we think it is appropriate for the school board to take racial balance into consideration in changing those boundaries.

In a small district like Vista’s, busing does not carry the burden that it does in large districts. The distance a student might be bused is modest. Adding perhaps 10 to 15 minutes to a student’s travel time is not unreasonable to achieve the broader goal of giving that child an ethnically diverse education.