Board Is Segregating Schools, Parents Say : Education: A group of Orange parents charge that a boundary change decided in an out-of-town meeting was improper.

A group of parents in the Orange Unified School District, upset over a boundary change that allowed a neighborhood of mostly Anglo children to switch to an elementary school that is 90% Anglo from one that is 49% Latino, have charged that trustees are creating racially segregated schools.

The parents further charge that the boundary change was made without proper public notification, and they also questioned whether the presence of mostly Latino day workers in the area really jeopardized children’s safety as parents had contended.

Board members voted on the controversial boundary change on Aug. 15 at a retreat in Palm Springs, a maneuver that critics contend violates at least the spirit of the Brown Act, the state’s open-meeting law.

Board members responded that they gave the required public notice that they would be voting on board business, including the school boundary issue, while they were in Palm Springs.

“We did not break the law,” said Ruth Evans, the Orange Unified school board vice president, who supported the boundary change.

The change was requested by residents of the Warmington area, also known as the Strawberry Patch area, that is situated roughly northeast of the intersection of Hewes and Bond streets in eastern Orange. At an Aug. 10 board meeting, the residents told trustees their neighborhood was split between the Linda Vista and Esplanade elementary schools. They asked that the entire neighborhood be unified within the Linda Vista attendance area.

Some of the parents said they wanted the change because it was unsafe for their children to walk to Esplanade. Others said they were sending their children to private schools rather than have them attend Esplanade, adding that the quality of education at Linda Vista was better.

One father said that he did not want his children walking past the day workers who congregate in parking lots along East Chapman Avenue from Yorba to Hewes streets in eastern Orange.

The board voted 4-3 in favor of the change at the Palm Springs retreat, with trustees Russell Barrios, Jane McCracken and Jeff Holstien dissenting.

At the Aug. 10 meeting, Barrios said he was concerned that the change might be racially motivated, according to board minutes. Barrios and Holstien could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

McCracken said she was assured that the ethnic balance of schools would not be significantly affected but that she decided to vote against the boundary change because it would create more safety hazards for the children in question.

‘Not a Question’

“I think it is my responsibility to do everything in my power to keep the schools as balanced as possible racially,” McCracken said. But “racial balance was not a question at all in this issue. . . . We were told it wouldn’t affect the numbers significantly.”

Nevertheless, she said, such a vote could encourage other neighborhoods to request the same kind of change from the board if they do not like their schools, and for any of a variety of reasons.

McCracken said safety was a deciding factor in her “no” vote. She said a videotape of the routes to both schools showed her that pupils attending Linda Vista would actually have to walk down streets with more traffic and safety hazards.

According to school records, only 38% of Esplanade’s enrollment is Anglo, whereas Anglos make up 90% of Linda Vista’s enrollment. The Warmington area is an affluent neighborhood of newer homes. Esplanade is an older school that has served a more established, ethnically mixed neighborhood.

Nellie and William G. Vasquez, who live on Linda Vista Street and send their children to parochial school rather than to Linda Vista, appeared at a subsequent board meeting to complain about the boundary change.

He said that the board “continues to gerrymander school boundaries, with specious and dangerous reasoning, with the sole apparent purpose of isolating and separating minorities.”

Several residents of the area have told trustees they are upset and insulted by the change. The Vasquezes said they are seeking to form a community action group that would hold the board accountable for its actions.

The agenda for the Aug. 15 meeting in Palm Springs clearly indicates that the boundary issue would be taken up. However, it describes the meeting as a “study session.”

“Anyone at the previous meeting knew what we were talking about,” school board President Sandy Englander said.

Other Opinions

Other legal experts contacted Tuesday were not familiar with the case but said they did not believe a school board is required to say exactly what action they will take at a meeting, only that the public must be notified when and where a meeting will be, and also that the meeting will be open to the public. But one lawyer, who did not want to speak on the record because he did not know the specifics of the Orange Unified issue, said the action could violate “the spirit of the Brown Act.”

About 40 pupils will be eligible for the change, but Harriett Perry, the district assistant superintendent for elementary education, said only about five or six have taken advantage of it. Only about half of them were attending Esplanade, and about five or six were attending Linda Vista through special permission from the district. The remainder, she said, were attending private schools.

“Their specific request was, ‘Look, our children don’t want to go to Esplanade,’ ” she said. “Under no circumstance would they go to Esplanade.”

Englander, the board president, said the situation resulted from a previous open enrollment policy at Linda Vista. Many Strawberry Patch pupils chose to attend that school even though they were not within its boundaries, and the district allowed the younger brothers and sisters of some of those children to continue at Linda Vista.