Carlsbad Plan to Transfer Students Angers Parents : Education: School board members say the changes are necessary in the growing city to comply with laws on ethnic balance.

The Carlsbad Unified School District is proposing to keep a racial balance in two heavily Latino schools by transferring in white students from nearby Magnolia Elementary, a plan that has infuriated some parents.

Parents say they are not opposed to integration, simply angry that their children would be forced to leave their friends and familiar teachers at a neighborhood school to attend more distant campuses.

However, school board members, who are feeling intense pressure from the Magnolia parents, argue that the city’s growth and state and federal laws leave them no choice but to change some school boundaries to handle incoming students and maintain ethnic parity.

The issue reflects two conflicting forces in Carlsbad: the sometimes painful adjustments of growth, and parents’ desire to keep their children in the schools they know.

Under the district’s plan, about 120 of the 745 students at Magnolia, a kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school east of Interstate 5, would be transferred to Jefferson and Pine elementary schools, west of the freeway.

Although the plan is still being reviewed, a dozen parents have appeared before the board and others have written letters and signed a petition against the transfer.

Magnolia parent Sue Bosio recalled her own painful childhood, when her father’s Air Force career took her to numerous elementary schools. “I never had the social ties and feeling of belonging, ever,” said Bosio, who has vowed that won’t happen to her two children.

“I don’t like to be considered a piece of a game board, moved around to meet the growth needs of the city,” she said.

The parents say they don’t object to the district’s racial goals, but at the same time don’t believe it’s fair to uproot their children, some of whom were made to transfer schools in the Carlsbad district once before.

Said Judy Pounds: “It’s not that I don’t want my kids to sit next to someone who’s Spanish, but it’s a matter of moving.”

The situation is perhaps not surprising given the city’s growth from 35,000 people 10 years ago to 62,000 today.

Too few schools have served developing southeastern Carlsbad, and, over the years, students who live there have attended schools miles north, including Magnolia, Jefferson, Pine and others.

That will change in September when the district opens a new, still-unnamed elementary school in the southern part of the city, near La Costa, to serve about 300 students who now attend the other schools.

But board members believe that, as students are pulled away from Jefferson and Pine to help fill the new school closer to their homes, a means must be found to keep Jefferson and Pine from becoming too weighted with Latinos.

Trustees are pondering siphoning off some Magnolia students to Jefferson, which is now 55.2% Latino, and Pine, which is 48.7% Latino. Magnolia is 10.5% Latino and 85.5% Anglo.

“We don’t have a choice,” school board member Joe Angel said. “We are required by federal law to maintain an ethnic balance. We’re going to move some kids around to allow this to happen.”

Both federal and California state laws govern desegregation in all school districts.

Although Angel said he sympathizes with Magnolia’s parents, “we have to deal with what’s best for the overall district.” Boundary changes are inevitable each time a new school opens, he said, noting that Carlsbad has 9,000 new housing permits waiting “in the pipeline.”

Angel, who is Latino, said he recognizes that some Magnolia students who have a four-block walk to school would have to go perhaps a dozen blocks to Jefferson and Pine.

He reasons that it’s fair to have Magnolia pupils travel a little farther if it means southern Carlsbad’s students will no longer have to travel 5 or 6 miles to class.

“There’s a trade-off,” Angel said. “It would be great to have stability, but it doesn’t work out all the time when a community is growing.”

Supt. Thomas Brierley said the district is “really concerned with the ethnic balance” and is trying to adjust school boundaries in a way that will cause a minimum of problems for parents and students.

He emphasized that the school board is reviewing alternative boundaries but will not act until another public hearing is held. A decision on boundaries involving Magnolia, Jefferson and Pine schools is expected in late May.