HUNTINGTON BEACH : Trustees Cut Back Desegregation Plan

The Ocean View School District board has scaled back a desegregation plan being implemented last fall, eliminating a magnet program that had been designed to attract white students to a predominantly Latino elementary school.

The district revised its proposed plan because of a state Court of Appeal decision last June that relaxed racial desegregation requirements for schools.

That ruling, involving the Long Beach Unified School District, effectively struck down specific State Board of Education mandates to correct schools’ racial imbalances. School integration policies now must only comply with a state Constitution requirement to make “reasonable and feasible efforts to integrate.”

As a result, for example, school districts are no longer required to enroll a certain percentage of minority students at each of its schools, as long as general efforts are being made toward long-term integration.

Ocean View was never ordered by the state to correct racial imbalances. But as the racial makeup of its schools grew increasingly lopsided, trustees agreed to adopt an integration plan before the district was ordered to do so. They also noted that they had to follow state guidelines to receive state reimbursement for desegregation efforts.

Because Ocean View is no longer required to move toward specific desegregation goals, however, trustees agreed to cancel the planned magnet program at Oak View Elementary School, where 85% of the students are Latinos or members of other minority groups. Districtwide, 30% of the students are minorities.

Under the original desegregation plan, which the board approved last May, more than 400 of Oak View’s 660 students were to transfer to other schools.

Among other changes, 175 students were to move to Oak View to participate in a magnet program offering elective courses not available at other district schools. Eliminating the program means that 175 students from other schools will not have to move to Oak View.

District officials had acknowledged that although the magnet program sought to achieve long-term integration, it would have been inherently discriminatory because white students would have been favored for the program over minority students.

But because racial quotas are no longer required, trustees agreed that the magnet program was unnecessary. The plan revision was recommended by the district’s Integration Advisory Committee, made up of parents, teachers, administrators and other district employees, after four months of study.

“We’re still fully committed to integration,” school board President Carol Kanode said. “This just makes the most sense right now. You can’t put in programs that you can’t afford financially.”

The other aspects of the integration plan will still go into effect in September, along with a sweeping grade-level reorganization plan that will introduce middle schools to Ocean View. The integration plan will include changes in attendance boundaries and an open-enrollment policy for students who would help a school’s racial balance by transferring to that school.

The desegregation and reorganization plans will force Crest View and Haven View schools to close, leaving the district with four sixth-through-eighth-grade middle schools and 11 elementary schools for kindergarten through eighth grade. District busing will increase fivefold.