Newport-Mesa Schools Target of Federal Probe

Federal authorities are investigating allegations that the Newport-Mesa Unified School District discriminated against Latino students by changing the boundaries for Wilson and Adams elementary schools, a district official said Thursday.

Assistant Supt. Robert Francy said officials from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights told him earlier this week that they will be seeking information on whether the district’s boundary changes were improperly based on racial and ethnic considerations.

In May, the school board adopted a plan that called for about 90 Latino students at Adams Elementary School, who were bused in from an area of Costa Mesa known as the Joann Street Rectangle, to be redirected to their neighborhood school, Wilson Elementary. Under the boundary changes, Adams Elementary, which is about 51% Latino and 41% white, would become a majority white school.

A May 26 complaint to the Office for Civil Rights alleges that the “transfers are intended to reduce the size of the [Latino] enrollment at Adams, and will further increase the minority enrollment and racial isolation of the [Latino] students at Wilson,” according to a letter sent to Supt. Mac Bernd earlier this month notifying him of the inquiry.

The complaint also alleges that the changes are not educationally justified and will cause overcrowding at Wilson, the letter said.

But Francy said the allegations are unfounded because the district gave parents from the Joann Street Rectangle an opportunity to keep their children at Adams Elementary--and all of them chose to do so.

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“There’s no merit to this complaint in terms of how this boundary change affected students because there was no displacement of students,” Francy said. “The district made this boundary change because it would allow students to attend their neighborhood school. The whole issue was about space availability.”

Although the children targeted by the boundary changes are still being bused to Adams, the new boundaries could affect incoming students from the Joann Street Rectangle because the district will not bus them if they choose to attend Adams.

Under state open-enrollment laws, students can attend schools outside their neighborhoods, but they must find their own transportation.

Joann Street Rectangle is within walking distance of Wilson Elementary, but students had been sent to Adams Elementary because the school previously did not have enough students, said school board member Edward H. Decker, who supported the changes.

“But the Mesa Verde neighborhood [around Adams Elementary] has experienced dramatic change,” Decker said. “It previously was identified as an area too expensive for most people, but now young families are buying these homes and sending their children to the local schools. We were trying to find a way to open up space at Adams to accommodate the surge of students we expected.”

Some parents also had objected to the practice of busing children to Adams from other parts of town and had maintained that the boundaries should be redrawn so that the school, on Clubhouse Road, would serve only children in the Mesa Verde community.

Alexis Booher, who has a child attending Adams, said she believes the changes are discriminatory.

“I think that some people just don’t like these kids coming into their white neighborhood,” she said. “They carry a belief that it will lower the level of education.”

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School board members approved the changes by a 5-2 vote, despite studies showing that Adams is not overcrowded and has the capacity for 100 more students. The board also ignored the superintendent’s recommendation that the district keep the same boundaries to avoid legal liability.

Bernd, who was unavailable for comment Thursday, told the school board before the vote that the changes might be perceived as having racial implications because of Wilson’s demographics. Of the 500 students at Wilson, 88% are Latino, 9% are white and 3% are Asian.