32 Students Are Denied Transfers Due to Race

Huntington Beach school district officials are refusing to grant transfer requests from 32 high school students because they are white, despite a warning from the governor’s office that the policy may violate constitutional prohibitions against racial discrimination.

Officials of the Huntington Beach Union High School District have blocked the transfers from Ocean View High School, saying the departure of 32 white students would upset the campus’ ethnic balance.

John Myers, assistant superintendent, said Friday that state law requires the district to maintain racial and ethnic balance in their schools and to monitor transfer requests accordingly. Allowing those white students to transfer would cause Ocean View “to become ethnically isolated. . . . That’s segregated,” Myers said.

But Gov. Pete Wilson’s education advisor, Marian Bergeson, sent a letter to district officials on Wednesday urging them to reconsider. Despite their assertions, the letter said, state education code does not mandate quotas to maintain racial and ethnic balance in schools.

“In this case, exercising the district’s discretion to deny [transfers] on the basis of race could violate the Constitution’s prohibition against discrimination or preferential treatment ‘on the basis of race . . . , color [or] ethnicity . . . in the operation of public education,’ ” Bergeson wrote.

District officials disputed Bergeson’s position, saying their attorneys had thoroughly researched state policies and laws on racial balances and transfer requests in schools. They agreed that state education code does not require them to weigh transfer requests against the racial makeup of schools--but a state law does, said school board member Michael Simons, one of five trustees on the all-white board.

“Legal counsel felt strongly that state law superseded education code,” Simons said. “Our hands are tied. . . . It almost seems like reverse discrimination, I’m sure. . . . It’s just how the law has been interpreted to the school board by the legal counsel. We are mandated to maintain a balance.

“Personally, I empathize with [the students] considerably and wish we didn’t have those restraints.”

A spokesman in the governor’s office said he was not immediately aware of the law cited by the district. But he reiterated that the district had misinterpreted state policy.

“It’s objectionable,” spokesman Rich Halberg said. “That’s just blatantly discriminatory and unfair.”

The governor’s office has no authority to overrule the district and allow the transfers, district officials said. But at least four of the transfer requests will be granted Monday, because four new white students have enrolled at Ocean View. The names of the 32 students who requested transfers will be put in a hat, and four will be drawn, Myers said.

Parents William and Susan Prescott had asked the governor’s office to intervene after the school board denied their request to allow their son, Nicholas, to transfer to Huntington Beach High School.

Susan Prescott said she was stunned that the denial was based on race.

“They are teaching racism,” she said. “I feel like they’re teaching my child to be a racist.”

Nicholas, a 15-year-old honors student, said he “had no idea how to deal with it.”

The family will file suit against the district because they have no other options, Susan Prescott said.

Nicholas wants to go to Huntington Beach High because it offers activities that Ocean View does not, his mother said. Also, she had hoped to arrange carpools with neighbors, several of whom have children at Huntington Beach High, so she would have more time to care for her other son, Mason, 6, who is autistic.

District officials said they are sympathetic but could not grant exceptions. Their decision to limit transfers is based solely on the changing demographics at Ocean View, Myers said, where the nonwhite population is made up mostly of Latinos and Asians.

In the last two years, the district’s white population has been declining by 1% annually, compared with 3% at Ocean View, which is now 40% white, he said. The district does not have a point at which the transfer restrictions are triggered, he said, but clearly Ocean View’s drop was precipitous.

“We would not be doing this if it were not mandated by law,” he said.