Beverly Hills Seeks to Keep School Diversity Program

Deciding that complying with state law is not as simple as black and white, Beverly Hills school officials agreed Tuesday night to try to preserve a pioneering diversity program that for 31 years has welcomed minority students to their local high school.

Board of education members said they will, if necessary, restructure a voluntary integration program begun in 1969 so it does not violate state laws banning affirmative action.

At issue is whether the home-grown integration program violates Proposition 209, the 1996 statewide initiative that forbids state and local affirmative action programs in public education.

No legal challenge has been mounted. But cautious school officials moved last fall to scrap the program after a school district lawyer warned that the initiative seems to prohibit it.

More than 200 people turned out Tuesday to support the diversity effort and condemn school officials who late last year quietly decided dismantle the program.

“Why weren’t we notified? The board doesn’t have the budget to use the U.S. Postal Service?” complained parent Trenton Sims.

Beverly Hills resident James Gilson, the high school’s student body president in 1969, urged officials to do what is necessary to preserve the program.

“I don’t want to deprive my children of the opportunity to live in the enriched environment” that has been successful for three decades, Gilson said.

Others challenged the district lawyer’s interpretation of Proposition 209.

Lew Hollman, executive director of the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles, advised board members that his own research and analysis of the initiative suggests that voluntary desegregation programs are excluded from the provisions of the proposition.

The program was started by the school system’s first black teacher, Lyle Suter, at the urging of Beverly Hills teenagers. Suter retired as head of the high school art department in 1988.

The first participants were 8th-graders from a junior high in Westwood. Over the years, the program has included minority students from 11 Westside middle schools.

The students were chosen on the basis of their ethnicity--African American, Asian or Latino--their grades and short essays.

This year, 117 of the high school’s 2,130 pupils are participants in the program.

Enrollment statistics for 1999, the most recent available, show that 5% of Beverly Hills High’s students were African American, 14% Asian, 4% Latino and 77% white.

Parents of current students say they learned by accident last month that the program was in danger of being scrapped. Word leaked out when parents inquired about admission forms for this fall’s 35 incoming students.

The proposal to continue the program by revising it if necessary was made by board member Virginia Maas. She said the district will work with volunteer lawyers such as Hollman to legally resurrect it.

Board member Alissa Roston said she favors extending the program to elementary and middle schools as well.

Gabe Halimi, a high school senior who also sits on the Board of Education, pointed out that next week is Multi-Cultural Awareness Week at Beverly Hills High School.

“The board is invited to attend,” he said. “In light of tonight, I suspect they’ll all attend.”