School Diversity Forums
February 9, 2008 by admin
Filed under Community, Economics, Education, Guest Writer: Field, M.R., Politics
What does diversity mean to you? For the United States as a whole, the ever-changing answer can be found in the country’s history and throughout its laws.
How to define diversity and whether to apply a diversity plan are questions faced by the Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS). Due to a Supreme Court decision in June 2007 and a new rule from the Iowa Department of Education, the answer must be made quickly (see background). Do not make the mistake of thinking this is just an issue about where a few children will attend school or that it applies only to people living in Des Moines. The entire nation has been moving away from using race-based statistics as tools for defining diversity in all aspects of society. How, or if, a diversity plan is applied to out-of-district open enrollment is just a small microcosm of that greater issue. Consequently, the choices before the school district are very limited.
The DMPS forums to be held the week of February 11-16, 2008, will focus specifically on out-of-district open enrollment. At the DMPS School Board meeting of February 7th, Superintendent Dr. Nancy Sebring and the school board expressed interest in having a more comprehensive discussion on diversity as part of in-district enrollment. Such a discussion would ultimately include conversations on neighborhood schools, magnet schools, and busing. Because the state’s deadline of March 1st for filing a diversity plan applies only to out-of-district enrollment, the school district is interested in keeping the forums focused on that issue alone. Drew Bracken of the Ahlers Law Firm cautioned during the board meeting that the government has historically favored in-district plans that are the same as out-of-district plans.
Sebring and her staff believe that using socio-economic status (SES) as the definition of diversity will work best, should a diversity plan be adopted by the board. The SES measurement they recommend is the number of students who receive free or reduced-price lunch. During a workshop on the budget later in the February 7th board meeting, Patti Schroeder, the district’s chief financial officer, noted that many grants for which the district applies are awarded based in part on the percentage of subsidized lunches served by a school district.
Members of the public commenting at the February 7th school board meeting offered their own experiences with the current desegregation policy. One man said his son is considered Caucasian but his daughter is identified as Asian American, even though they have the same parents. A woman said her adopted children were considered Caucasian but were English language learners (ELL). Mary Ann Spicer spoke in favor of a diversity plan and recommended including race as one of the determining factors.
The DMPS originally had scheduled three forums but added a fourth hearing at the request of the public and the school board. For some people, the choice faced by the school board is a matter of economics, for others it is about their children, and for others it is about society.
M.R. Field covers the DMPS school board for AroundDesMoines.com. 
admin is
Email this author | All posts by admin
Opinion: Using race as a measurement for action has been both good and bad. On the bad side, the federal government, and hence many state programs paid for with federal funds, have required economic injustice to be shown in terms of race. Thus, for me to argue for a clean environment or for tenants to have participation in governmental meetings as equals of property owners, I had first to demonstrate that the inequality impacted African Americans. It took away the voice of people who were not part of that racial minority while feeding a negative stereotype of African Americans. If something is wrong, it is wrong regardless of the color of somebody’s skin.
On the plus side, affirmative action has allowed African Americans an opportunity to move outside of a limited range of jobs and social strata. Many jobs are never advertised to the general public. They require somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody just to learn about openings and to be introduced to the person doing the hiring. If a large group of people can never gain access to those circles of acquaintances, the individuals in that group will find it harder to gain equality.
School desegregation was one way to open up those circles of acquaintances. It addressed just one part of the isolation, though. Any diversity plan adopted by the DMPS would similarly be only a partial approach to alienation.
Socio-economic status can work as an equalizing measurement. The proposal by the DMPS to rely only upon free and reduced price lunch statistics, however, leaves out the social part of the SES. A family with two parents and four children making $50,000 may have the same economic status as a single gay man making $25,000 a year. In contrast, their social status will be very different. Even two families making $50,000 with four people each could be very different. One could include a single spouse working at a single job for 40 hours per week while the other spouse cares for the children and the house. The other family may have both parents working, maybe one making $12,000 a year working a minimum wage job and the other making $38,000 a year in a job that includes overtime pay.
Would socio-economic status as a diversity measure open up opportunities for a group of people that otherwise would have no entry into those options? Would a diversity plan have better success at life-long integration if it included measurements for race and/or English-learner status? Should the school district consider integration goals just for K-12 opportunities or should it consider life-long integration as its goal?