School battle to get another hearing

The four-year legal battle between the Seattle School District and a group of parents over the use of race in school assignments will move into its fifth round, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced yesterday.

A majority of the 9th Circuit judges voted to accept the district's request for an 11-judge panel to decide whether the district can use a racial tiebreaker. A three-judge appellate panel earlier ruled in favor of parents, who argued the tiebreaker was unnecessary and violated their constitution right of equal protection.

The announcement was good news for the district, which wants to resume using the tiebreaker, arguing it helps the district maintain school diversity in a city where neighborhoods are largely segregated, and ensures that minority students in the city's South End can go to high-quality schools in the North End.

"We're gratified that the 9th Circuit has agreed to hear this case," said district spokeswoman Patti Spencer.

Opponents of the tiebreaker said they wished the case was over but vowed to keep fighting.

"I'm as committed today as I was when we began," said Kathleen Brose, president of Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS).

Brose and other white parents filed the suit in July 2000. At the time, Brose's oldest daughter had not been assigned to Ballard High School, the school closest to her Magnolia home and the school she wanted to attend.

Ballard was one of several schools where the district gave preference to minorities because applicants outnumbered spots, and the district considered the school racially out of balance. At Franklin High, the same tiebreaker helped white students get into a school that had a larger minority population.

The district used other tiebreakers as well, but race was the second tiebreaker in high school, and the third in elementary schools. The district has said it usually affected about 300 of its students each year.

The case has been heard in U.S. District Court in Seattle, the 9th Circuit, and in the state Supreme Court. The decisions have been mixed, with the district winning two rounds, and the parents winning two.

In the last round, the three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit agreed that the district could seek to maintain diversity but said the tiebreaker, as it was designed, failed to meet the legal criteria for doing so. It pointed to two cases involving the University of Michigan in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that admissions policies that use race must be flexible, avoid quotas, minimize harm and be employed only after considering race-neutral alternatives.

The district suspended use of the tiebreaker in the 2002-03 school year. Since then, the racial balance at affected high schools has changed, sometimes because of factors other than the racial tiebreaker. But the schools don't look as dramatically different as some originally predicted.

Enrollment at Ballard High, for example, is now 62.5 percent white. In 2001-02, it was 57 percent. Nathan Hale High School remains about the same — 61 percent white. Roosevelt is 59 percent white, up from 55 percent three years ago. The white population at Franklin and Garfield has dropped — eight percentage points at Franklin, and four at Garfield.

The case is expected to be heard in the next three to six months.