With the historic legal battle to integrate America’s big-city schools being abandoned across the nation, the Chicago schools and the federal government have reached a tentative agreement that would release the district from 26 years of federal oversight on desegregation efforts by the 2007-08 school year.
The settlement, filed jointly Monday in U.S. District Court, effectively allows the school system to decide on its own, without federal intervention, how much money and resources to devote toward integrating its schools. School officials maintain that desegregation will remain a primary objective.
Under the agreement, the admission process for Chicago’s magnet and selective enrollment schools will remain for at least two more school years.
The tentative pact represents a retreat by the Justice Department from its more aggressive stance toward the district on equity issues in recent years, although it does keep Chicago under its scrutiny one year longer than school officials wanted.
As recently as five months ago, Justice Department attorneys opposed Chicago’s bid to be released from court oversight at the end of this school year, citing a long list of transgressions. But the trend nationally has been to release districts from longstanding court orders, after the Supreme Court ruled in 1991 that districts have to desegregate only “to the extent practicable.”
“This decree like most around the country is on its last legs,” said Harvey Grossman, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.
With the student body less than 9 percent white, Chicago school leaders have argued that it is nearly impossible to integrate the entire system. In fact, officials made the same arguments in 1980, when nearly 20 percent of Chicago school students were white. Today, the dearth of white students in urban districts is contributing factor in why so many desegregation lawsuits are being abandoned.
African-American students, who represented 61 percent of the district in 1980, still are the largest group at almost 50 percent. The percentage of Latinos has doubled, from 19 percent to 38 percent.
Judge’s approval required
The latest agreement still requires the approval of U.S. District Judge Charles P. Kocoras, who has scheduled a hearing on it for 9:30 a.m. Thursday. Kocoras had planned two weeks of public hearings on the case to begin May 15. Those hearings, which would be averted under the settlement, were expected to spotlight the district’s long and controversial history of how it has handled integration and the allocation of its resources.
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Although the school district has spent at least $2.5 billion on desegregation in the last 26 years, most of the city’s black and Latino children still attend class in racially isolated schools that mirror the city’s segregated housing patterns.
What little integration there is occurs in the city’s magnet schools, where admission is determined by a racially weighted lottery, and in other special schools that screen for academic qualifications while also considering race and ethnicity. These remain some of the most desirable schools because they tend to have higher test scores and extra programs.
School officials said they are committed to integration, even without the federal government monitoring those efforts through the courts.
“Our goal is to maintain the diversity we have achieved and to expand that if we can,” said Patrick Rocks, chief legal counsel for the school system.
Schools chief Arne Duncan promised that the system will continue to provide extra academic support in racially isolated schools and will preserve its integrated magnet and selective enrollment schools.
“This is core to my values and how I was raised,” said Duncan, who attended the private, racially integrated University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in Hyde Park.
“We can spend hundreds of thousands dollars less on lawyers and put it in the schools. Money that went to legal fees will be spent on the students.”
Duncan estimated the case has cost more than $1 million in the last four years.
Being under court supervision did provide Chicago with some protection from possible lawsuits, attorneys said. Some parents in other districts have challenged race-based admissions criteria.
For that reason, Duncan said the schools will undertake an extensive review of its magnet and selective enrollment admissions policies and may propose a new system after the case ends. It would not be effective until the 2008-09 school year at the earliest, Rocks said.
Rocks said he cannot guarantee that racial weights will stay in the new admissions policy but said recent court decisions have upheld racial considerations if there is a compelling educational reason.
Race-neutral considerations, such as family income and education levels, are not always sufficient to increase diversity, Rocks said.
Replaces old agreement
The agreement filed Monday replaces one approved in March 2004 that also was supposed to lead to the end of federal oversight. That agreement was the first change in the district’s desegregation plan since it negotiated a 1980 settlement. The Justice Department had sued Chicago to force it to integrate, and the voluntary settlement avoided a lengthy legal battle. Chicago never admitted segregating its schools.
The 2004 decree had a host of more stringent reporting requirements that caused friction between Justice Department lawyers and the school district.
“We were very quickly, after that decree was entered, fighting over details,” Rocks said. “I think it just proved to be unworkable.”
The Justice Department declined to comment Monday on the new agreement.
Alonzo Rivas, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who has watched the case, said he wonders if Chicago will keep up its commitment to diversity once no outside body is watching over it.
For example, the district failed to offer any African-American or Latino children the opportunity to transfer into largely white schools in the 2004-05 school year before the court ordered it to do so.
Others in the community also are concerned about whether the district spends equally on its neighborhood schools and on magnet and special schools.
“I am not sure one more year is enough time to answer all this,” Rivas said.
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