School Officials Ask Change in Ethnic Formula

San Diego city schools administrators are proposing a major change in how they figure ethnic balances for student participation in the district’s multimillion-dollar voluntary integration program.

In a plan not yet formally presented to school board members, Supt. Tom Payzant will suggest that the ethnic balances--which determine which students can and cannot attend magnet schools or other special programs--no longer be based on the traditional 50% white, 50% non-white participation.

Rather, Payzant will propose that the balance be based on the district’s annual white-non-white enrollment data. For the present school year, that would mean a balance of 65% non-white, 35% white.

As a consequence, schools north of Interstate 8 that have room for more non-white students from Barrio Logan and Southeast San Diego could take numbers up to the 65%-35% balance in contrast to the 50%-50% balance now set.

Theoretically, a school in a predominantly white area without enough neighborhood students could end up with a predominantly non-white student population, and Payzant’s staff warns in a document that some areas might object to such increased busing.

Conversely, the plan would permit participation in magnet programs by white students in 54 neighborhood schools who now cannot apply. They have been barred because their neighborhood campuses are heavily non-white and would become more so if white students were permitted to leave for magnet programs at even more minority-isolated schools.

But administrators believe the ban is viewed by many parents as unfair and that lifting it would not cause undo trouble to overall integration balances.

The integration issue came up briefly during a daylong retreat by trustees and top district administrators, which included a discussion on how to rejuvenate the integration program. That program has failed in recent years to show improvements in Latino and African-American student achievement. The program involves almost 30,000 students.

Board members have been harshly critical of the program. In response, Payzant’s staff has promised a major overhaul, and a change in racial balances is only the first of several proposals over the next three months. The others will center on ways to improve academic achievement.

But all of the preliminary discussions will be done in private between the trustees and administrators. City schools attorney Christina Dyer believes that any discussions of changes in the integration program can be held privately because they could affect the final order of a 1985 Superior Court case ordering district integration.