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Thursday, January 23, 2003

My family benefits from school quotas.

I'm not talking about the indirect benefit of getting our child into a school that more closely reflects the look of our country, though my wife and I certainly hope that will be a plus, too. I'm talking about the fact that our little girl was a lock to get into the kindergarten of our choice because she's white.

Every white kid who applied to the two kindergarten classes at Allegheny Traditional Academy on the North Side next fall has been accepted. The 35 black kids who applied were placed in a lottery, and only 26 were accepted. Nine remain on a waiting list.

Is this fair? As fair as it can be. Does it seem odd? As odd as it can be.

Our daughter will be entering school a half-century after the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "segregated schools are not equal and cannot be made equal," but our country seems unable to find an integration plan as straightforward as that declaration.

Take the past week's debate over President Bush's opposition to the University of Michigan's use of racial preferences in admissions. I don't know if they go too far, but it has struck me that our president is not the best guy to lead the charge against preferences; Bush got into Yale University with a modest academic record but with a granddaddy who sat on the school's board of trustees.

Birthright privileges, by definition, discriminate against those who do not have them. They will always be imperfect remedies for an imperfect world. What's different about the situation in the city's 29 magnet school programs is that the racial advantage shifts from school to school.

Magnet schools began in 1979 as a way to achieve racial balance voluntarily. Each school has a specialty such as a foreign language or the performing arts. Half the spaces in each classroom are reserved for African-American students, the other half for other students. For some schools, there's also a geographic preference for students who live nearby.

Families that apply are either drawn to a particular program or turned off by the neighborhood school. But there's an obvious irony in this innovative method of integration: Never are you more aware of your race than when you scout these schools.

For instance, at Linden Academy, the "German magnet" in Point Breeze, black children have the racial advantage. Every black child who applied for kindergarten next fall has been accepted. But 66 "other" children applied for only 26 spots. After a lottery, 40 are on the waiting list.

The situation is reversed at the school my family chose. In scouting the magnets, we decided the best fit for our child was the school closest to our house. Allegheny Traditional Academy gives first preference to residents of the lower North Side, but it's off most white folks' radar. Many know Allegheny only by its recent past as a rough middle school.

But my wife and I were impressed by the tour we got when we walked in unannounced. We liked what we saw in the classrooms, the students in uniform, the piano lessons that begin in kindergarten and, not least, the idea of walking our daughter to school. So we signed up and talked up the school with other parents in the West Park playgrounds. But only 19 of us "other" folks have applied for 26 spots so far.

Our hope is that we continue to be impressed by the school. Our dream is that it becomes the kind of draw for the lower North Side that Linden has become across town, because our current neighborhood schools don't have great reputations.

The city's quarter-century experiment with magnets is not an unqualified success. A certain gimmickry is inherent in this voluntary integration plan. But about 20 percent of the city's public school students are in magnets, and families that might otherwise opt out of the city schools -- and even the city itself -- enjoy the choices. (Though they're less happy if they don't get what they choose.)

All these maneuvers, here and at the University of Michigan, are designed to have our schools more closely reflect our community and our nation. In a predominantly white city with a school system nearly 60 percent black, my family has become one of the "others," rewarded for the diversity we bring.

There ought to be a simpler way. Maybe the next generation will find it.