Unmasking the school re-zoning process: Race and class in a Northern Colorado community

Abstract

In 2007, the US Supreme Court struck down two student school assignment plans, one in Seattle and the other in Jefferson County, Kentucky, which specifically relied on racial classification. School districts can no longer use race-specific criteria to assign students to schools. Accordingly, school districts will have to use alternative methods to diversify their schools. Justice Anthony Kennedy, however, endorsed “race conscious” mechanisms that allow school districts to devise student attendance zones that encompass racially segregated neighborhoods, the building of new schools in mixed neighborhoods and the development of programs in order to integrate schools. We present a case study of a school district in northern Colorado that redrew its attendance zones because it constructed a new middle school in an affluent White neighborhood. We argue that school districts that seek to implement such plans will most likely be challenged, even where physical distance to schools does not present hardships for parents, and where minority and poverty rates are low enough to carry out such goals. School authorities need to be cognizant of the limits and possibilities of race-conscious economic integration plans, and mindful of their potential adverse effects.