TOPEKA Kan.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision could force the public school system here to modify the policies it has used for a decade to keep individual schools racially balanced, attorneys say.
Since the 1990s, the Topeka district has permitted students to transfer from their neighborhood schools to others when it helps improve racial diversity. It also built three elementary “magnet” schools to attract students from across the city.
The transfer policy and the magnet schools were part of the district’s plan for countering housing patterns that had left neighborhood schools too segregated. The plan was a response to parents reopening the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court’s historic 1954 decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that public schools can’t use race as a factor in deciding where students will attend classes. At issue were desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky.
“It looks like you’re not allowed to do that anymore,” Carl Gallagher, a Kansas City, Kan., attorney who represented the state during the later Brown litigation, said of the Topeka district’s policy.
Bill Rich, a Washburn University law professor who advised parents in the reopened Brown case, agreed.
