Where Civility Is a Motto, a School Integration Fight Turns Bitter

The planned community of Columbia, southwest of Baltimore, has prided itself on its ethos of inclusion ever since it was founded more than half a century ago.

{snip}

But a recent proposal to restore some of that idealism by balancing the number of low-income children enrolled in schools across Howard County, including those in Columbia, has led to bitter divisions. Protesters in matching T-shirts have thronged school board meetings. Thousands of letters and emails opposing the redistricting plan, some of them overtly racist, have poured in to policymakers.

{snip}

The plan, announced by Dr. Martirano in August, would transfer 7,400 of the district’s 58,000 students to different schools in an effort to chip away at an uncomfortable truth: Some of the county’s campuses have become havens for rich students, while others serve large numbers of children whose families are struggling.

Dr. Martirano’s plan, which he called Equity in Action, would also alter the racial makeup of some schools, given that the majority of poor students in the county are black or Hispanic.

{snip}

The virulent opposition in an area that its founder once declared to be “color blind” shows that the issue remains deeply divisive among liberals when it comes to their own children.

That there is a racial dynamic to the struggle in Columbia is undeniable. It is mostly white and Asian parents who are protesting the plan. Black and Hispanic children are more likely to be concentrated in schools with large numbers of poor students.

One piece of hate mail opposing the proposal said, “Blacks destroy school systems and schools.”

{snip}

But a group that has organized much of the opposition, Howard County Families for Education Improvement, said the racism and classism of those letters had nothing to do with its stance against the redistricting effort, which the Board of Education will vote on this month.

{snip}

“I know for a fact that none of the folks I’ve met in opposition at all would be characterized as racist, and in fact, my motivation is the exact opposite,” said Hemant Sharma, a pediatrician, father and representative of the opposition group.

{snip}

Many of the protesters’ children are now assigned to attend River Hill High School, where fewer than 5 percent of current students are from low-income families, according to district data. Under the proposal, they would be bused, as soon as next August, to Wilde Lake High School, where 46 percent of current students’ families are low-income.

Poverty rates at more than half of the district’s 77 schools would be shifted closer to the districtwide rate of 22.5 percent under the plan, which would also alleviate overcrowding on some campuses.

{snip}

In more recent decades, development in Howard County expanded westward, and newer housing developments did not include many affordable homes. Central Columbia, which includes Wilde Lake, is denser and has different demographics than outlying areas of the county. At Wilde Lake High School, 45 percent of students are black and 13 percent are Hispanic, while at River Hill High School in nearby Clarksville, 7 percent of students are black and fewer than 5 percent are Hispanic.

{snip}

Average standardized test scores are indeed lower at Wilde Lake than at River Hill.

{snip}

The opposition group, Howard County Families for Education Improvement, has an approach that appears carefully crafted to distinguish itself from decades of past resistance to school desegregation plans.

A page on the group’s website — a page that was later hidden after local news coverage — advised opponents of the plan to be mindful of their talking points and slogans.

{snip}

A reference to a long bus ride was acceptable. Any reference to “forced busing,” the coded language used by opponents of desegregation efforts in the 1960s and 1970s, was not.

{snip}

The son of immigrants from Guyana of Indian origin, Dr. Sharma, 44, grew up in Howard County. He acknowledged the national research on the benefits of socioeconomic integration, but he suggested that the studies might not apply to the county’s schools.

{snip}

He argued that Asian-Americans, a growing group in Howard County, had not been represented on a committee that helped the superintendent develop the redistricting plan. Local chapters of the Chinese-American Parenting Association and the Indian Origin Network oppose the proposal.

After a protest last month outside the Board of Education headquarters, parents streamed into the meeting room and stepped up one after another to the microphone. There had already been half a dozen similar meetings, with over 500 speakers, the overwhelming majority of them in opposition.

They were Democrats, they said, consultants to social justice nonprofits, teachers, veterans’ advocates.

They compared the freedom to choose a public school to the freedom to choose an abortion.

{snip}

One speaker said the plan reminded her of the Communism her parents had fled in Romania.

{snip}

The strength of the opposition has caused some Wilde Lake families to question whether redistricting is a good idea, recalling the skepticism that communities of color sometimes have toward integration as white resistance persists over decades.

{snip}

In meetings last week, the Board of Education essentially restarted the planning process, and proposed alternatives to Superintendent Martirano’s proposal, which now seems unlikely to pass as written.

{snip}

The board is scheduled to vote on redistricting on Nov. 21. The fight leading up to the vote has been a profound challenge for a diverse county that prides itself on its history of getting along. The bumpers of many local cars display a magnet with a long-running countywide motto, one that is frequently cited by both sides in the debate: “Choose civility.”