Anyways, back to the issue at hand. For your reference, there is a breakdown of the 10 school districts in the Omaha Metro Area prior to this legislation at the bottom of my post.

Prior to this bill being passed the Omaha Metro Area was split into 10 different school districts with 10 different tax bases. Approximately 45% of the students in the Omaha Metro Area all went to school in one district, the Omaha Public Schools District, or, the OPS. The OPS contained the vast majority of minority and lower income students. 56% of OPS students were minorities and 55% were low income.

The OPS was rapidly deterioriating because the other nine Suburban Districts by and large got a larger slice of the tax pie. So, about a year ago the OPS made a move to take over the Suburban Districts. This would mean the city of Omaha would all be controlled by one board, and all autonomy that the Suburban Districts had once had would be lost.

Naturally, the Suburban Districts opposed the proposed OPS takeover. So, this fight has been brewing in the city of Omaha for a year or so. This legislation was introduced in reaction to and in order to resolve the fight.

This is what was done:

All 10 Districts were lumped into one “Learning Community”, meaning that all ten districts are now under one Tax Umbrella. That is to say that now Urban Schools will be funded by not only Urban taxes but Suburban Taxes as well.

Now, each district gets one seat on the Learning Community Super Board, which governs how funds are split amongst districts.

This is where the size of OPS becomes important. As I said, OPS serves 45% of the students in the Omaha Metro Area. It would’ve been downright unfair to have such a large block of students be represented by only one out of ten votes on the Learning Community Super Board. As such, it was written into the legislation that OPS was to be split into 3 districts, and those districts were to be drawn on geographic lines.

In short, splitting up OPS was a necessity in making the Learning Community function fairly.

Now, you said this: “Let me make a distinction. If a school is mostly black because whites have left the district, that’s not illegal.”

I’m glad to see you made that distinction, because in splitting up OPS geographically, we run into the fact that the city of Omaha is racially distributed along very clear geographic lines. They could split up OPS so each of the three districts would be more racially diverse, but it would require some very strange border designation.

Should we simply redraw every district in the Omaha Metro Area so the other 9 districts that are largely white and middle to upper class are also more diverse?

Of course not, because as you said, “If a school is mostly black because whites have left the district, that’s not illegal.”

As for this comment: “The people in Omaha are fed up with black parents complaining about the achievement gap between students, so they’re giving blacks their own schools. Does this mean the faculty will be predominantly black, too? Hmmm…”

This couldn’t be further from the truth. As I explained, this situation is a result of an aggressive move by the OPS to take over the nine other Suburban Districts in the Omaha Metro Area. The people of Omaha, and the people of America for that matter, have historically not paid heed to the complaints of poor black people. This situation is not an exception.

So my question becomes, La Shawn: what is your problem with this legislation?

———-
Break Down of Districts

Elkhorn:
5% Minority, 8% Low Income
Total K-12: 3,952

Ralston:
21% Minority, 36% Low Income
Total K-12: 3,030

Douglas County West:
7% Minority, 30% Low Income
Total K-12: 716

Bennington:
4% Minority, 11% Low Income
Total K-12: 704

Gretna:
3% Minority, 6% Low Income
Total K-12: 2,084

South Sarpy:
4% minority, 14% Low Income
Total K-12: 1,070

Westside:
15% Minority, 21% Low Income
Total K-12: 6,028

Papillion-Lavista:
12% Minority, 17% Low Income
Total K-12: 8,570

Bellevue:
22% Minority, 23% Low Income
Total K-12: 9,008

Millard:
9% Minority, 9% Low Income
Total K-12: 20,427

OPS (The District that is being split up):
56% Minority, 55% Low Income
Total K-12: 45,228

——————–

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Black student unions, black only dorms, black studies, blacks only classes… what must the ghost of Martin Luther King jr be thinking?

In 2nd grade, I was bussed to an inner-city school. The quality of my education did not suffer and I made many friends, including my my first black friends.

In 6th grade, I was bussed again, this time as a volunteer to attend a magnet school for “gifted” students. This school was in the inner city, and wasn’t really a magnet school. It was a regular school that had suburban students bussed in for a few gifted programs. The city must have ginned up a gifted program in order to raise the numbers of desegregated schools; they had to have raked in extra federal dollars for the effort.

This time, my education suffered, especially in math. I spent 6th grade doing math that I had mastered in 4th grade. We had a computer lab and a science class, which was good, but every other subject was a complete waste of my time. (I never really got back on track as far as math was concerned). My mom still blames herself for letting me go there.

And my black friends from 2nd grade? Many of them were at the magnet school; most of them shunned me and the other kids. The lines had already been drawn, and with the exception of a few high-achievers who took part in the gifted classes, the lines were never to be crossed.

I wonder if the school still is as good?

De Gaulle et les communautés étrangères en France…

“Si une communauté n’est pas acceptée, c’est qu’elle ne donne pas de bons produits, sinon elle est admise sans problème. Si elle se plaint de racisme à son égard, c’est parce qu’elle est porteuse de désordre. Quand elle ne fournit que du bien, tout le monde lui ouvre les bras. Mais il ne faut pas qu’elle vienne chez nous imposer ses moeurs”.

(De Gaulle, mon père. Philippe De Gaulle)

So this is where the politicians in the state come in. The Legislature has come up with many plans and endured much scrutiny during this process, untill LB 1024 was proposed which would keep all districts at their current boundaries but introduce a “super” district called a learning community. And this learning community would include all the schools in the 2 counties and include them in a common tax base. Meaning that the wealthy Millard, Ralston, and Elkhorn would have to share funds with OPS. This is where the bill stalled. Untill Sen. Chambers, who is a black barber with law degree from the state’s best law school, proposed an amendement to LB 1024 that essentially scraped the previous plan and instead broke the OPS district up into 3 smaller districts allowing for more local control. This amendment passed almost without question and it wasn’t untill the following days that some Senators realized that the smartest person in the Legislature, Sen. Chambers had outsmarted them again. Becuase it is hard to imagine that Sen. Chambers who represents North Omaha would not realize that race being a suspect class when it comes to state actions that this bill would not be struck down upon judicial review.

The AG has expressed this concern that he questions the Constitutionality of the Bill, and the Governor Heineman, who is in a losing battle with our past football coach for the Republican nomination in May is trying to gain support by opposing the OPS action. So that is why he signed the bill. And another amendment to breakup all school districts with more than 25,000 students so more control could be had by parents also failed. Showing that this action was only meant to break-up the power currently held by OPS.

In the end this case is going to go to court and baring some unforseen event OPS is probably going to win unfortunately because their concern is not the children they teach. Because OPS instead of working to improve the education they provide instead paid lawyers to dissect the laws looking for a way for them to get more power. It is just to bad they did it using the law.

According to the article, this is what will happen if the law goes into effect:

“Boundaries for the newly created districts would be drawn using current high school attendance areas. That would result in four possible scenarios; in every scenario, two districts would end up with a majority of students who are racial minorities.”

I am certainly not a lawyer, but why would that be illegal. I used to teach in the San Antonio, Texas. That city had seven independent school districts. There are certain funding advantages to having independent school district with independent tax bases. Each district competes against the other for qualified teaches. They offer different incentives, and different pay scales

Since the people are not force to live in any particular boundary, and the students are not being transported to any particular district based on their race how does this qualify as segregation?

The drive to do this was spearheaded by Ernie Chambers, who is black. He’s also an jerk, an obstructionist and an overall pain in the butt. He’s not really well thought of outside of his constituency.

I’ll be linking your post into the one I did on this subject.

You know, Paul, you actually made some good points in your comment, but there were too many personal attacks for my taste. You’re a new reader, so here’s some advice. When you comment on someone’s site, pretend you’re in their house. I assume you have at least some home training. Feel free to resubmit your comment without the personal attacks. In fact, don’t reference me at all. Attack the argument and dispute whatever point you have problems with. – Admin