By SCOTT BAUER
Associated Press Writer

LINCOLN, Neb.

In a move decried by some as state-sponsored segregation, the Legislature voted Thursday to divide the Omaha school system into three districts _ one mostly black, one predominantly white and one largely Hispanic.

Supporters said the plan would give minorities control over their own school board and ensure that their children are not shortchanged in favor of white youngsters.

Republican Gov. Dave Heineman signed the measure into law.

Omaha Sen. Pat Bourne decried the bill, saying, "We will go down in history as one of the first states in 20 years to set race relations back."

"History will not, and should not, judge us kindly," said Sen. Gwen Howard of Omaha.

Attorney General Jon Bruning sent a letter to one of the measure's opponents saying that the bill could be in violation of the Constitution's equal-protection clause and that lawsuits almost certainly will be filed.

But its backers said that at the very least, its passage will force policymakers to negotiate seriously about the future of schools in the Omaha area.

The breakup would not occur until July 2008, leaving time for lawmakers to come up with another idea.

"There is no intent to create segregation," said Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, the Legislature's only black senator and a longtime critic of the school system.

He argued that the district is already segregated, because it no longer buses students for integration and instead requires them to attend their neighborhood school.

Chambers said the schools attended largely by minorities lack the resources and quality teachers provided others in the district. He said the black students he represents in north Omaha would receive a better education if they had more control over their district.

Coming from Chambers, the argument was especially persuasive to the rest of the Legislature, which voted three times this week in favor of the bill before it won final passage on the last day of the session.

Omaha Public Schools Superintendent John Mackiel said the law is unconstitutional and will not stand.

"There simply has never been an anti-city school victory anywhere in this nation," Mackiel said. "This law will be no exception."

The 45,000-student Omaha school system is 46 percent white, 31 percent black, 20 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian or American Indian.

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.

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This comes along from my neck of the woods. Essentially, what happened is this:

In the beginning...there were two districts in town. One contains the majority of students, but due to tax lines the other one gets the majority of funding. The one that is underfunded contains virtually all of the cities minorities.

Then....Omaha's district moved to combine with the other one, which was opposed loudly from the other district because it would mean an evening out of funding and that would require cuts on their part.

Lastly....realizing that the wealthier, suburban area had a greater history of political interest, many of the conservative representatives in the state responded to Omaha's proposal by threatening to cut it apart.

And now they have. I can't imagine such a measure is going to be successful, simply knowing what I know about educational law. I will say that OPS is dreadful about distributing its own wealth, but it's also rediculous that the district teaching 65% of the children gets 35% of the funding.

The school I teach at is in the south part of town, and would be in the heavily Hispanic area. It really means shit to me, because we're the poorest funded school in town already and I don't need a Powerpoint projector to be an awesome teacher.

I was bused to a "black school" to raise test scores there if it makes you feel better. Nothing integrates a school like busing a bunch of white/asian kids to a predominantly black school then putting them into separate classes in that school.

Busing was clearly a stupid idea, and it's a shame that you had to go through it, but legislators don't do themselves any favours when they openly thumbed their noses at Brown and Green.

Racial separation cannot be "solved" until the socio-economic status of different ethnic groups levels out. That is years away.

Yeah, programs like that are rediculous. Omaha doesn't do that, but that was actually one of the legislature's reasonings behind the decision. "Well, it's not like they bus them around anymore." For some reason the public here has it in their minds that it's about control and integrating schools by shipping kids around. It's not, it's about funding...and having four superintendants instead of one, and four Admin centers instead of one, and four curriculum supervisors instead of one, etc etc etc, is not the most brilliant way to solve that issue.

It's an interesting read. I didn't realise this still went on

This could be solved with school vouchers.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this

Well, I was kinda being sarcastic, but why?

There's no way they'll get to do this. Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district has been desperately dancing for the Supreme Court for 40 years trying to desegregate. I can't imagine this move won't get beat down by the courts.

I was going to ask you how you thought school vouchers would solve the problem as I did not catch the sarcasm.

But I'll give it a shot as to why vouchers don't work or as to why I don't think they work. Basically I see them as a weak bandage that will stop the bleeding for a short period of time if at all. A few kids get bused over to a better school but what about the whole district, I don't know. I see it as a quick fix to the problem of education in this country.

That's a very quick review of what I think, not very thought out. What's your opinion on this?

Well, I do agree that it is a quick fix. But I think it's a permenant fix too. I think if parents and kids had more leverage over what schools their kids went to, that it would put more, and permenant pressure on the public school system to reform and improve standards.

I think you'd end up seeing self-segregation though. Which is why I said it kind of sarcastically.

It would put a serious amount of stress on the school system to improve, but and yeah it would become a sticky issue. Good point and as for right now, well, the current system just is not working.

Agreed, although I would wager that what's actually wrong with education and what you feel is wrong are very different things.

School vouchers, looking at things from the inside, I don't feel would change anything. They don't tend to have that big an impact in the areas they are used in, and schools are already constantly paranoid and concerned about their level of success because of public scrutiny of standardized tests (and you know how I feel about that one).

I completely agree that standardized testing is pure, straight up Bullshit

When funded properly, they have had a big impact on areas they are used in. Check out Milwaukee for example. The implemented a well funded program. 700 students left the public school system. The public school system felt the crunch, and realized they had to do something. They made reformations, and in the subsequent year the promised that the public schools would achieve the same level as the private schools.

And they did it.

Subsequently, the following year most of the people that participated in the voucher program the year before, went back to the public schools.

This, in my opinion, is how school vouchers should work. I am not about privatizing all of the school's. But I think vouchers is the best way to apply outside pressure and force public schools to change.

I have heard very few failures where school vouchers have been applied.

Milwaukee has spent half again as much in lawsuits and investigations regarding things like principals at voucher schools stealing money and voucher schools meeting requirements (they've had to shut three down just this school year, and it was even more frequent before that) as they do on the voucher system. Efforts are being made to force improvement or total shut down on several schools, but are frustrated by the state's lessened ability to directly impact private schools. In recent years, evaluations by the press and several academic journals have all suggested that the private schools are a pretty dead-on match for their public counterparts: there are a number of great ones, a few bad ones, and most run down the middle...so not much more choice than already exists.

About 70% of the students involved in the voucher program go to religious schools, meaning that Milwaukee is putting more public money into religious education than any other city in American history.

Interesting side-note: the voucher schools take care of about 10% of the cities special education students, leaving the other 90% for the public schools, but beyond that the make-up of the schools tends to be almost exactly the same.

Every city voucher program I've read about or studied shows similar results. About 5 years of confusion and change, with slight improvements, and then it levels off and returns to previous levels. So does this make the program a success? Not really...it hasn't resulted in much change. Does it make it a failure? Certainly not. But if we're talking about education reform, it's not showing the kind of difference that saves the world.

To save the world, you've got to look at the function of a system that hasn't changed in 120 years, and the state of a nation where more and more children enter into Elementary schools with no reading skills or (more frequently) disciplinary history.

There's only one reason the press found that the private and public schools are equal now. And that is because of the voucher program.

Sadly in my opinion, in order for schools to function as best as possible, they need to be handled like a private business. So schools fail. Businesses fail. The consumer adjusts, the product gets better, which is what happened and is happening in Milwaukee.

Explain further.



Interesting, because prior to the voucher program Milwaukee ranked 5th in its region in terms of education, and today it ranks 7th. Obviously I don't point that out to say that it actually got worse, which would be inaccurate, but to say if it is getting better it doesn't seem to be doing so to the same degree as some other cities.

Part A.) The only reason that the voucher program was implemented was because of how "bad" the public schools were. The people were unhappy, the government took drastic measures. Read above, the public schools vowed to the public that they would meet the standards of the private schools that had been outperforming them, and in just one year they did just that. It created parity if nothing else.

I try to follow this as best I can, any chance you could shoot me some info in a PM since we are horribly off topic?

B.) Different control factors? I don't know. Step A is getting the public schools up to par in at least the given area. I'd like to see some info though, you seem to be up to speed with it.