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Island West students originally were reassigned to the new Pritchardville Elementary School, opening this fall. The board amended the plan in January after several parents asked that their children be allowed to remain at Okatie.
"Allowing the Island West area to stay at Okatie, in the absence of a credible justification, creates an unwarranted exception for a largely white neighborhood that was not permitted for any other area," according to a statement from OCR.
The board voted Tuesday to provide better justification for granting the exception and ask OCR to reconsider its decision.
Board member Earl Campbell said OCR needs to accept that some schools will be predominately white, black or Hispanic depending on the demographics of surrounding neighborhoods.
"You cannot tell folks where to live," he said. "And if a school is in that area, that's where those children are going to go to school."
Parents will not accept moving students to schools far from their neighborhoods, he said.
"Eventually, if (OCR) pushes us far enough, somebody is going to file a lawsuit," he said.
Earlier this school year, OCR asked the district to develop attendance boundaries that would reduce the white population at Okatie Elementary and the Hispanic population at Red Cedar Elementary to comply with the school district's desegregation plan. The 1970 agreement requires the percentage of black and white students in each school approximate the district-wide percentage.
Nearly 70 percent of students at Okatie are white. The rights office has said that number is too high. Other Bluffton-area elementary schools are between 29 and 52 percent white.
District administration developed a plan that would reduce Okatie's white enrollment to about 63 percent. One component of the plan is putting Island West in Pritchardville Elementary's attendance zone.
Leaving Island West students at Okatie would put the school's white enrollment at about 65 percent.
Board vice chairman Bob Arundell said two percentage points don't make a school significantly less racially identifiable and that OCR needs to justify its reasons for disrupting Island West students.
"I'm very disappointed in OCR putting form over substance when we have worked so hard with our limited resources to do all we can for our students," he said.
Board chairman Fred Washington Jr. said he's willing to ask OCR to reconsider its decision but doesn't expect the federal office to change its mind. He said the board has an obligation to reduce the racial identfiability of its schools based on the agreement it signed with OCR.
"Whether it's one percent, two percent, the spirit is that you're moving toward change," he said.
