Riverview faces stringent orders to boost minority enrollment

Riverview Charter School faces federal directives to boost minority enrollment that have not been placed upon South Carolina's other charter schools, according to a South Carolina official, and prescriptions by the Office for Civil Rights put the school's enrollment methods at odds with state law.

An agreementreached July 18between the federal Office for Civil Rights and the Beaufort County Board of Education allows Riverview to open as planned Aug. 17.

But it does so with stipulations not required of the state's more than 30 other charter schools.

"(OCR) is making recommendations beyond what our state act says to do," said Mary Carmichael, executive director of the S.C. Association of Public Charter Schools. "That's never happened before."

Riverview will serve grades kindergarten through five when it opens this fall at 302 Burroughs Ave. in Beaufort and become the first charter school in Beaufort County, following failed attempts to open one on Hilton Head Island in 1997 and another on St. Helena Island in 2005. Riverview will add a grade each year until 2012.

How long it can remain open is unclear.

The agreement between OCR and the school districtstipulates Riverview must close if it doesn't meet racial enrollment targets and take specific steps set by the OCR to recruit more black students and faculty.

The first of those steps was to offer immediate enrollment to all minority students on the waiting list. About 30 of the more than 50 minority students offered a spot at Riverview Charter School for the 2009-10 school year have accepted so far, Geri Kinton, communications chairwoman for the Riverview board, said last week.

But Carmichael said giving admissions preference to minority students conflicts with the state law governing charter schools. If the number of applicants to a charter school exceeds the number of openings, students must be selected by a random lottery, according to the state Charter Schools Act.

Still, a 40-year-old agreement with the federal government governing desegregation efforts in Beaufort County trumps state law, Carmichael and a school desegregation expert said.

The desegregation plan

The Beaufort County School District still is bound by a voluntary desegregation agreement school officials entered into in 1970, requiring that the percentage of white and black students in each school approximate the districtwide percentage.

The agreement requires the district to consider racial balance and get federal approval whenever it sets school attendance zones, selects sites for new schools or restructures schools in such a way that student populations are shifted.

Hundreds of school districts across the country -- but primarily in the South -- adopted desegregation plans after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and several court cases interpreted the law, said Kelley Carey of Hilton Head Island, a school planning consultant who has worked for 30 years with districts under desegregation plans. Carey also has testified in several desegregation lawsuits.

Some districts were ordered by the courts to adopt plans after lawsuits were filed against them; others admitted they were segregated and voluntarily entered into agreements with the federal government, Carey said. Each plan is unique and addressed the racial composition of the district at the time.

"The plans and consent orders vary widely in scope, content and quality but are aimed at desegregating to the 'extent practicable,' which is clearly a situational test," Carey said.

Whether voluntary or not, districts are bound by their plans until a federal court or the OCR rules it has achieved "unitary status," meaning the district has proved it no longer discriminates against black students and has eliminated the effects of segregation "as much as practical."

Once declared unitary, districts are no longer required to assign students to schools based on race alone, Carey said.

About 20 districts in South Carolina have achieved that status; more than 60 others are still bound by desegregation plans, according to the state Department of Education.There are 85 school districts in South Carolina.

Districts typically choose to initiate the process required to achieve unitary status.

But Fred Washington Jr., chairman of the Beaufort County Board of Education, said the district has no plans to do so. He said the district should first focus on improving academics and boosting student achievement before taking up the issue.

Earl Campbell, one of the longest-serving members of the school board, said the issue was discussed about 10 years ago, but the board has never decided to take action.

"I think that if that happened, if we were not under an OCR regulation or agreement, I think that would upset some of the people in the community ... especially in the predominately black community," he said. "I don't see that happening now."

The desegregation plan is better suited to an era of discrimination that has long since passed, according to a parent who planned to send her child to Riverview. Mary Mashke and her husband already were considering sending their kindergartner to another school because they recently moved. The deal with OCR to grant immediate enrollment to minority students on the Riverview waiting list sealed their decision to send their child to Coosa Elementary School instead.

"We are in shock with the things that have happened with the school board and OCR," Mashke wrote in a letter to members of the Riverview board. " ... I am embarrassed for you that you are having to choose children from the wait list based on their race. It just isn't fair, especially since you were so careful in following the precise rules for the lottery."

Setting a strong example

The state's charter school act addresses racial composition but isn't as far-reaching as the OCR recommendations, Carmichael said.

Minority enrollment of a charter school should not differ by more than 20 percent from the local school district's minority enrollment, according to the state Charter Schools Act of 1996.Charter schools can be exempted from that rule if there is no evidence of discrimination, according to the law.

The agreement the Beaufort County Board of Education reached with the OCR says Riverview must ensure its 2010-11 enrollment of white students doesn't exceed the district's kindergarten through sixth-grade enrollment of white students by more than 20 percentage points. Its black enrollment should not be more than 20 percentage points below the average.

Its white and black enrollment for 2011-12 and all subsequent years should be within 15 percentage points of the districtwide enrollment, according to the agreement.

If Riverview doesn't meet those goals, it must close.

Carmichael said she's never heard of another case in which OCR ordered a charterschool be closed because it didn't meet standards for racial composition.

"I was very surprised they went as far as they did," she said. "To our knowledge, this is really the first time OCR has come in and put a whole new layer on top of what the charter act already says."

Kinton said the requirements laid out by OCR are stricter than she expected but preferable to any alternative that delays the school's opening. Even so, Riverview had to wait more than two weeks to receive funding from the district because the school board would not release the money until the school received OCR approval. The charter school is to get $2.4 million from the school district.

Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, said her staff worked closely with Riverview and school district officials on a plan to comply with the desegregation order and allow the school to open as scheduled.

"We wanted to balance the needs of the students and parents expecting the school to open in a few weeks alongside ... the spirit and intent of the desegregation decree," Ali said. "This is about doing everything to be sure this school is diverse in a community that is indeed diverse."

Ali said Riverview is the first charter school in South Carolina to be thoroughly investigated by her staff since she was confirmed as assistant secretary of the Office for Civil Rights in May. About half of South Carolina's charter schools are in districts bound by desegregation plans.

Across the country, there is a fear that charter schools would contribute to the segregation of students, Ali said. The agreement reached with Riverview shows that isn't the case.

"This sends a very strong symbol to school districts across the country and particularly across the South," she said.

Doing the math

It's not clear how the agreement with OCR will influence Riverview's future.

The school district's enrollment is 45 percent white and 34 percent black. Riverview's lottery to determine 247 spots for the 2009-10 school year produced an enrollment that was 76 percent white and just less than 10 percent black.

Nonetheless, school officials were confident they would receive district and OCR approval anyway because of their efforts to recruit black applicants and because the lottery produced an enrollment with a racial composition nearly identical to the applicant pool's racial composition.

To illustrate what Riverview must do to remain open, assume the district's percentages of black and white students does not change and that the school starts with the same enrollment figures first produced by the lottery. In that scenario, the school would have to add 13 black students to meet the prescribed black enrollment for 2010-11. It would have to add another 16 to comply with OCR's order for 2011-12.

The 29 total new black students is more than initially were enrolled in the school.

And Riverview still would have to close because the percentage of whites enrolled in the school would not be sufficiently reduced by adding those 29 students.

To comply, Riverview could then nix plans to expand to 304 students for 2010-11 and cut overall enrollment while increasing black enrollment. Or it could add more non-white minorities although that would require recruiting still more black students.

"I don't know that we've talked about (reducing enrollment)," Kinton said. "There still are so many scenarios that could happen."

Kinton said she didn't think recruiting more black students would be as difficult going forward as it had been because the school's opening should give Riverview credibility.

"All the recommendations OCR gave for recruiting, we were already doing," Kinton said. "They just weren't getting the response we hoped for. But now that it is clear we're going to open, there's less skepticism in the African-American community.

"For example, to get into African-American churches was hard, but now that people see there's really going to be a school, we've now got invitations to come in and speak to congregations. ... Now we have an opportunity to show we're not a white private school. We're dispelling all the myths."

The school board chairman agreed Riverview can make headway in black communities.

"It's not just the goal, but it's the plan that's supposed to be put in place to achieve that goal," Washington said. "What OCR is looking for, and we're looking for, is a good-faith effort to meet the goals and serve all children. When people see that, I think the black community will embrace the school. And I think that working together (with Riverview), we can achieve that goal."

Kinton said the OCR order comes with an immediate silver lining: "We will have a diverse student body on day one that we wanted all along, which we never expected because historically, charter schools don't get minority buy-in for the first couple of years."