Ruling not likely to affect Triangle districts

Triangle school districts have abandoned the use of race in school assignments and Wake County, in particular, has gained national attention for using socioeconomic factors to try to keep schools diverse.

Ann Majestic, the school board attorney for Wake and Durham schools, said in an interview that she did not think the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to strike down programs in Seattle and Louisville that used race in assigning students would have much impact here.

North Carolina school districts have been leery of using race because the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees this area, has been critical of the use of race-based school assignments.

Both Wake County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro use socioeconomic factors as one criterion in assigning students. In fact, the high court opinion cited Wake as a district that has achieved diversity without using race. Wake tries to ensure that schools are balanced by family income, not by race.

In Durham, school selection is based on geography and, in many cases, a lottery system. Durham also has an open transfer policy.

"We base school assignment on distance and try to create communities through attendance zones, and not through any other factors," said Chris Bennett, Durham's director of advanced academics.

A similar approach is used in Johnston County.

The ruling was criticized by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president of the N.C. State Conference of the NAACP, in a news release. "They say they don't want race to matter but deny the reality of racism, which greatly matters," Barber said.

Despite the reaction from some civil rights groups, some observers said there's more room in the court ruling for the use of race by schools than it may seem.

"If people are only reading doom and gloom from this opinion, they're mistaken," said Ashley Osment, senior attorney for the UNC Center for Civil Rights.

Osment and Majestic cited the opinion of Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. Although Kennedy backed a plurality in striking down Seattle's and Louisville's assignment programs, he disagreed with them on other areas. The two lawyers noted that Kennedy said there were circumstances where race could be a factor in school assignments.

(Staff writers Samiha Khanna and Cheryl Johnston Sadgrove contributed to this report.)