GOOD SCHOOL, BAD QUOTAS

...What baffles some Arlington parents through all this is the board's refusal to acknowledge the popularity and effectiveness of the traditional school by expanding it to meet demand...

...For the 1998-99 school year, ATS had 162 applicants for 46 kindergarten spaces to be filled by lottery...

...Both years, the lotteries prompted discrimination suits on behalf of children denied admission...

...Instead, the board apparently took advantage of the opening Bryan's opinion had left when it noted that "ATS's policy does not consider a host of evaluative factors including race, which may in the end 'tip the balance' in favor of admission...

...Defendants have come forward with nothing to convince the court that the interest of diversity has become more compelling in the intervening eleven months...

...Each time, U.S...

...The Board's number one goal is to have a fair and equitable admission policy that meets the goal of diversity," explains Lisa Farbstein...

...Siblings of children already at the school are admitted automatically...

...For 1998-99, the board made race one of three decisive factors...

...Despite this second defeat, the Arlington County School Board voted unanimously to appeal...

...The eventual lottery winners were 54 percent white, 26 percent Hispanic, 10 percent black, and 9 percent Asian...

...Race is the sole decisive factor ATS considers in accepting students once the white 'cap' is met through random selection...

...In response to this ruling, the school board altered its policy, but not quite as the court had instructed...

...Lara Tito's court victory was resounding...

...School officials advertised in minority newspapers and on minority radio stations...

...But in the 1996-97 school year, ATS's student body was 56 percent white, 13 percent Hispanic, 13 percent black, and 18 percent Asian...

...Informational events were held in Hispanic neighborhoods and conducted in Spanish...

...This time, a new set of disappointed parents sued, and Judge Bryan criticized the board even more harshly, calling the weighted lottery "a transparent attempt to circumvent Tito...

...In recent years, Drew has easily accommodated all applicants...

...Race was weighted as follows: black 11 points Hispanic 9 points white 5 points Asian/Pacific Islander 4 points Students whose first language was not English received 3 points, English speakers 1 point...

...ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, holding that the board's use of race as a primary factor in admissions violated students' constitutional rights...

...There are 1,598 kindergarten students in the county, and a full 11 percent of them apply to ATS—more than three times as many as apply to the other elementary alternative school, Drew Model School...

...Conducted on May 7, that lottery produced a kindergarten class (including siblings) that corresponded almost exactly with the applicant pool: 63 percent white, 10 percent black, 10 percent Hispanic, and 16 percent Asian...

...Instead, starting with number 32, school officials skipped over whites in favor of minority applicants, until a class of the desired racial composition had been assembled...

...Each student's three scores were then multiplied, so that in the final calculation an Asian, English-speaking, middle-class child, for example, received 4 points (4 x 1 x 1 = 4), while a black, non-English-speaking, low-income child received 66 points (11 x 3 x 2 = 66...

...When it comes to students, race is not an issue for ATS principal Holly Hawthorne...

...Although the advantages of composing a student body whose racial makeup mirrors that of the community at large may be real," wrote Bryan in his May 13, 1997, opinion, "more is needed than the facile talisman of 'diversity' to justify infringing the constitutional right not to be discriminated against on the basis of race...

...For the 1997-98 school year, ATS received 145 applications for 46 kindergarten spaces to be filled by lottery...

...So, the board feels it is imperative that the students who attend the school are reflective of the countywide demographic population...

...The attendance zone for the alternative schools is the whole county," explains spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein...

...But this is not quite honest...

...Among the white children passed over was Lara Tito, whose parents sued the school board for discrimination...

...She says, "I just want to teach them...

...In the meantime, the board suffered a third legal rebuff when its request for a stay of Bryan's order—allowing the board to honor the results of the weighted lottery until the appeal could be heard—was denied, and the board was required to hold a new, random lottery...

...Students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches got 2 points, all others 1 point...

...To attract more minority families, the board asked ATS to step up its outreach...

...The Arlington County School Board has twice been found in violation of civil-rights laws...

...A computer-operated "lottery" then sorted the applicants on the basis of these final scores until it came up with an entering class approximating the county's population with regard to race, income (40 percent of Arlington residents are low-income), and language (43 percent are not native speakers of English...

...Under this system, students were assigned three scores...

...So the board devised a way to grant admission to alternative schools on the basis of race...

...Even though the program costs no more than an ordinary public school, there is no talk of duplicating it...

...In 1997 and 1998, the board admitted students to the county's two most popular alternative schools, including ATS, under lottery systems weighted in favor of minorities...

...At Drew, students learn in multi-grade teams and progress through the curriculum according to their "individual learning needs...

...ATS pleased parents by offering private-school quality at public-school prices—and administrators were glad to retain children who might otherwise have left the public system...

...Parents praise this back-to-basics alternative school in Arlington, Va., for its early emphasis on reading and writing, its dress and behavior codes, and its expectation of parental involvement...

...district judge Albert V. Bryan Jr...

...In fact, Arlington Traditional School seems close to the old public-school ideal: orderly, inspiring, competitive, safe—and open on an equal basis to all applicants...

...Arlington Traditional School was founded in 1978, when parents rebelled against the open classrooms and multi-age groupings in their neighborhood schools...

...But the school board was never satisfied with the racial breakdown at ATS...

...Clearly, the traditional model has tremendous appeal...

...The racial breakdown of the applicants was 69 percent white, 10 percent Hispanic, 9 percent black, 12 percent Asian...

...Judge Bryan ordered the school board to cease using racial preferences in admissions...

...Farbstein says the number of parents who want the alternative school is actually small—just "1.9 percent of the elementary-school population...

...Year after year, applicants far outnumber available spaces—a fact that has vaulted ATS onto the racial-preferences battleground...

...Under an ordinary lottery, the children with numbers 1 through 46 would have won...

...Arlington's student population is 41 percent white, 31 percent Hispanic, 17 percent black, and 10 percent Asian...

...Nearly all materials for ATS parents are written in both English and Spanish...

...While this effort increased applications from minorities, the numbers still failed to mirror those of the county...

...His April 14 order leaves little room for interpretation: "Less than a year ago, this court held that diversity was not a compelling governmental interest justifying racial discrimination in ATS admission procedures...

...In order to take into account family income and native language as well as "race/national origin," the board adopted what the court would later call "a tortuous lottery system involving weighted percentages and multipliers...