MINORITY ISSUES: RACIAL ISSUES FOREMOST IN BOUNDARY QUESTION (DRAWING THE LINES -- LAST IN A SERIES)

A committee studying attendance boundaries in Cape Girardeau said its latest proposal moves toward resolving historically unbalanced minority distribution in the city's elementary schools. But some parents said the committee hasn't gone far enough.

A proposal submitted to the Board of Education last month calls for nonwhite enrollments of between 15 and 35 percent per building when Barbara Blanchard Elementary School opens next fall. The districtwide minority enrollment is 25 percent.

"As long as we're shooting for that range, I don't see how anybody could be upset about us using racial balances as a criteria," said committee chairman Steve Trautwein.

Nearly every elementary school would fall within these parameters if the school board adopts the proposal. Alma Schrader school, which has never had a two-digit minority enrollment percentage, would be the lone exception with a 10 percent minority enrollment under the new proposal.

Assistant Superintendent David Giles said striving for the range of 10 percent within the 25 percent district minority enrollment greatly improves the minority enrollment at Alma Schrader and would correct the racially identifiable population at May Greene, where the minority enrollment is more than 65 percent. May Greene is one of the schools slated to close at the end of this school year. The other is Washington.

The new distribution also would allow students to attend school in an environment that reflects the diverse community they live in, Giles said.

"It is not comfortable for us as educators to purport some high ideals in the school, and at the same time have some things that may be counter to that," he said.

But some parents said the committee didn't go far enough to achieve its goal. Under the new proposal, the problem of racial inequities would just be transferred from May Greene to one of the remaining buildings, they said.

They point out that the 10 percent proposed minority enrollment at Alma Schrader is 26 percentage points less than the percentage of minorities that would be enrolled at Jefferson.

"That's racial maldistribution," said Dan Berry, whose children would move from Alma Schrader to Blanchard under the proposal.

Parents said that Blanchard, at 36 percent minority enrollment, also would have too large a minority enrollment.

"There'll be white flight from Blanchard school in two years, and you're going to have the same problem. It won't fix anything," said Andrea Schneider, whose children would remain at Alma Schrader under the proposal.

Parents said true diversity could be achieved by sending all students in a single grade level to one attendance center, or by making every school have the same minority percentage. Under this proposal, they said they saw no real improvements.

Said Dee Dee Wilson, whose children would move from Alma Schrader to Blanchard: "Nobody likes change, but if we're going to have change, let's have change."

Committee members said they didn't just pull the proposed boundaries out of the air. The parameters on minority distribution were set after discussions in 1997 with Dr. Charles Rankin, director of the Midwest Desegregation Assistance Center in Manhattan, Kan.

Rankin said federal guidelines set goals of having each school within 20 percent of the district's overall minority enrollment, which is 25 percent. The district used a 10 percent guideline in its proposal.

Using federal guidelines, the committee's proposal falls within federal limits and is achieving desegregation.

Said Rankin: "They're to be commended for that. When you have a 6 percent and 60 percent minority distribution, what you have is a silk stocking school and a poor school, and that's out of bounds given the district's enrollment.

"The thing that's important in any desegregation effort is to try and make everything equitable," he said. "This is an opportunity for all children to get a better education.

"All they're going to have in Cape Girardeau is schools," he said, "not black schools, not white schools. Just schools."