The Ann Arbor Board of Education is currently working on a plan to redistrict
the elementary schools.  Many people are saying that the Board is moving too
fast and that there is no real need to do anything.  They believe that their
school is just fine.  They go on to say that any problems that do exist are
localized.  In fact, all of Ann Arbor's elementary schools are suffering from
the current district attendance areas.  All of them can be improved by
re-drawing the school boundaries.  The major issues are racial balance,
under-utilized buildings, and overcrowded buildings.

In the forty years since the Supreme Court decided Brown vs. the Board of
Education, many courts have established desegregation plans for school districts
across the country. Some of these districts are still under court supervision
after thirty years. Brown vs. Board of Education was decided on the 14th
Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees every citizen the
equal protection of the laws.  Current interpretations of court decisions and
Executive regulations implementing this nation's laws describe a school that has
a racial proportion more than 15 percent different from the district's general
population as separate and therefore unequal.  In the Ann Arbor school district,
seventeen percent of the population is African-American.  Therefore, no single
school should have a population that is more than 32 percent or less than two
percent African-American.  While none of our schools are less than two percent
(the lowest is Burns Park, at 5 percent), two are at or above 32 percent:
Carpenter, at 41 percent, and Pattengill, at 32 percent.  Both of these schools
are on the south or southeast side of the city.  Three other schools are more
than ten percent above the district's general population:  Mitchell, at 29.1%,
Mack, at 27.9 percent, and Bryant, at 27.3 percent.  Mitchell and Bryant are in
the same general area as Pattengill and Carpenter, while Mack is in the near
West side. Obviously, the problem is somewhat localized, but when combined with
the other problems, the solution cannot be limited to the southeastern corner of
the school district.

The district currently has twenty-one elementary schools, twenty occuppied, with
a total capacity for 8900 students.  This year, we have 7700 elementary
students.  While six of the schools are overcrowded, the other fourteen are all
under-utilized. The crowded schools are scattered across the city:  Dicken, with
16 more students than capacity, and Lawton, with 91, in the southwest; Allen,
with 14 more students, is in the southeast; Angell, 22 over, is in the central
part of the city; King, with 39, is on the east side; and the second most
crowded school, Logan, with 84 more students than it has space for, is on the
north.  Since all the other schools are under-utilized, it would seem easy to
just move students from a crowded school to an emptier one.  While this would
relieve the overcrowding, it would not improve the utilization of all the
buildings.  There would still be 1200 empty seats.  The three smallest of our
elementary schools each have room for 300 students, while the largest, Mack, can
house  525 students. Three other schools have room for 500 students, and the
rest can educate between 400 and 475 students.  Even without opening Lakewood,
which is included in the district-wide capacity numbers above, at least one more
500-student building should not be an elementary school next year.

Haisley, like Mack, is roughly half-full, with 271 students in a building built
for 500.  Mack currently has 276 students.  (For comparison purposes, note that
the current enrollment of Pittsfield, 242, will fit in the empty spaces in Mack
with room left over.)  Both Haisley and Mack are in the northwest corner. Since
the other schools in that area are also below capacity, the only way to get more
students is to bring them up from the southwest, to relieve Dicken and Lawton,
or across from the northeast, to relieve Logan.  Pulling students from Dicken or
Lawton would involve moving students to and from Eberwhite.  Moving students
from Logan would leave the other schools in the northeast even emptier, even if
students where shifted north from King.  If either Northside or Logan, with a
capacity of 475 and 425, respectively, were closed, students would have to be
shifted to Mack, since Thurston and the remaining one could not absorb all of
the closed building's students, especially if King's overcrowding is relieved.

Carpenter, with a capacity of 450, has room for another 134 students.  In
addition to being racially separate and under-filled, Carpenter is surrounded by
other schools which are also below capacity.  The only building in the area that
is overcrowded is Allen.  Burns Park, a little farther west and north, has 37
empty spaces, while Pattengill has 23 empty spaces.  Both have more than enough
room to accept the fourteen over-capacity students at Allen.

No matter which buildings are removed from the mix of elementary schools, the
effects will be felt across the district, as the students from the closed
building are shifted to nearby schools, forcing them towards, or over, their
capacity.  This means that their current students will be shifted to schools
farther from the closed building but closer to, or at least not farther from,
their homes.

For reasons that should now be clear, the district's schools boundaries must be
redrawn.  The changes will not be made easier by waiting.

4 February 1998.
Joseph L. Gelinas.