Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 15, 1994 TAG: 9409150047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Students from outside Roanoke are accepted into the city's magnet schools even though some city children are denied admission.
In the school year that began last week, the city accepted 103 magnet students from Salem and the counties of Bedford, Botetourt, Franklin, Montgomery and Roanoke.
But some black parents say it's unfair for the school system to accept non-Roanoke residents while their children are turned away because of lack of space and the desire for racial balance.
Magnet schools are designed to offer innovative educational programs with state-of-the-art technology that will attract students to schools they normally would not attend.
Federal guidelines require school administrators to try to achieve a 50-50 racial balance in magnet schools to help desegregate the school system, which is 39 percent black.
The magnet schools are designed to attract white students to schools in mostly black neighborhoods and blacks to schools in mostly white neighborhoods.
In some Southwest Roanoke neighborhoods, the population is 95 percent white. In some Northwest Roanoke neighborhoods, the population is 85 percent black.
Debra Young, who is black, lives four blocks from Highland Park Elementary School in Old Southwest, but her daughter cannot attend the magnet school.
The child's application has been denied twice, because she lives in the Virginia Heights Elementary School attendance zone, another mostly white area.
Yet a white child from Salem is enrolled at Highland Park, Young said.
``People drive in from Salem, Botetourt County, Franklin County and other areas into the school, leave their children off and go to their jobs,'' she said. ``I don't understand. I would think that city residents would be accepted.''
This year, Jennifer Stanley wanted her daughter to go to Westside Elementary School because of its performing-arts magnet program.
"They told us they were recruiting whites for Westside, and that my daughter could go to Fishburn Park Elementary," said Stanley, who lives in the Fishburn Park attendance zone.
Fishburn Park, the city's first magnet school, is in a predominately white neighborhood near Virginia Western Community College.
"We are denying black children admission while some white students outside the city are allowed in," said June Bentley, the mother of a biracial daughter who was admitted to Westside Elementary after she complained.
School administrators apparently had classified the child as black and denied her application on racial grounds, because the school was 66 percent black last year. Although Bentley said she never agreed for her child to be classified as white, the school system changed its position and admitted her.
Despite complaints by some parents, school administrators said there is nothing amiss about the enrollment policy for magnet schools, which are financed mainly with federal money.
In keeping with the city's open enrollment policy, the school system accepts students from other localities for regular and magnet schools.
Under the policy, the city does not charge the nonresidents tuition. The city receives state funds to help cover the cost of educating the nonresidents.
Of 134 new applicants for the magnet schools from outside Roanoke this year, 103, or about 77 percent, were accepted. Of 456 new applications from Roanoke students, 270, or about 60 percent, were accepted.
Sandra Burks, a magnet school specialist, said the 373 new students were distributed among the city's 10 magnet schools.
Burks said approximately 1,000 students are being bused out of their home attendance zones to magnet schools. Students in the attendance zones for magnet schools also can attend.
The city still is compiling figures on the breakdown by race at each school. Lissy Runyon, public information officer, said those figures will be available by October.
Burks said two conditions must be met for children to be accepted to magnet schools: The schools must have the space, and the admission must not cause the racial split to widen.
Because of the desire for racial balance at Westside Elementary, the children in a Northwest Roanoke family have been switched from one school to another, and then back to the first school, in the past week.
Todd Johnson's family lives in the Westside attendance zone, but the two children were told they could attend Huff Lane Elementary School in a mostly-white neighborhood. They went to Huff Lane for the first three days of school, but were told Friday that they must transfer to Westside.
"The school people said the children must go to Westside because they are white. They said they needed more white students," Johnson said.
Johnson kept his children out of school this week because he did not want them to go to Westside. He complained to several local and state offices. He also complained to the city School Board on Tuesday night.
Late Wednesday, Johnson was told his children could go back to Huff Lane.
"They said the children won't have to go to Westside and we're glad of that," he said. "There were too many cultural differences for them to go to Westside."
by CNB