Twenty years after eight suburban school districts and Minneapolis banded together to promote racial integration, many educators now doubt whether such efforts are working or worthwhile.

Some want their money back.

Minneapolis Superintendent Bill Green last month threatened to pull out of the West Metro Education Program (WMEP), concerned about diverting $3.5 million in annual state aid to two schools that he said had become, in effect, segregated magnet schools. Robbinsdale Superintendent Stan Mack said his district "should not be subsidizing either of those two schools or the WMEP district" because they had failed to promote integration.

A similar school integration effort involving St. Paul and several eastern districts also is in turmoil. North-St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale pulled out of the East Metro Integration District (EMID) last year. Mahtomedi plans to pull out after next year. "We wanted to have programs with measurable outcomes," said North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale Superintendent Patty Phillips. "I have not seen that."

As linchpins of the voluntary desegregation effort that replaced forced busing, integration districts have their supporters. After Green threatened to yank Minneapolis out of WMEP, the Minneapolis school board chambers were clogged with angry parents and others.

Minneapolis parent Kyle Samejima said her daughter has become "a different type of citizen" after five years at Fine Arts Interdisciplinary Resource (FAIR) school in Crystal, disputing the notion that the school had only encouraged white flight from Minneapolis. "There's been an amazing coming together around this issue," she said.

Green backed off his proposal in favor of further study, but doubts about the districts' usefulness persist. Meanwhile, the Legislature is debating the use of tens of millions in annual integration dollars, prompted in part by the budget crunch and a 2005 legislative auditor report that criticized the lack of oversight of integration spending.

Nationwide, integration districts represent an effort practiced on a larger scale by school districts in Louisville, Ky., and Raleigh, N.C.: setting up magnet schools and other forms of school choice to achieve integration by attracting students of all races.

Finances and achievement

In Minnesota, schools that enroll in integration districts not only lose state student aid to those districts, but the districts also must also send them a portion of the integration funding they get from the state. For example, North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale not only lost $1.2 million in state aid to EMID schools last year, but had to send $602,000 of its $1.7 million in state integration funding to EMID.

Member district superintendents also say they're still waiting to see proof that the schools are improving student achievement. EMID official say their state test scores are "not what we'd like them to be." As for WMEP, the achievement gap between black and white students at one of the district's two schools -- the Interdistrict Downtown School in Minneapolis -- remains a chasm at many grade levels.

Green also argued that suburban districts are diversifying so rapidly that the old parameters defining integration don't apply anymore. For instance, state data show that minority enrollment in Columbia Heights has gone from 21 percent of the student population in the 1999-2000 school year to 61 percent last year. In North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale, the percentage of minority students has soared, from 12 percent to 32 percent.

Myron Orfield, executive director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on Race and Poverty, said just because more minority students are enrolling in suburban schools doesn't mean suburban districts are becoming more integrated. "It's a false argument," said the former state legislator. "The older suburbs are resegregating. ... The schools at the edge [of the suburbs] are white and affluent."

State law requires districts with minority populations much higher than those of surrounding districts to come up with ways to narrow those racial divides. But WMEP appears to be doing little to further integration. Eighty percent of the students sent by Richfield's schools to the WMEP schools -- the Interdistrict Downtown School and the FAIR school -- are white. Richfield Superintendent Robert Slotterback said that tilts the Richfield racial mix away from the balance schools are seeking.

Minneapolis' Green noted that WMEP schools are producing the opposite demographic result of what was intended. White students make up 69 percent of the Enrollment at the FAIR school, while the Interdistrict Downtown School has a minority enrollment of 67 percent.

Parents on the defense

Still, both districts have avid defenders among administrators and parents. Wayzata Superintendent Chace Anderson praised WMEP for providing teaching strategies for improving student achievement. St. Paul schools officials have voiced support for EMID.

"With our kids, it's getting exposure to various cultures they simply could not get in the standard neighborhood schools," said Roseville parent Mike Boguszewski, whose sixth-grade daughter, Anna, attends one of the EMID schools -- Crosswinds Arts & Science School, for sixth- to 10th-graders -- in Woodbury. "That is enrichment in life."

Like WMEP, EMID features two schools: Crosswinds and Harambee Community Cultures/Environmental Science school in Maplewood, which covers kindergarten to fifth grade. Both schools operate on a year-round schedule, and demographic data show they are evenly divided between white and nonwhite students.

At Crosswinds, class sizes average a modest 25, Principal Anne Andersen said. Last week, she proudly pointed out the school's theater, which recently featured a student production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." She also noted that the school's advanced orchestra recently had won a competition and performed in Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall.

Upstairs in the modern building, which features open classrooms, 13-year-old Alexandria Smith was working on a project in oceanography class. She said she likes Crosswinds' diversity and year-round schedule. "When I had a three-month [summer] vacation, I seemed to forget a lot more of what I learned," she said.

At WMEP, Superintendent Dan Jett said the integration district's board is working with the Minneapolis schools to address Green's concerns, but defends WMEP's mission. "If integration isn't a focus, it's easy for school districts to resegregate," Jett said.

Despite the Interdistrict Downtown School's academic problems and a high turnover among principals, the FAIR school has fared well, named last year by the U.S. Department of Education as one of only six model magnet schools nationwide.

Ultimately, though, disgruntled superintendents say they're going to have to see better, more cost-effective results out of WMEP and EMID to tamp down their discontent.

"Frankly, for us, we weren't getting our money's worth," said Brooklyn Center Superintendent Keith Lester, whose district will pull out of WMEP after next year. "We had students going to the FAIR school in order to integrate and it's not, and we had students going to the Downtown School to integrate and it's not, and in the end we thought we were offering just as good an opportunity as they were."

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