Carving Out the Omaha School System Along Racial Lines
Three new school districts for three different ethnic communities. Critics call the legislation to divide the public school system a setback in race relations while residents weigh-in on discussion of a ‘learning community.’
At the end of her freshman year, Kimberly Nguyen, 16, transferred from Burke High, a mostly white school located near the western border of the Omaha Public School District (OPS), to Central High on the lower east side. When she told her friends, most were puzzled why she would choose to go to a “black school.”
Central High’s largest minority group is African American, according to school data. Nguyen, who is Vietnamese American, made the decision because of academics, proximity to home and friends.
“And while Central undoubtedly has the best academics of those two, there are a lot more fights and cliques at Central,” said Nguyen. “I believe this is true not because kids from the south side of town are rowdy and bad because that’s not true.
“I believe most of the kids from Central come from working class families. They are taught it’s a dog-eat-dog world and things aren’t always fair.”
Like any other city, the school district’s student body is inextricably tied to demographic changes.
Omaha’s burgeoning population has led to the formation of racially and socio-economically divided communities. On the west, more affluent suburban areas boom with its own separate school district while older communities on the eastside are mostly made up of lower income housing.
To keep federal funding and diversity intact, the OPS tried busing students and forming magnet schools on the east side. Last year, OPS officials announced its “one city, one school district” campaign to fold all school districts into the OPS in order to share property tax dollars more equitably. When the idea was met with resistance by suburban schools, the OPS went to the Legislature.
The Omaha Legislature on April 13, in a move criticized by some as state-sponsored segregation, voted 31-16 to pass LB 1024, a bill to divide OPS into three districts — one mostly black in the northeast, one predominantly white in the west and one largely Hispanic in the southeast.
The idea came from Sen. Ernie Chambers, the state’s only African American senator, who later told the Associated Press that his African American constituents would have a better education if they had more control over their district. Republican Gov. Dave Heineman signed the bill into law the same day.
Almost immediately, headlines screamed of racial segregation and pundits wrote editorial pieces intoning the Jim Crow mantra of “separate but equal.”
“We will go down in history as one of the first states in 20 years to set race relations back,” Omaha Sen. Pat Bourne told the AP.
Asian Pacific Americans, who only account for about 3 percent of the population, are scattered throughout the city. Nguyen is convinced that if LB 1024 is enacted, OPS will become more racially divided.
“The fact of the matter is, two districts will end up having mainly working class/middle class/minority kids, while the other is mostly Caucasian [and] upper class,” she said. “I believe if we did enact LB 1024, the bad would get worse while the good just gets better leaving the kids who live in the ‘bad’ school district out of the chance to see new surroundings,” said Nguyen.
But other Omaha residents like Jeri Endo say there are some positive points getting lost in the misleading dialogue about racial segregation. For instance, students will now have the ability to choose where they want to go rather than settle on the closest school.
Omaha’s schools aren’t racially segregated, they are the products of economic growth, said Endo, who lives in the suburban Millard School District.
“People would say ‘Oh my gosh look at this!’ But it’s just so happens that’s where people live,” she said.
The problem of “equal” public education isn’t unique to Omaha. Los Angeles’ suburban sprawl creates large disparities in academic achievement and the Chicago School District has required oversight from the federal government for the past 25 years. Chicago’s schools and communities are among the most segregated in the nation, according to a 2004 study by Harvard University’s Civil Rights Project.
The redistricting of OPS will take effect in 2008 although the measure has already been met with opposition from Attorney General Jon Bruning, the OPS superintendent and some local civil rights groups.
Sharon Ishii-Jordan, a professor at Omaha’s Creighton University, said imposing a segregated school system is unfair for families that may not have the transportation means to choose a different school system. But she along with other community leaders have been working with the OPS over the years to build more inclusive communities and schools.
“One of the pros of this legislation is that it brought all the school districts in the greater Omaha area together to talk about what it means to be a ‘learning community,’” said Ishii-Jordan.
OPS officials are still debating alternatives for the split. The Omaha 100th Legislature is scheduled to convene Jan. 3, 2007.
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