ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 17, 1996 TAG: 9611190007
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BOSTON
Boston dropped racial quotas at its three finest public schools Friday, dismantling the 2-decade-old policy under pressure from a white girl who claimed reverse discrimination.
The quotas, a vestige of the 1970s desegregation case that plunged Boston into violence, will be replaced with a yet-to-be determined method that will ``ensure that students in Boston from every racial and ethnic group have equal access,'' said Robert Gittens, chairman of the School Board.
The decision came four days before Julia McLaughlin's lawsuit challenging the quotas was to go to court. The 13-year-old was rejected by Boston Latin School even though she scored higher on the entrance exam than 103 minority applicants admitted to the seventh grade.
Boston Latin, whose graduates include Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, is one of three elite Boston public schools that require entrance exams. All three ``examination schools'' had a self-imposed 35 percent minimum set-aside for blacks and Hispanics.
The new policy will go into effect with the class entering next fall.
The quota system was a vestige of a 1974 desegregation order and an accompanying busing plan that touched off rioting in largely white South Boston. The upheaval lasted for years. The order remained until 1987, and the schools have continued the quota system voluntarily since then.
U.S. District Judge Arthur Garrity - who wrote the 1974 order - earlier this year ruled that Julia be admitted to the school while the lawsuit was in progress.
- Associated Press
LENGTH: Short : 38 linesby CNB