Ethnic Mix Still Matters

Three decades have not made the decision any easier, or any easier to accept:

Is it more important for students to attend the school closest to home, even if that means ethnically segregated schools?

Or is it more important for students to attend schools with an ethnic mix that resembles their community’s, even if that means some children have to travel outside their neighborhood?

It was debated nationwide in the 1960s and returned to the headlines last week in Moorpark, where more than 100 parents spoke out Thursday at a school board study session on redrawing boundaries.

Like their own parents or grandparents of decades past, the concerned mothers and fathers who spoke at Thursday’s meeting want their kids close to home, surrounded by familiar classmates from neighborhood play groups and sports leagues and, ideally, able to walk or bike to class.

But The Times commends the Moorpark Unified School District trustees for their efforts to provide an ethnic balance at each school. All students, and not just those from poorer neighborhoods, will be better prepared for life in the 21st century as a result.

Moorpark is redrawing its boundaries to take advantage of the new Walnut Canyon Elementary, scheduled to open next fall at the old Moorpark High School site on Casey Road. The new campus will help handle increased enrollment and make room for other elementary schools to take advantage of state incentives for reducing class sizes to 20 or fewer.

About 30% of the district’s students are Latino, most of them living in the city’s older, midtown area. The 63% who are white tend to live in the southern hillside neighborhoods of Mountain Meadows and Peach Hill and in Campus Canyon to the northeast.

Although state requirements to consider ethnicity when setting attendance boundaries have grown more vague since the 1970s, the trustees are right to keep that factor high on the priority list.

“We think there’s an educational benefit for kids to be exposed to different cultures and value systems so they aren’t only surrounded by the same kids they play with in their neighborhoods all the time,” Trustee David Pollock said last month.

Children learn much more in their elementary and middle schools than the three R’s. The ability to understand and deal with people of all kinds is essential in today’s society and business world--and tomorrow’s.

Kids who get to know other kinds of kids are better equipped to form their own opinions rather than settle for shallow stereotypes. That makes for a better society, and for individuals better equipped to live happy, successful, open-minded lives.