THE POLITICS OF RACIAL INTEGRATION IN THE SEATTLE PUBLIC
SCHOOLS: DISCOURSE, POLICY, AND POLITICAL CHANGE,
1954-1991
by
JENNIFER MARIE HEHNKE
A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Department ofPolitical Science
and the Graduate School ofthe University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor ofPhilosophy
December 2009
11
University of Oregon Graduate School
Confirmation of Approval and Acceptance of Dissertation prepared by:
Jennifer Hehnke
Title:
"The Politics of Racial Integration in the Seattle Public Schools: Discourse, Policy, and Political
Change, 1954-1991"
This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Political Science by:
Gerald Berk, Chairperson, Political Science
Julie Novkov, Member, Political Science
Joseph Lowndes, Member, Political Science
James Mohr, Outside Member, History
and Richard Linton, Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies/Dean of the Graduate
School for the University of Oregon.
December 12, 2009
Original approval signatures are on file with the Graduate School and the University of Oregon
Libraries.
© 2009 Jennifer Marie Behnke
111
An Abstract of the Dissertation of
Jennifer Marie Hehnke for the degree of
in the Department of Political Science to be taken
IV
Doctor of Philosophy
December 2009
Title: THE POLITICS OF RACIAL INTEGRATION IN THE SEATTLE PUBLIC
SCHOOLS: DISCOURSE, POLICY, AND POLITICAL CHANGE, 1954-1991
Approved: _
Gerald Berk
This study examines the role of narrative in racial integration politics in the
Seattle Public Schools between 1954 and 1991. In 1978, the Seattle School District in
coalition with civic actors implemented a mandatory student assignment desegregation
policy, "The Seattle Plan," without a court order. A decade later, another similar
coalition of actors came together to shift desegregation policy towards a "controlled
choice" method of student movement. In 1991, with the support of the newly elected
Democratic mayor, the foundation of desegregation was dismantled.
In Seattle, the shifts in desegregation conflicts can be explained as the
transposition of certain arrangements of ideas into policy and the concurrent shift in the
arrangement produced by new alignments of actors able to find enough common ground
to coalesce and make policy. This dissertation explores the complexity of ideas about
racial equality and the oftentimes-surprising arrangements actors created. I analyze the
way elected, elite, and non-elit~ actors at the local level talked about, interpreted, and re-
vinterpreted questions of racial segregation, equality, and the role of the public schools and
explore the amalgamations of ideas about race and schools that explain the unique
development of policy in Seattle with a way to account for change relying on micro-
political developments. I examine the discursive arrangements generated within these
conflicts, the coalitions built around these ideas, and how the ideas were implemented as
policy. I analyze a broad range of archival materials, newspaper accounts, and interviews
with actors who were involved in these events.
CURRICULUM VITAE
NAME OF AUTHOR: Jennifer Marie Hehnke
PLACE OF BIRTH: Santa Barbara, California
DATE OF BIRTH: June 2,1978
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:
University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon
Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi
DEGREES AWARDED:
Doctor ofPhilosophy in Political Science, 2009, University of Oregon
Bachelor of Arts in History'and Political Science, 2001, Mississippi State
University
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:
American Political Development
Race and Ethnic Politics
Public Policy
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Graduate Teaching Fellow (Instructor, Teaching Assistant, Research Assistant),
University of Oregon, Fall 2001 to Fall 2009
Research Assistant, Health Policy Research Northwest, Spring 2009 toWinter
2009
VI
GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS:
Vll
Mary Chambers Brockelbank Graduate Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2008
Center on Community and Diversity Graduate Research Award, University of
Oregon, 2004
V111
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My many years with this project were supported in so many amazing ways. I fIrst
wish to express sincere appreciation to those participants who granted their time and
thoughts to help me understand race and politics in Seattle. My deepest thanks to Cheryl
Bleakney, Robert Dorse, Dr. Amy Hagopian, Linda Harris, Suzanne Hittman, Michael
Hoge, Dorothy Hollingsworth, Dr. David Moberly, Don Nielson, Ellen Roe, Marilyn
Smith, Patt Sutton and T.J. Vassar for talking with me about their experiences and
interpretations of Seattle's "experiment" with racial student assignment. I wish to
express sincere appreciation to the archivist at the Archives and Records Management
Center for the Seattle School District, Eleanor Toews. She helped me dig through their
vast archives ofdocuments, lending guidance and direction as I visited in the early stages
ofthe project. I thank the archivists at the University of Washington Libraries who were
extremely friendly and helpful.
This project was supported by the Center on Community and Diversity at the
University of Oregon, which provided resources for my fIrst summer ofresearch in
Seattle. Additionally, I thank the University ofOregon's Mary Chambers Brockelbank
Scholarship for support. I am also deeply grateful for the continued support I received
from the University of Oregon's Political Science Department and the Graduate Teaching
Fellows Federation.
My committee was a wonderful mix ofmentors. I thank James Mohr in the
History Department for his support, time, and rigorous expectations. Thanks to Joseph
IX
Lowndes, whose conversations helped me through the complexities of this project,
ranging from the intersection of race, schools, and politics as well as the difficulties of
interpretive research. Julie Novkov, though being 3000 miles away for the good portion
of this project, provided both intellectual and emotional support. Julie provided critical
and challenging feedback that pushed the project forward and made time for me
whenever we were in the same town. Finally, I wish to give my deepest gratitude to
Gerald Berk, who supported me from my very fIrst day in graduate school to my very
last. Gerry's continued mentorship, enthusiasm for my project, immense intellectual
support, and passion for constructivist and historical research shaped my intellectual
growth. After coming to his office with self-doubt and confusions, I always left feeling
intellectually regenerated and excited to get back to work.
I could not have made it through with my sanity without the support ofmy
friends, family, and colleagues. Our "Dissertation Attack!" group was an invaluable
source of support for the fmal two years. Bruno Anili, Sean Parson, Courtney Smith and
Ryan Smith provided not only critical feedback (and beer) but also the support of those
going through the same crazy process. My best friends in Eugene were my foundation.
Ed Taylor, Emily Taylor, Mike Meyers, Karen Peters-Van Essen and Jason Hartwig are
my Oregon family. My biological family, Doug, Beverly, Danny and Kristen Hehnke,
eternally support me, as they have with all endeavors in my life. Lastly, I am grateful for
the every day support, time, work, creativity, laughter and love of my partner, Ryan
Smith. More meaningfully than two dissertations, we built a relationship.
For my family
x
xi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION 1
Why the Seattle Public Schools? 6
Analytic Foils and Focus 9
Discourse and Policy Change 15
Narrative Constellations, Discursive Coalitions, and Policy................................ 20
Method and Outline of Chapters 28
II. RACIAL SEGREGATION AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 1954-1972 33
National and Legal Context 36
Constructing Narrative Constellations 41
Narrative Expansion and Reaction 64
A Discursive Coalition: The City Establishment and the CACRC 78
Conclusion 97
III. INTEGRATING THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 1971-1977 102
National and Legal Context 106
Constructing Narrative Constellations 112
Building a Discursive Coalition 128
Chapter
XlI
Page
Policymaking: The Seattle Plan 154
Conclusion: Institutional Reception and Multiculturalism 177
IV. DISMANTLING DESEGREGATION AND THE ADVENT OF SCHOOL
CHOICE, 1978-1991 182
National and Legal Context 186
Interpreting Implementation, Re-casting Narrative Constellations 207
Equity (Policy) Reconsidered: Gathering a Discursive Coalition 232
The Meta-Concept of Choice 255
Conclusion 266
V. CCINCLUSION 271
Political Change 273
The Meaning of Race in Seattle 281
APPENDICES 288
A. TIMELINE OF DESEGREGATION EVENTS 288
B. COMMITTEES AND ORGANIZATIONS IN SEATTLE 290
C. ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS CONSULTED 293
BIBLIOGRAPHY 294
X111
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1. Narrative Constellations 23
2. "Negro Population in Seattle: 1960". 44
1CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In the winter of 1977, the Seattle School Board enacted a remarkable blend of
creativity, compromise, and perseverance with the approval ofa district-wide
desegregation policy that included mandatory student assignment and busing. The
"Seattle Plan" gained local and national commendation as a surprising success where a
coalition of school district and civic actors clutched the reins of local control and
arranged an innovative desegregation policy without a court order. At every step, parents
in fear of having their children forcibly bused fought the policy development. However,
a growing group ofparents, civic actors, and the School Board arranged a policy that
reflected a sincere investment in creating a multi-cultural and racially integrated school
system.
Fourteen years later, the Seattle School Board unanimously voted to eliminate
mandatory busing to desegregate within the next four years, essentially dismantling the
foundation of student movement for racial integration purposes. The discourse of school
choice had re-cast the debate over racial equality in Seattle and the nation and allowed for
a shift in policy priorities away from integration towards alternate mechanisms to achieve
equality in student performance. By 1995, the only vestige ofracial integration was the
use ofa child's race as a third factor in assigning students to schools if the school chosen
2by the parent was over-capacity.! In 1997, the community group called Parents Involved
in Community Schools (PICS) filed suit against the Board over the use of this race-
conscious policy. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No.
1 landed in the Supreme Court for decision in 2007. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme
Court ruled in favor ofPICS, denying the use of race-conscious policies in student
assignment.
In a candid interview with former Seattle School Board member Dorothy
Hollingsworth, six months after the PICS ruling, she relayed her interpretation of the
history of Seattle's desegregation efforts, "I felt that we desegregated, but we never
integrated.,,2 Hollingsworth was the second black School Board member in Seattle
School District history, serving between 1975 and 1981. She was on the Board that voted
for the first voluntarily adopted desegregation policy by a city of its size in 1977, The
Seattle Planfor Quality Integrated Education. 3 Hollingsworth saw successes in the
District's desegregation policies and failures originating in the policy that never let it
fully mature. On a similar note, Board Member in 1977, Suzanne Hittman said "I think
we've changed behavior ofpeople so they won't shun a person ofcolor. But their
I The fIrst two factors that took precedence over race were: if a sibling attended the school chosen, and
proximity of the school to the child's home.
2 Dorothy Hollingsworth, interview by author, Seattle, Wash., 2 December 2007.
3 "Three Cities That Are Making Desegregation Work," (Washington, D.C.: National Education
Association Special Study, 1984).
3attitude, I don't know about the attitude.,,4 Former Superintendent Dr. David Moberly
described the Seattle Plan, "it was a great social experiment that didn't pan OUt.,,5
These former school district actors spoke to the perceived successes and failures
of Seattle's experiment with racial desegregation, which sandwiched a mandatory
desegregation policy between efforts to induce voluntary racial transfers (1964 and
1991). What explains these shifts and perceptions of success (desegregation, behavior),
and of failure (integration, attitude)? For some, the answer lies in people's attitudes,
whether prejudice or desires for control. "People don't like change," lamented school
board member Linda Harris.6 Former school board member Patt Sutton looked back on
Seattle's attempt, "I think we may have as a society enormously nalve.,,7 She
hypothesized that desegregation continually ran into resistance because people were
afraid of busing their children, "most of all it is fear of the unknown and the removal of
the illusion of control."g Former school board member Don Nielson said busing carne to
and end because "it didn't make any sense... spending a lot of time on integrating schools
takes the eye off the focus of what we really need to be doing.,,9 Amy Hagopian, school
board member in the early 1990s, blamed unclear goals; "What were we trying to
achieve, so we'd know whether or not we achieved that? Was the goal simply
4 Suzanne Hittman, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 30 November 2007.
5 David Moberly, phone interview with author, Eugene, OR, tape recording, 5 September 2007.
6 Linda Harris, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007
7 Patt Sutton, phone interview with author, Eugene, OR., tape recording, 19 November 2007.
8 Ibid.
9 Don Nielson, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 25 July 2007.
4desegregation of the schools [to move bodies]? Was it to eliminate the achievement
gap?"IO
These former actors involved in the desegregation debates noted important
factors running up against a policy that challenged not only white privilege, but also the
accepted foundation of schooling: the neighborhood. People were resistant and fearful
of busing, desegregation warranted a large amount ofresources, and the goals were often
ambiguous or unclear. With all these factors running up against the possibility for
desegregation, it could appear that civic actors pushed through the Seattle Plan simply to
quell the threat of court order. However, the Seattle Plan arranged a complex policy to
not simply avoid court order, but to pursue a different vision for the future of racial
equity. Additionally, the policy lasted through multiple anti-busing movements and
national-level shifts towards relaxed civil rights enforcement. It was not until 1991 that
the school board voted to end mandatory busing, which did not happen for four years.
One could hypothesize Seattle's history then may simply reflect a cyclical trend
of liberal progress and conservative backlash. Maybe racially conservative ideology
came to dominate the discussion ofracial equality in a way that gathered enough
frustration with busing to disband the progressive coalition and for federal institutions to
relax enforcement. However, both liberals and conservatives in Seattle took part in the
emergence and end of desegregation policy, as well as the shifts in the way people talked
about racial equality, the schools, and desegregation. Additionally, many policy ideas do
not clearly reflect strict divisions in racial "progressivism" and "conservatism." For
10 Amy Hagopian, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007.
5example, which camp do you put a policy to provide more resources for minority
schools? What if these resources replaced desegregation? What if these resources were
taken from majority schools? How or what does this policy mean in different contexts?
Within this complexity, how do we explain the intersecting dynamic ofpolicy and
idea change? Given that intention did not generally become reality in terms ofpolicy
development in Seattle, an explanation focusing on actors, intentions, and interest group
conflict does not explain the specific ideas that came to dominate desegregation conflicts,
the coalitions ofactors who arranged policy, and the policy arrangement that included
variant and often competing ideas. Therefore, this project takes seriously the production
of meaning in idea creation, coalitional arrangement, and policy development. Dvora
Yanow describes this problematic of "how does a policy mean" as one that seeks to
identify "the specific meanings, intended and made, of specific policies and how those
meanings are communicated and variously interpreted."l1 This approaches politics as
made up of "shared as well as incommensurable meanings," that allows "the possibility
of multiple meanings in policy and organizational actions" and policies as "expressive
and not only as instrumental solutions to problems.,,12 This project utilizes an
interpretive framework that organizes the political development ofdesegregation in
Seattle into an analysis of ideas and their institutional reception; a search into their
intricate meanings, interpretations, re-combinations, deployments, and the way ideas can
11 Dvora Yanow, How Does a Policy Mean? Interpreting Policy and Organizational Actions (Washington,
D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996).
12 Ibid.
6organize actors into unlikely coalitions that serve to change the terrains of conflict and
the possibilities for articulations of equality.
In Seattle, local actors activated desegregation conflicts through the creation,
articulation, or arrangement of ideas about racial equality, segregation, and the role ofthe
schools. The path of development in Seattle can be seen as actors framed, re-framed,
interpreted, and re-interpreted the relationships between ideas like equality, race,
diversity, choice, neighborhoods, and busing. As actors filled these concepts with
meaning over time, different groups of actors came together with their interpretations and
explanations, finding enough in common to arrange policy from both compatible and
antithetical ideas. Actors formed policy from the transposition of certain narrative
associations and the concurrent acts of prioritization, emphasis and alignment of ideas
into a policy with specific and contextual meaning. With close attention to the local
fights, deliberations, and policy processes, this analysis foregrounds the actions and
discussions of the people who were trying to work out the complexity of racial politics on
the ground.
Why the Seattle Public Schools?
The public school arena has often been the center of strong and even violent
sentiments against race-conscious policies, such as mandatory busing. By the mid-1990s,
most ofthe nation's racial integration policies had been dismantled. Public schools are
local sites where racial hierarchies and their manifestations have been negotiated and
7contested over time. 13 The Seattle Public Schools provide a lens into these locally
contested interpretations ofrace, equality, and the role of the public in the interpretations
ofrace and equality.
Seattle was ripe with opportunity for desegregation in 1977: it was a city proud
of its liberal image; it was in the jurisdiction ofa judge sympathetic to desegregation; and
a coalition of elite civic actors from diverse ideological backgrounds worked together to
develop a policy in order to avoid court order. Seattle also displayed a history ofovert
arid subtle racial discrimination: housing discrimination remained legal through the
1960s; federal housing projects enacted during WWII turned into racial an ethnic ghettos;
the city establishment and schools resisted admittance of segregation until the late 1960s;
and the public schools both manifested past historical discrimination and sustained racial
segregation between schools.
Studies oflocal politics, especially concerning race, show a particularly distinct
politics in terms of actors, coalitions, and idea formation. 14 When examining the
contextual politics of schools and race, local politics provides a lens into idea formation
that is not always captured at the national leveL For example, an analysis of culture and
language as it intersects with macro-level institutional change may conclude that
desegregation policy succumbed to the inherent push-pull between entrenched cultural
13 Amanda E. and Maria Krysan Lewis, Sharon M. Collins, Korie Edwards and Geoff Ward, "Institutional
Patterns and Transformations: Race and Ethnicity in Housing, Education, Labor Markets, Religion, and
Criminal Justice," in The Changing Terrain ofRace and Ethnicity, ed. Maria Krysan and Amanda E. Lewis
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004).
14 Ronald P. Formisano, Boston against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s
(Chapel Hill: The University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1991), Mathew Lassiter, The Silent Majority:
Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
8battles between egalitarian liberal ideologies and anti-transformative racist ideologies. ls
But a peek into the local development of desegregation politics reveals a deep problem
with the macro-level view- how does one explain a Seattle liberal who is also anti-
busing? Or, how does one explain a member of an anti-busing grassroots movement who
supports a form of racial integration? After initial investigation into the local politics of
schools and race, I concluded that the research and analysis of this specific intersection
between a "liberal" northern city and school politics would need a very close look into
ideas, how ideas become received in policy, and what accounts for shifts in ideas and
their users.
Seattle is also a window into broader trends in U.S. racial politics. For one, the
West has a specific and different racial and desegregation culture and political
development. Western civil rights activity began in the 19th century as many black
parents fought desegregation in California, Colorado, Kansas, and Montana. Quintard
Taylor (1998) claims that there is a "striking ambiguity" about race in the West, much of
it stemming from the presence of at least four minority groups who have had varied
interactions with whites and each other. I6 Additionally, Washington reflects similar
trends in the shifted tone of racial politics in the post-Brown era. For example,
California, Washington, Michigan, and Nebraska's citizens voted to end affirmative
action or race preferences in public institutions. I? Today, Seattle schools' resegregation
15 Desmond S. and Rogers M. Smith King, "Racial Orders in American Political Development," American
Political Science Review 99, no. 1 (2005).
16 Quintard Taylor, In Search ofa Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998).
9reflects the general national trend. Despite the growing diversity in the population, most
white students in the US attend school with few minority peers. IS Gary Orfield reports
that the national trend reflects the trend in the South, where schools became desegregated
and now are resegregating to previous levels. 19 Today, one of the most significant
features of the public schools is not their level of integration and equality, but the taken-
for-granted acceptance ofanother system of separate and (not-so-) equal schooling and
assumption that all kids are institutionally treated equally. The curtain drawn to separate
race from the public sphere of schooling has limited avenues to address persistent levels
of racial inequality that continue to reproduce racial hierarchies within the public schools
and society.20
Analytic Foils and Focus
I began to approach the racial politics of Seattle schools like many other scholars
who approach desegregation policy in terms ofa failed trajectory. Various analyses pose
the problems of desegregation policy as: uncommitted actors or flawed policy design;21
17 California's Prop 209 (1996); Washington's Initiative 2000; Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (2006);
Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative (2008). In June 2009, the Arizona state legislature cleared the way to place
a constitutional amendment on the 2010 ballot to ban racial and gender preferences.
18 Amanda A. Lewis, "Some Are More Equal Than Others," in White Out: The Continuing Significance of
Race, ed. Woody and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Doane (New York: Routledge, 2003).
19 Gary Orfield, "Gary Orfield Documents the Resegregation of America's Public Schools," The Journal of
Negro Education, no. 24 (Summer 1999).
20 While not drawing the specific conclusion from Victoria Hattam, In the Shadow ofRace: Jews, Latinos,
and Immigrant Politics in the United States (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007)., this
association was influenced by her description of the trend away from ''race'' to "ethnicity," pg 13.
21 Luis Ricardo Fraga, Nick Rodriguez, Bari Anhalt Erlichson, "Desegregation and School Board Politics:
The Limits of Court-Imposed Policy Change," in Besieged: School Boards and the Future ofEducation
10
white flight and its subsequent flight of resources and/or its symbol of white aversion to
redistributive policy;22 conservative Court appointees of the Nixon and Reagan
administration who marred progress and enforcement;23 or the difficulty of sustaining the
civic capacity of a school reform coalition.24
I began to find that these analytic lenses did not allow me to flesh out the most
intriguing aspects of the story that developed out of my research. Many of these
explanations relied on static visions of interests, white reaction, or coalition building that
did not map on to the developments in Seattle or would hide the political dynamics that
seemed to matter most. For example, many studies bring up the importance of social
capital, civic mobilization and political arrangements geared toward progressive
education politics.25 These theories add a basic concern for understanding how to
organize an enduring set of relationships between the community and political
Politics, ed. William G. Howell (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2005), Jennifer L.
Hochschild, The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1984), Gary Orfield, "Toward a Strategy for Urban Integration: Lessons in School
and Housing Policy from Twelve Cities," (New York: Ford Foundation, 1981).
22 Charles T. Clotfelter, After Brown: The Rise and Retreat ofSchool Desegregation (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2004), Thomas F. Pettigrew, "The Case for Metropolitian Approaches to Public-School
Desegregation," in Race and Schooling in the City, ed. Adam Yarmolinsky, Lance Liebman, Corinne S.
Schelling (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).
23 Thomas M. Keck, The Most Activist Supreme Court in History: The Road to Modern Judicial
Conservatism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), Gerald N. Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope:
Can Courts Bring About Social Change? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
24 Marion Orr, Black Social Capital: The Politics ofSchool Reform in Baltimore, 1986-1998 (Lawrence:
University Press ofKansas, 1999), John Portz, Lana Stein, Robin R. Jones, City Schools and City Politics:
Institutions and Leadership in Pittsburgh, Boston, and St. Louis (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
1999), Clarence Stone, Jeffrey R. Henig, Bryan D. Jones, Carol Pierannunzi, Building Civic Capacity: The
Politics ofReforming Urban Schools (Lawrence: University Press ofKansas, 2001).
25 Ibid.
11
institutions that will help facilitate local goals.26 This research shows that the most
successful education reform plans endure where there is a level of "civic capacity"
maintained by the district. Clarence Stone applies "regime theory" to the public
education context and defines "civic capacity" in terms of the central role of partnerships
and cross-sector alliances that create the institutional resources to develop and implement
key policies and programs in the education arena.27 Therefore, the most important
variable in determining school reform success is the specific alignment of resources
generated outside the school districts to support the new school policy.
While resources are undoubtedly integral to pushing through complex and
contentious school policy, these theoretical lenses offered a limited view of the dynamics
of school policy and development. Within Seattle's school politics, the cross-sector
alliances were key in the acceptance and design of the Seattle Plan and the end of the
desegregation, but their institutional resources did not solely define their roles. The roles
of the business community, or city, or civic organizations more closely aligned with the
ideas they brought to the decision-making circles and the ways they interacted.
Therefore, I sought a way to include a direct focus on ideas about desegregation and
school policy that could allow a vision of stakeholders and coalitions as more than pre-
political interests or the sum of their parts. The actors who took part in the politics of
desegregation and who shaped into coalitions crafted creative policies from ideas
generated within their interactions.
26 Stephen Smith, Boomfor Whom? Education, Desegregation, and Development in Charlotte (Albany:
State University ofNew York Press, 2004).
27 Portz, City Schools and City Politics: Institutions and Leadership in Pittsburgh, Boston, and St. Louis,
Stone, Building Civic Capacity: The Politics ofReforming Urban Schools.
--------- ---
12
While not directly analyzing desegregation policy, studies of ideology also further
an understanding of the failure of race-conscious policy or endurance of systems that
reproduce white privilege. These studies explore the ideological advent and success of
colorblindness discourse, which includes mecpanisms and practices that produce and
reproduce racial inequality through apparently non-racists ways.28 Many terms have been
used to describe this phenomenon of subtle post-Civil rights racism such as "colorblind
conservatism,,,29 "ideological colorblindness,,,3o "colorblind universalism,,,31 colorblind
racism ,,32 "racial backlash ,,33 "colorblindness discourse" or "formal-race talk ,,34 or
" ,
"colorblind ideology.,,35 These ideas include many of the same basic arguments: that
28 Lawrence D. Bobo, "Inequalities That Endure? Racial Ideology, American Politics, and the Peculiar Role
of the Social Sciences," in The Changing Terrain ofRace and Ethnicity, ed. Maria and Amanda e. Lewis
Krysan (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists:
Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence ofRacial Inequality in the United States (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003), Ashely "Woody" and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Doane, ed., White Out: The
Continuing Signifcance ofRacism (New York: Routledge, 2003), Reva B. Siegel, "Discrimination in the
Eyes of the Law: How "Colorblindness" Discourse Disrupts and Rationalizes Social Stratification,"
California Law Review 77 (2000).
29 Michael K. Brown, Martin Camoy, Elliot Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie M.
Shultz, David Wellman, Whitewashing Race: The Myth ofa Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2003).
30 Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres, The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming
Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).
3] Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2004).
32 Lewis, "Institutional Patterns and Transformations: Race and Ethnicity in Housing, Education, Labor
Markets, Religion, and Criminal Justice."
33 Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreatfrom Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).
34 Siegel, "Discrimination in the Eyes ofthe Law: How "Colorblindness" Discourse Disrupts and
Rationalizes Social Stratification."
35 Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence ofRacial Inequality in
the United States.
.---------------- ----- ---
13
"Jim Crow" racism is less pertinent in the racial hierarchy of today and that colorblind
discourse works in the name of a liberal rights-based version of equality, the forgetting of
past discrimination, and the co-optation of civil rights language to normalize practices
that sustain racial stratification and group inequality. This discourse asserts
colorblindness as a reality as opposed to an aspiration and gains its discursive and
normative power through the "race-neutral" frames it uses and its normalization and
mainstreaming of whiteness or "white racial invisibility. ,,36
These projects have provided invaluable analysis of the policy pitfalls and
ideological walls that racial equality policy runs up against. However, utilizing this
theoretical tool also narrowed the lens in a way that made many key features of my story
invisible. The colorblind conservative theories posit both a static vision of race and
actors. The discussion of colorblind ideology, for example, is not irrelevant, but it should
be nested in a discussion of the dynamics, rather than an endpoint, of change. In
addition, these explanations tend to place change or identity outside of politics: in pre-
political ideas, pre-political assumptions or interests, or larger institutional structures that
define local politics. While utilizing this lens, I found that my attention was directed
towards ideas about race as "racism," and the new ways racism could be formulated in
policy. Therefore, I was distracted from actors who apparently played key roles in the
processes of school politics but did not fit into "conservative" or "liberal" categories.
36 Ibid, Woody Doane, "Rethinking Whiteness Studies," in White Out: The Continuing Signifcance of
. Racism, ed. Woody Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (New York: Routledge, 2003), Lewis, "Some Are
More Equal Than Others."
14
Consider a key actor who does not fit the categories of "conservative" or
"liberal." Michael Preston, a school board member who served in the 1980s and 1990s
began to fmd ways to incrementally lessen the amount of busing and the legitimacy of
busing beginning around 1983. He was one of three black board members. He
prioritized minority children's education. He focused not only on "excellence" in
education, but economic opportunity as the end result of education for minority children.
Preston was integral in pushing the District towards "controlled choice," and the end of
mandatory busing. How could these tools explain this creative and important Board
member? It is impossible to make sense ofhis complex role in framing new ways to talk
about schools, race, and equality that became ways that ultimately made sense to
Seattleites from a broad spectrum of interests, roles, or places.
Or consider a second example. I interviewed a school board member who served
in the early 1990s who forced a shift in the analytic focus of colorblind conservatism, for
example, because of the apparent contradictions she displayed. Dr. Amy Hagopian, still
active in school politics today, talked about the plight of minorities, the resources allotted
by white PTA board members, and the difficulties ofdesegregation. She had decided,
mid-tenure, that busing made no sense after always voting for the "deseg" plans when she
began serving with the Board. She had not switched parties. She had not decided that
her kids should not be involved in desegregation. She simply understood the relationship
between the role of the schools and racial equity in a different way.
Therefore, my driving question is not "why did desegregation fail or succeed," or
whether or not conservative or liberal ideas were driving policy? This project revolves
15
around not simply questions of policy failure or ideological domination, but the
foundational questions of formation of ideas, coalitions, and policy as well as change, and
meaning. It explains the development ofdesegregation policies in Seattle, the changes in
how people talked about race and equality, how (rather than just what) ideas were written
into policy, and how actors were able to substantially change policy trajectory over time.
Therefore the question of this project is how did certain understandings of race and
equality gain authority over school policy and how did these accepted understandings
shift?
Discourse and Policy Change
Guiding this project in these terms opens up questions beyond timing, structure,
interest, power, and ideology towards questions of ideas, actors, policy processes, and
contextualized coalitional politics. How did Seattle actors arrive upon a vision ofracial
equity for its public schools that included not only efforts to end discrimination but to
encourage multi-culturalism and integration that went beyond legal necessity? How did a
coalition ofactors from diverse ideological standpoints come together to implement this
specific policy? Subsequently, how did the School District with a similar coalition of
actors begin to dismantle their desegregation efforts by the late 1980s and replace cross-
town busing with a choice-based student assignment policy? How was desegregation
dismantled, that is, what arrangement of ideas was able to deconstruct one policy for
another? This necessitates a focus on the empirical storyline: on the arrangements of
ideas that either sustain or dismantle a policy, where these ideas came from, how actors
16
put them together, what ideas and actors were left behind, and how certain assumptions
and ways of talking about desegregation become influential within culture and policy.
In Seattle, the terrain of conflict was not simply defmed by anti-busing and pro-
integration forces between 1954 and 1991. A peek into the local development of
desegregation politics in Seattle uncovers a question like, how does one explain a Seattle
liberal who is also anti-busing? Or, how does one explain a member ofan anti-busing
grassroots movement who supports racial integration? In order to provide a complex
account ofchange, I turn to theories ofpolicy discourse and language that constitute the
political processes. 37
This project assumes conflicts or policy problems are social constructs
characterized by narrative or discourse, given that conflicts mean nothing without the
words and actors who create them.38 Policy controversies characterized within the highly
charged realm of racial politics can be best understood in terms ofnarrative battles
between multiple conflicting visions of racial equality and inequality and prescriptions
seldom resolved in response to evidence, facts, or interest group bargaining. Rein and
Schon (1993) argue "stubborn policy controversies ... cannot be understood in terms of
the of questions ofvalue from questions offact, for the participants construct the
problems oftheir problematic policy situations through/rames in which facts, values,
37 See R. Cover (1983), Fischer and Forester (1993), M. Hajer (1993), V. Hattam (2007), D. Howarth, et al
(2000), A. Norval (1996, 2000),S. Skowronek (2008), D. Stone (2002), D.Yanow (1996).
38 Maarten A. Hajer, "Discourse Coalitions and the Institutionalization of Practice: The Case of Acid Rain
in Britain," in The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, ed. Frank Fischer and John
Forester (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993).
17
theories, and interests are integrated.,,39 Robert Cover (1983) writes, "No set oflegal
institutions or prescriptions exist apart from the narrative that locate it and give it
meaning.,,40 Stephen Skowronek (2008) echoes this point that it is not the endorsement
ofa particular ideal that invokes meaning, "but the way in which [it is] reworked and
redeployed.,,41 Utilizing these analytic foundations makes it possible to look beyond
static ideas or interests towards the arrangements of these ideas and how they became
stories about the social reality within which Seattle actors worked.
This project also assumes that discourse takes on causal power on its own. Ideas
take on meaning by the way actors construct meaning for them by arranging ideas into
stories about their situations and visions for the future. Actors generate and give meaning
to ideas within politics. Ideas are not pre-defined as essential characteristics or natures of
identities and therefore politics as contingent, contradictory, partial, and incomplete. As
ideas are built and linked through political debate, ideas gain form and potential power by
the way they are joined, prioritized and comparatively opposed. Seattle school and racial
politics displayed a vast amount of contingency, contradiction, and change in how ideas
were used, which were able to sit comfortably together, and which actors were able to
shift debates. I take care to maintain the focus not on the battle between competing ideas,
but on the contests between and within ideas (especially when ideas are used by multiple
39 Martin and Donald Schon Rein, "Reframing Policy Discourse," in The Argumentative Turn in Policy
Analysis and Planning, ed. Frank Fisher and John Forester (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993).
40 Robert M. Cover, "The Supreme Court1982 Term: Forword: Nomos and Narrative," Harvard Law
Review 97, no. 4 (1983). Pg 4
41 Stephen Skowronek, "The Reassociation ofldeas and Purposes: Racism, Liberalism, and the American
Political Tradition," The American Political Science Review 100, no. 3 (2008), 392.
18
actors), constructed priorities and emphases, and the shifting conflicts resulting from
actors combining and re-associating ideas in new ways to produce policy.42 Restated, I
look at both the array of ideas and their associated meanings and the multiple meanings
associated within one idea. Meanings can be found in the connections between ideas,
such as race and equality, and in the signification ofone idea, such as busing.
Ultimately then, I analyze which claims or combinations of ideas or concepts
became institutionally received in policy and how they were arranged. Victoria Hattam
argues, "Most ofthe new recombinations [of ideas] fall flat, failing to resonate with
others. But occasionally, political elites crystallize nascent changes at hand, forging
previously disparate elements into new political formations, bringing the emergent into
being.,,43 In the production of narrative, actors use ideas in combination with others for
distinct purposes. The interpretation of this use is not an avenue to discover "0bjective
interests" or and "essence" to the ideas.44 The purpose of the narrative analysis is to
uncover the multiplicity of ideas that actors use and create, how certain ideas gain
meaning, their histories, their antagonisms, and their meanings in a context. For some,
this has meant locating patterns within the ways people use ideas. For example, Hattam
uses the terms "linguistic associations" or "associative chains" in order to convey the
contingent connections associated with constructed sets of ideas. She writes, "we do not
choose the words we use one at a time; they come linked together in patterns or
42 Ibid., 386.
43 Hattam, In the Shadow ofRace: Jews, Latinos, and Immigrant Politics in the United States.
44 Aletta 1. Norval, "The Things We Do with Words- Contemporary Approaches to the Analysis of
Ideology," British Journal ofPolitical Science 30, no. 2 (2000).
19
associative chains. The connections are neither fixed nor logically derived, but are
forged through culture, practice, and time.,,45
This analysis highlights the genealogies of the institutionally received ideas:
where they came from, what they were reacting to, how they were placed in relation to
one another within policy outcomes. But by framing this exploration as genealogical
investigation, I do not assume that an idea has a specific origin or one specific
development, or that the character of its travel is over time. Ideas are used in
combination with other ideas, and therefore develop within politics to gain specific
meaning within a context. Tracing the processes of development, deferral, and re-
arrangement assumes the question of interest cannot always preclude the question of
action; ideas are not simply reflections of people's manipulations and uses of specific
ideas for specific purposes. This is not to say that actors do not try to conveyor
manipulate specific ideas or invoke previous associations. The assumption that ideas are
created within politics and that discourse takes a part in creating identities only assumes
the active nature of conflict, as Deborah Stone argues, "the interaction between ideas and
alliances is ever-changing and never-ending.,,46 To understand their meaning in the new
arrangement, an idea's previous associations must be accounted. To analyze the histories
of ideas is to search for the ways actors filled concepts with meaning, associated them
with other concepts, and discarded certain potential meanings.
45 Hattam, In the Shadow ofRace: Jews, Latinos, and Immigrant Politics in the United States, 2-3.
46 Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art ofPolitical Decision Making (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2002), 34.
20
Narrative Constellations, Discursive Coalitions, and Policy
Following these assumptions, this project initiates analysis by exploring the
arrangements of ideas used in the political debates. The way people talk about ideas,
such as individual choice and racial equality can shift dramatically over time. This
analysis seeks to unpack these arrangements of ideas that have acquired a level of
commonsense understanding that signaled a shift in what ideas actors in Seattle took for
granted and what ideas they discarded.
I follow the work of scholars interested in framing, language and narrative
processes. Benford and Snow defme framing in terms of meaning construction. For
Benford and Snow (2000), frames '''locate, perceive, identify, and label' occurrences"
and "help to render events or occurrences meaningful and thereby function to organize
experience and guide action.,,47 Rein and Schon (1993) argue frames integrate "facts,
values, theories and interests" and provide a way for people to "construct the problems of
their problematic policy situations. Robert Cover (1983) defmes narratives as ''the codes
that relate our normative system to our social constructions of reality and to our visions
of what the world might be.,,48 Victoria Hattam (2006) uses the concept of "associative
chains" to describe the patterns of ideas that "are neither fixed nor logically derived, but
are forged through culture, practice, and time.,,49 Hajer defines discourse "as an
47 Robert D. and David A. Snow Benford, "Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and
Assessment"," Annual Review o/Sociology 26 (2000).
48 Cover, "The Supreme Court 1982 Term, Forward: Nomos and Narrative," 10.
49 Victoria Hattam, Joseph Lowndes, "Changes beneath Our Feet: Language, Culture and Political
Change," in Formative Acts, ed. Stephen Skowronek and Mathew Glassmen (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
21
ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categories through which meaning is given to a
phenomena.,,50
I use the concepts of "narrative constellation" and "discursive coalition" as tools
to explicate both the linguistic associations drawn together into narrative and the dynamic
policy activity that occurs when actors create something out of varying constellations. I
intervene with the concept of "meta-concept" in order to describe a mechanism through
which people with disparate goals are able to come together to muddle through policy in
a way that significantly shifts the political terrain of conflict. The meta-concept holds
together the overlay ofvarious narrative constellations in ways that "re-wire" connections
and therefore meanings. 51 To be clear, these tools are not variables that work separately
or causally. I insert these analytic tools as a way to describe the active nature of this
political development and to allow the analysis to highlight the essentially dynamic
character of ideas, actors, and coalition building.
Narrative Constellations
Within each period of this specific policy history, I explicate the "narrative
constellations" built by actors in their attempts to explicate the meanings ofracial
segregation, the role of the schools, and equality. While not trying to compete with
similar concepts, I use the term "narrative constellation" for multiple reasons. Of course,
this is a presumptuous leap to describe ideas in terms ofphysical manifestations.
50 Hajer, "Discourse Coalitions and the Institutionalization of Practice: The Case ofAcid Rain in Britain."
51 Chris Ansell, "Institutional Change as Constitutional Process, Conference Paper, Unstructuring Politics
Workshop," (Eugene, OR: 2009).
22
However, the idea ofconstellation seems appropriate because not only does it reflect
connections, story, agency, and construction, but also the myth ofpermanence.
Constellations are stories, crafted by people out of disparate and not naturally associated
elements (stars), in ways that subsequently mythologize permanence because oftheir
acceptance. The constructed connections are the elements that defme constellations;
without stories ofconnections, stars remain stars. The visual representation of
constellations highlights the non-linear connections between ideas. I explore the
connections within narrative constellations in order to understand the emergence ofan
idea, what an idea has been crafted to mean in relationship to another, how ideas are
prioritized or emphasized, and what ideas have been left out in relationship to history and
context. This concept is especially useful when similar ideas have very different
meanings for different actors.
For example, actors can construct very different connections between race,
busing, inequality, academic achievement, equity, multiculturalism, segregation, and
white isolation. Ifwe map these ideas as stars with no necessary connections, we can
picture an arrangement of ideas with infinite connection potentials. Figure 1 displays two
potential arrangements ofconnections between the same ideas, thus crafting very
different meanings for the same arrangements of ideas.
The story in Constellation 1 can be seen in the connections: equality is associated
with race, multiculturalism, academic achievement, and busing; inequality is associated
with segregation, white isolation, and academic achievement. The interrelated character
ofall the elements also associates busing, for example, to racial inequality that means
23
both minority segregation and white isolation. Therefore, one can envision a policy
constructed to create equity in terms of both multiculturalism and academic achievement
and to integrate for the purposes of ending racial isolation ofall groups.
Constellation 1.
Figure 1. Narrative Constellations
Constellation 2.
Constellation 2 could imply a story with a different policy goal. In this constellation,
both the connections and lack of connections are integral to the story. Equity is
associated with academic achievement and disassociated with race, multiculturalism,
white isolation and segregation. Inequality is associated with academic achievement
only. Race, busing, multiculturalism, segregation and white isolation have no connection
to inequality or equity or academic achievement. Therefore, a policy could be aimed to
improve academic achievement for all groups with no goal to integrate racial groups.
24
In addition, the constellation incorporates the story about each concept in
relationship to the other concepts. Hattam describes an important aspect of the logic of
associate chains as their constitutive relationship at work. She argues the "comparative
dynamic" at play between associative chains as "enormously consequential" because it
"secures the meaning ofboth terms.,,52 For example, the meaning ofrace in
Constellation 2 is established by its connections to segregation and busing and its
disconnections between equity, academic achievement and even multiculturalism.
Additionally, if we take these two constellations as representing two policy arrangements
(say in 1977 and 1991), we can also explain the differences in policy in terms of the
comparison between connections.
Discursive Coalitions
In Seattle, political change happened when actors and their constitutive narrative
constellations were drawn together in the "constitutional process" ofpolicymaking.53
Within the arenas ofpolicymaking, the actors and constellations interacted and aligned to
create and legitimize policy. Rather than examining the successful coalitions as groups
of actors with pre-defined interests, this analysis discovered that the meaning of the
coalitions was most fruitfully examined in terms ofthe ideas combined within the
temporary coalition ofactors. Therefore, I use the term "discursive coalition" to describe
the actively working group ofactors that were able to find something in common to
52 Hattam, "Changes beneath Our Feet: Language, Culture and Political Change."
53 Chris Ansell, "Institutional Change as Constitutional Process, Conference Paper, Unstructuring Politics
Workshop," (Eugene, OR: 2009).
25
institutionalize significant policy changes. Maarten Hajer (1993) describes a "discourse
coalition" as "the ensemble of a set of story lines, the actors that utter these story lines,
and the practices that conform to these story lines, all organized around a discourse.,,54
Story lines, Hajer defines, are "the medium through which actors try to impose their view
of reality on others, suggest certain social positions and practices, and criticize alternative
social arrangements.,,55 The analysis of the discursive coalition is central to
understanding the meaning of the policy and change because the examination does not
merely analyze words, or even sets of words, but the "argumentative meaning." For
Hajer, "the real challenge for argumentative analysis is to find ways ofcombining the
analysis of the discursive production of reality with the analysis of the (extradicursive)
social practices from which social constructs emerge and in which the actors that make
these statements engage.,,56
Within the discursive coalitions, actors re-arranged pieces of the narrative
constellations and gave new meaning to the arrangement through processes of
prioritization, emphasis, and deferral. In these dynamics, actors mobilized certain ideas
over others, shifted relationships between ideas, and de-emphasized other ideas. Shifts in
idea structures and policy occurred when these discursive coalitions brought together
narrative constellations, sometimes re-connecting for partially different purposes. By
articulating the resulting policy in terms of these overlays of ideas, we can envision
54 Hajer, "Discourse Coalitions and the Institutionalization of Practice: The Case of Acid Rain in Britain."
55 Ibid., 47.
56 Ibid.
26
interesting and unexpected outcomes if two entirely different constellations of ideas are
grafted together in order to solve a complex policy problem in one moment. These small
actions serve to have far-reaching consequences for future debates and paths of ideas.
The discursive coalitions that arrived at different points in Seattle's desegregation history
were wrought with tensions, disjuncture and contradictions. These new, and sometimes
tenuous, coalitions served to temporarily settle pieces of the conflict and defer, or even
displace, other pieces.
Meta-concepts and Coalitional Politics
How does a discursive coalition come together? Chris Ansell argues that
institutional evolution contours around a "meta-concept or meta-concepts."S7 In Seattle,
two examples of meta-concepts are "multiculturalism" and "school choice," which were
both able to catalyze the coming together of a coalition of widely disparate actors. Ansell
argues that meta-concepts are powerful because they "create audiences and induce
relationships between more basic concepts and practices." They entail ambiguity and
polyvalence, but are but grounded in contextualized practices. Most significantly, meta-
concepts are able to re-arrange familiar concepts in a way that joins people with disparate
viewpoints. Ansell calls this dynamic "re-wiring," which "suggests that many of the
nodes of the network remain the same, but that the connection between them are
changed." They become "highly multivocal," or polyvalent, because different people can
fill the concepts with different meaning or different arrangements ofpriority. For
57 Ansell, "Institutional Change as Constitutional Process, Conference Paper, Unstructuring Politics
Workshop."
27
example, "school choice" created a bridge between people interested in racial equity and
racial privilege, which shifted the meaning of school desegregation for all groups.
Meta-concepts do more than "re-wire" the connections between and among ideas.
Meta-concepts are themselves evidence of re-wired connections between ideas, they
represent the displacement of the previous guiding argumentations. Ansell argues they
create "new discursive publics." They provide groundwork for a different way to talk
about equality, for example that both produces new grounds for conflict and displaces old
and thereby engages and creates different people and identities.
In Seattle, new "publics", or "discursive coalitions" were able to coalesce under
the meta-concepts of multiculturalism and school choice at different times, acts that
combined, re-prioritized, and re-arranged previously arranged ideas about racial
segregation, equality, and the role of the schools that signified a level of commonsense
understanding. These two concepts specifically brought together activated constituencies
and relationships between disparate groups that represented associations that made sense
for people, and also activated changes in following developments. Hattam and Lowndes
argue, "Significant political change [... ] is achieved through circulation and the taken-
for-grantedness of the discursive linkages that follow."s8 Narrative shifts acquire
permanence when they re-defme the arrangement of conflict presumed to naturally orient
political debate.
58 Hattam, "Changes beneath Our Feet: Language, Culture and Political Change," 204.
28
Method and Outline of Chapters
In order to explore the narrative processes ofpolitical change, I examined
extensive documentary evidence, newspaper and media accounts, and personal interviews
with school board members and one superintendent. To analyze these texts, I utilized
interpretive methodology in order to investigate the meaning of ideas within their
contextualized histories and explore their movement and use across time by different
actors. In order to gain personal perspective on the history and experience of school
desegregation conflict, I conducted thirteen semi-structured interviews with former
Seattle school board members and one superintendent. In order to provide context,
history, personal perspective, and continuity, I analyzed secondary source accounts of
Seattle's desegregation history. The primary source of evidence came from archival
sources, which included policy documents, school board records, memos, and public and
drafted policy reports or reviews.
In each chapter, I outline national and legal context that serve as partial mirrors
and boundary conditions for the local debates. I also use these to show the importance of
local analysis because the unique changes in Seattle do not necessarily match with
national or legal developments. I then outline the narrative constellations built to address
the terrains of conflict. Following, I examine developments that saw certain actors create
policy out ofthese various constellations. I discuss the development of discursive
coalitions that came to change policy with newly arranged sets of ideas. I explore the
ways ideas were put together in both the narrative constellations and in the discursive
coalitions that crafted policy, in order to show how re-alignment, prioritization, and
29
emphases constituted meaning for the policy and the way it shifted the terrains of
conflict, and therefore the new narrative constellations and future debates.
In Seattle, desegregation conflicts extending from 1954 to 1991 can be explained
as the transposition of certain narrative constellations into policy and the concurrent
displacement of conflict based on the arrangement of these ideas illustrated by
prioritization, emphasis, and new alignments of actors and ideas. Significant policy
change resulted in the displacement ofconflict in Seattle and took the form of shifts in
emphasis within questions surrounding policy decisions. For instance, the debates of the
1960s (Chapter II) displaced the conflict over whether the schools should address racial
separation in the schools, with a new conflict over how the schools would address racial
separation. This chapter explores the formulation ofdebates around questions of what to
do about racial separation in a city that doesn't purposefully segregate? Between 1954
and 1971, actors within Seattle created wide ranges of ideas in order to push agendas
related to racial equality. By the end of this period, a surprising coalition developed and
pursued a policy, called Continuous Progress, that entailed a radical restructuring of the
physical and philosophical nature of the public schools, an idea initiated by the
Superintendent and approved (though in various increments) by the School Board. The
idea challenged the very structure of neighborhood schooling, as the status quo
philosophical position about schooling, and the assumption that Seattle, as a liberal city,
needed to address racial inequality. While the initiation of Continuous Progress was a far
cry from the conflict over whether or not racial segregation even existed in Seattle, the
fundamental conflict about the role of the schools was not settled. The decision to
30
implement this policy, along with the character of its failure, changed the terrains of
conflict in Seattle. After 1971, the conflicts over desegregation turned towards a debate
over whether or not the policy should be mandatory or voluntary, again a question about
the defmitive role of the schools.
Chapter III examines the period between 1971 and 1977, which ends with the
Board approving the Seattle Plan. The years between 1971 and 1977 saw Seattle actors
struggling to deal with the intersection of racial inequality, neighborhood attachments,
and imminent court order. In Seattle, the battle over desegregation can be best understood
as a struggle within and between three predominant narrative constellations developed by
actors to frame a story about racial segregation, the role of the schools, and the contours
oflegitimate policy. The resulting mandatory desegregation policy, The Seattle Plan,
resulted from the coming together ofa discursive coalition of actors who were able to
draw together and re-arrange the competing narrative constellations under the meta-
concept of "multiculturalism." The concept of "multiculturalism" served as a force of
discursive realignment that joined previously antithetical actors and their divergent
interests. By becoming a point of reference that could re-associate linkages within
narrative constellations, this concept proved to realign the relationship between actors as
well as their ideas so that those invested in integration could agree upon the same policy
as those interested in avoiding a court order. The fmal debate settled a new set of
narrative claims within the Seattle Plan: desegregation was not merely a legal necessity
but an educational necessity in an increasingly diverse world; schools had a role in
promoting social change important for a multi-racial society; and individual rights could
31
not trump the need to ameliorate historical discrimination. The combination of these
assumptions re-grounded the desegregation debate as it settled the schools' role in
addressing "racial imbalance."
The period between 1978 and 1991 (Chapter IV) witnessed the incredible
steadfastness of the Seattle Plan along with the rise in discursive power of a narrative
constellation that brought together a new set of ideas, held together by the concept of
school choice. This resulted from interrelated developments that re-cast the role of the
schools, the meaning of racial equality, and subsequently the possibilities for
conversation about desegregation. This period begins in 1978 with the implementation of
the Seattle Plan and ends with the reconfiguration of the Seattle Plan's unsteady
discursive coalition and constitutive narrative constellation with a new arrangement of
ideas, held together by a narrative frame oriented around school choice. Within these
policy actions and interpretations, actors initiated significant change as they re-cast
alternatives to school equity with new narrative constellations, that both frayed, cut,
amplified, and retained elements of the Seattle Plan's narrative constellation. The
implementation battles ended up narrowing the discursive field of debate and the range of
competing ideas that actors could reconcile within policy.
The endpoint for the chapter signaled the arrival and power of this new discursive
coalition and concurrent re-arrangement ofnarrative constellations with power over
school policy that revolved around school choice. Reflective ofthis arrival, the Seattle
Times reported a few years later, "Today, the overriding issue for Seattle is not
32
desegregation."s9 The overriding issue was academic achievement, and the means,
through which board policy could accomplish this, while appearing equally invested in
equality of academic achievement, was school choice. After this period, the Board took
steps to eliminate busing with "surprisingly non-confrontational" votes, according to
former school board member Don Nielson.6o In 1991, the Board voted unanimously to
eliminate mandatory busing within the next five years. The District moved towards this
goal "with remarkably little comment from city residents and civil-rights groups," a lack
ofresistance that surprised many Board members and administrators.61
School choice and its narrative partner, academic excellence, gained prominence
by the end of this period as the vocabulary through which equity would be interpreted,
performed, and measured within the public schools. The discourse of choice displaced the
previously dominant discourse ofmulticulturalism by replacing its frame of questions,
alternatives, and debates with new accepted points ofreference. This discursive coalition
that convened under the idea of school choice provided the legitimacy necessary to begin
the process of dismantling desegregation policies because it articulated a relationship
between the role ofthe schools and the individual in ways that made choice more
commonsense than integration.
59 "Choice, not busing, for Seattle's schools," Seattle Times, 25 September 1996, B4.
60 Don Nielson, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 25 July 2007.
61 "Little response to desegregation plan- school board's hearing draws only seven speakers," Seattle Times
7 May 1992, E1; "Busing's end means choice will begin," Seattle Times, 16 April 1992, A8.
33
CHAPTER II
RACIAL SEGREGATION AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 1954-1972
This chapter explores the construction and interaction of interpretations ofracial
segregation between 1954 and 1972 in order to analyze the way actors in Seattle
temporarily settled a specific arrangement of ideas about how to meet the needs ofracial
equality after Brown v. Board ofEducation and the Civil Rights Act (1964). In these
early struggles, invested actors in Seattle generated a spectrum ofpolitical commitments
concerning racial segregation in the schools that interacted to define what racial
segregation meant in Seattle and how school district actors should respond. Between
1954 and 1972, national and local arenas struggled with the meaning ofcentral concepts
in the desegregation debates: segregation, racial inequality, racial equality, individual
rights, neighborhood schools, and the role of the schools. With the decision in Brown v.
Board ofEducation, Seattle actors slowly began to directly address the racial situation of
their neighborhoods, employment opportunities, and public schools, and interpreted the
event ofracial segregation in multiple and competing ways. The public schools served as
a particularly potent source ofracial tension, as they were the public institution without
an overt history ofracial discrimination.
In a period when no answer readily trumped another to solve the various problems
of racial segregation in the public schools, actors developed sets of ideas, or narrative
34
constellations, to work through these questions and react to others' processes of
interpretation and meaning-making. The constructed narrative constellations became the
language through which Seattle actors conversed about boundaries between public action
to rectify racial disparities and preserving individual rights symbolized by the
neighborhood school student assignment that re-enacted segregated housing patterns.
Though both the interpretation ofproblems as well as solutions were highly contested in
this period, the constellations remained tied together in conversation over three central
questions that comprised the central interpretive terrain of conflict. What is
"segregation," that is, how to describe racially divided schools when the division was not
legally mandated? What is "public" when it comes to racial disparities? How do actors
negotiate the intersection ofprivate individual rights and public's role in ensuring racial
equity?
The resulting debates did not reveal a dualistic power struggle between competing
interests, but a dynamic process where actors attempted to meet policy and public needs
by generating and combining ideas in ways that were not previously defmed by
competing interests. Eventually, a coalition formed between a central civil rights group
and the school district, which attempted to implement a school integration policy. This
discursive coalition, drawn together by the debate between integration and black power,
brought multiple interpretations of racial segregation to bear on policy action. However,
they held the social construct of integration in common enough to join and form a
specific integration policy to desegregate middle schools.
35
The resulting policy reflected a new understanding ofthe role of the schools and
what racial imbalance meant in Seattle, which denied the problem of racial school
segregation until 1964. After a decade of struggle, the District attempted to implement an
integration plan that included mandatory busing between 1968 and 1970, which was
delayed by court injunction until 1972. In the face ofcourt delay initiated by a powerful
grassroots anti-busing group, the District voted to further delay the mandatory aspects of
the plan and initiated a weakly-implemented, voluntary racial transfer policy in 1972. On
the surface, this period ended with basically the same institutional policy stance as it did
in 1964, when the District fIrst implemented a voluntary racial transfer program.
Nevertheless, the institutional story cannot elaborate the meaning for this historical
moment. The new policy expressed a different meaning for racial segregation in Seattle.
This chapter begins with an exploration ofthe national and legal context that
served as both boundaries for Seattle politics and also show the national character of
these unsettled debates. Next, the chapter explores the initial city establishment and civil
rights reactions to Brown and the following narrative constellations these actors
established to address the meaning of racial segregation in Seattle and the role ofthe
public schools. As actors struggled within developing civil rights conflicts, they
responded to one another's narrative constellations. Certain actors found ways to disrupt
narrative connections that provided space for new ways to orient the central concepts of
debate. Following, I describe the discursive coalition that combined competing narrative
constellations and how institutional actors challenged, re-combined, and added ideas
36
from the multiple competing narratives in response to political needs and to concurrent
narrative development.
Overall, this chapter will explore the changes in meaning expressed within new
discursive political claims as they became temporarily validated in policy. First, de facto
segregation existed in Seattle. Second, integration was a valuable goal that the school
district should pursue because it encouraged equity and mutual respect, but not a
necessary role. This distinction leads to the third new claim; the most important
organizing factor for student assignment remained the neighborhood as a traditional
community stronghold. That is, the neighborhood represented community values, a social
network, and a necessary element ofa child's rearing, but not necessarily a physical
location or an entrenched site of inalienable rights. The end of the chapter explores the
concurrent failure of a mandatory integration policy and a new character of
interpretations of the political terrain, which shifted the grounds for debates after 1972.
National and Legal Context
As Seattleites wrestled with the idea of segregation in their own schools, they
were influenced by how specific ideas were linked together at the national level to create
specific claims about racial segregation caused by housing patterns. For northern, or
northwestern, school districts, the national debate over Brown was marked by ambiguities
in terms of the State's reach.! Seattle actors had not yet determined whether or not the
kind of segregation that existed in Seattle was actually implicated by Brown or the Civil
I Ronald P. Fonnisano, Boston against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel
Hill: The University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1991).
37
Rights Act of 1964. However, when Seattle understood that their segregation was indeed
legally culpable under Brown, the major questions addressed at the national level
developed towards an undetermined institutional space for the amelioration of
segregation.
Anti-Discrimination and The Courts
The Supreme Court began to deal with questions about de facto segregated
schools in terms of "what harms could the Court legitimately have considered in deciding
Brown?"z Courts wrestled with questions of remedy in southern schools, and questions
of liability for school districts when segregation occurred under "formally race-neutral
assignment policies" in northern schools.3 The general character of the Courts at this
time was ambiguous, but emphasized formal anti-discrimination as well as a notion of
color awareness that had potential to expand desegregation justification beyond
ameliorating discriminatory intent to benefiting society as a whole.
The Supreme Court did not formally rule on de facto segregated schools until
1973, and provided an ambiguous stance on "race-neutral" policies that resulted in school
segregation. In an implicit affirmation ofa Seventh Circuit Court decision ofBell v.
School Board, City ofGary (1964) upheld neighborhood-based systems of student
assignment when the "racial imbalance" resulted from housing patterns rather than
2 Reva B. Siegel, "Equality Talk: Antisubordination and Anticlassification Values in Constitutional
Struggles over Brown," Harvard Law Review 117 (2003-2004).
3 Ibid., 1513
38
official policy.4 In contrast, when the Court ruled on districts with histories of official
discrimination, as with Green County (1968), they ruled freedom ofchoice plans did not
automatically pass muster given that they did not end patterns of segregation. Swann v.
Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board ofEducation (402 U.S. 1 (1971)) opened the doors to
policies that included busing to ameliorate segregated systems. However, none ofthese
decisions directly dealt with "northern" or "de facto" districts.5
In the early 1960s, federal courts routinely began to uphold the right of state and
local governments to implement race-conscious policies intended to address de facto
schools.6 Siegel describes these actions as a "central cleavage in the law," where federal
courts could not intervene, but could allow state and local governments to step in and
rectify racial imbalance.7 Therefore, race-conscious state action was permissible at this
time, and even deemed valuable for a "pluralist" society. For example, Chief Justice
Burger's observed in Swann that school authorities could include policy "to prepare
students to live in a pluralistic society each school should have a prescribed ratio of
Negro to white students reflecting the proportion for the district as a whole."s In
4 Doris Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968" (University of
Washington, 1968). Also see Joseph Crespino, "The Best Defense Is a Good Offense: The Stennis
Amendment and the Fracturing of Liberal School Desegregation Policy, 1964-1972," The Journal ofPolicy
History 18, no. 3 (2006).
5 Gerald N. Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1991).
6 Siegel, "Equality Talk: Antisubordination and Anticlassification Values in Constitutional Struggles over
Brown," 1514.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., 1517.
39
response, white plaintiffs began to argue against race-conscious measures to achieve
"racial balance" through the language ofcolorblindness, or anti-classification.9 However,
the courts denied these arguments, as one judge explained in 1966, "the Constitution is
both color blind and color conscious. To avoid conflict with the equal protection clause,
a classification that denies a benefit, causes harm, or imposes a burden must not be based
on race."IO Federal courts routinely argued race-conscious efforts to rectify segregation
did not violate white parents' right to equal protection. II Race-based state action gained
a level oflegitimacy ifused to redress past discrimination.
Federal Institutions
The Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964 also provided an ambiguous space for racial
equality concerns. Title VI ofthe CRA authorized the Justice Department to sue school
districts out ofcompliance with court-ordered desegregation orders and gave the
Department ofHealth, Education, and Welfare (HEW) the power to withhold funds for
schools excluding students on the basis ofrace.12 Following the CRA, Congress also
secured federal funding for schools that agreed to eliminate segregation through the
9 Ibid., 1519.
[0 Judge Wisdom, in United States v. Jefferson County Board o/Education, 372 F.2d at 876, (5th Cir. 1966).
II Siegel, "Equality Talk: Antisubordination and Anticlassification Values in Constitutional Struggles over
Brown," Footnote 162, 1517.
12 Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change?, 47.
40
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. 13 The ESEA also provided
funds for school districts with large percentages oflow-income students. 14
As it seemed to represent a solidification ofa liberal school desegregation policy,
the national debate over what to do with de facto schools was far from solved. IS Despite
ambiguous enforcement, the CRA proved to ameliorate racial isolation in the South
considerably.16 The CRA also included language that limited its reach in correcting
"racial imbalance," meaning de facto segregated districts. 17 The Senate limited the
CRA's reach to districts where racial imbalances resulted from housing patterns and its
enforcement philosophy in the distinction made between de jure and "racially
imbalanced" districts. IS Robert C. Lieberman (2002) argues that CRA "adopted an
explicitly color-blind approach to prohibiting racial discrimination.,,19 By focusing on
individual anti-discrimination, Lieberman argues that the act therefore refused to, but did
not "lock-in" an approach to discrimination through a race- or group~conscious approach,
which determined specifically limited enforcement mechanisms.
13 Charles T. Clotfelter, After Brown: The Rise and Retreat ofSchool Desegregation (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2004).
14 Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change?, 47.
15 Crespino, "The Best Defense Is a Good Offense: The Stennis Amendment and the Fracturing of Liberal
School Desegregation Policy, 1964-1972."
16 Jennifer L. Hochschild, The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).
17 Crespino, "The Best Defense Is a Good Offense: The Stennis Amendment and the Fracturing of Liberal
School Desegregation Policy, 1964-1972," 305.
18 Ibid., 309.
19 Robert C. Lieberman, "Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political Change," American
Political Science Review 96, no. 4 (2002).
41
These national and legal developments specifically and ambiguously defined the
role of state institutions concerning desegregation in legal and national institutions.
Legally, school districts were only responsible for desegregation when they had actively
discriminated. Legal developments revealed a space for race-conscious ameliorative
sentiments that extended to de facto segregated schooling patterns.
Constructing Narrative Constellations
The post-war era in Seattle saw a large rise in the minority population and a
tentative confrontation with the growing problem of "racial separation." Though the City
of Seattle had a history of interest in equal opportunity and minority issue awareness,
Seattle handled these issues much the same as many northern de facto school districts
around the nation, by denying that racial segregation existed and foregoing responsibility
by blaming housing patterns.2° This institutional position represented a discursive and
institutional disjuncture and served to allow for a wide range of ideas to confront long-
held values within the public schools. Actors in Seattle began to answer the questions of
the meaning of racial separation and Brown for Seattle, and a northwestern de facto
district's role in addressing racial separation.
20 Seattle had been publicly committed to equal education since 1889, when the Territorial Legislature
passed the "Enabling Act," which stated, "It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for
the education of all children residing in its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race,
color, caste or sex." (Quintard Taylor, The Forging ofa Black Community: Seattle's Central Districtfrom
1870 through the Civil Rights Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994).
42
After World War II, the black population in the Western states grew by 443,000,
or thirty-three percent,21 In Seattle, the black population grew by 413 percent between
1940 and 1950. In the expanding defense industry, post-war worker shortages as well as
President Roosevelt's 1941 Executive Order 8802 (prohibiting employment
discrimination in firms with government contracts) opened many previously closed
workplaces to African Americans.22 Black families generally settled in the city's
neighborhood referred to as the Central District or Central Area, which was a largely
segregated community by the 1950s.23 The schools began to reflect these segregated
communities.
Though Seattle was the only major city in the Pacific Northwest that did not
segregate blacks in public housing projects, racially restrictive covenants became
commonplace after 1926 in Seattle.24 Despite the 1948 Supreme Court ruling against
racial restrictions in Shelley v. Kramer, these restrictive deeds were legal (though
unenforceable) in Seattle until 1968. In hundreds ofneighborhoods and subdivisions,
racially restricted covenants denied property by restricting the neighborhood to only
"whites" or "caucasians," or by specifically prohibiting specific racial, ethnic, or religious
21 Quintard Taylor, In Search ofa Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998).
22 Taylor, The Forging ofa Black Community: Seattle's Central Districtfrom 1870 through the Civil
Rights Era.
23 Mindy Cameron, "Building for Learning: How Seattle Is Reinventing Its Public Schools," (Seattle:
Alliance for Education, 1999).
24 This is when the Supreme Court validated their use (Taylor, The Forging ofa Black Community:
Seattle's Central Districtfrom 1870 through the Civil Rights Era., 179).
43
groupS.25 The Lake Washington Ship Canal became the "de facto racial dividing line"
that basically divided Seattle into a northern (white) section and larger southern section
that represented a highly segregated, primarily African American, "central district"
surrounded by majority white neighborhoods.26 In 1950, Seattle blacks lived within ten
(out of 118) census tracks in the Central District. By 1960, as the black population
increased by 11,000, 78 percent now lived in these same ten tracks. Figure 2
demonstrates the extent to which African Americans were isolated in the Central District,
or Central Area, in 1960.
Racial Tension and Racial Separation
Seattle projected a self-image ofracial progressivism, as a city that took pride in
meeting the needs ofa diverse and growing population without legally having to do so.
As early as 1938, a committee of teachers working with the Urban League developed a
bibliography ofmaterials on race relations. In December 1944, a group called Seattle
Civic Unity Committee (Civic Unity) was formed from a cross-section ofcity actors
interested in addressing racial issues in Seattle, and endorsed a voluntary exchange
program between high schools, to promote greater racial understanding. The district
25 The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, "Racial Restrictive Covenants," available from
http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/segregated.htm; accessed 8 September 2008.
26 HistoryLink.org. "Essay 3939: Busing: A Well-Intentioned Failure," available from
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfin?DisplayPage=output.cfin&File_Id=3939; accessed 12 September
2008.
44
assured the public that they made "every effort to assure absolutely equal educational
opportunities for all races and creeds.,,27
,
... 1
LAKE..
COf\OC~tfTRK (:ll'lf.t_'_~ (JIO,"WII ,..,.0'/11 1'01111 r;.r
",c.,-'[~" \.,,~ v .... l.vt .. r Q~lr ",.n.r ..,.,./:A\(A..:'.
~AC·~ O~'T ~fPR[f>('~I~
) S PEOl'U
NEGRO POPULATION
SEATTLE: 1960
rOTAI 1>I[~R() I'OO>UlA1JON
WI'-iIN .. IIY IN ."'60 'JiI.'.J:J1
IN AIo/.A~ lo'JilH 'fW(1! IHAN
,,~ NEG-RefS. !)O,.~ PI ACED AI
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''''[~\N f'OIN' OF tJlGRO
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("rN~lJ~. T~ACIS
Figure 2. ''Negro Population in Seattle: 1960." Obtained from The Seattle Civil Rights
and Labor History Project available from
http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/segregated.htm; accessed 8 September 2008.
27 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
45
In contrast, between the initiation ofBrown and 1963, the city establishment
disconnected education and social change by denying responsibility for school
segregation, claiming the schools were not de jure segregated; if anything, housing was
to blame. The Seattle city establishment included the School District, Mayor's office,
Chamber of Commerce, and two daily newspapers. At the Board meeting immediately
following the Brown decision, board members did not mention the case or
desegregation.28 When the Board did discuss Brown, they argued that despite Seattle's
heavy concentration ofAfrican-American students in six elementary schools and three
secondary schools, segregation defined in Brown did not implicate Seattle because there
it was not legally mandated separation and therefore irrelevant.29 As Board Member Dr.
Edward Palmason reasoned about the Board's position at this time, "the Brown decision
was a race decision - not necessarily an education decision and that it dealt with
segregation by law and it didn't affect us [... ] our segregation was caused by housing
patterns and we're not guilty.,,30 Or. Palmason demonstrated an initial distinction
between the role of the public schools in racial matters and the role of the schools in
educational matters, by separating the meanings of "race" and "education." Around the
28 Seattle School District Record No. 51, Fiscal Year 1954-1955, pg 155, Archives and Records
Management Center for the Seattle School District No. l(hereafter and for succeeding Records with
appropriate number: Record 51 (SSR».
29 Though private real estate companies overtly discriminated, the city establishment stated publicly that
Seattle did not discriminate.
30 Dr. Palmason quoted in Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
46
nation, this is how de facto segregated schools handled the Brown decision 3I Outside of
the South, the primary (but not only) institutional cause of school segregation was
housing segregation.
While the District denied responsibility for any "race" problem in Seattle,
inequality in schooling in the segregated neighborhoods and a palpable rise in racial
tensions prevailed. By the 1960s, it became increasingly more difficult to mask the fact
that schools in the Central and South areas were unequal. They had overcrowded
facilities, lower achievement rates among minorities, less parental involvement, racially
insensitive in teachers and administrators, inadequate or improper teaching techniques,
and inequality in minority hiring.32 Despite the evidence, the District continually denied
these problems were racial problems. If there were any problems associated with race
within the schools themselves, institutional actors often defined it as a "social" or
"cultural" problem for the community to address. For example, the City of Seattle
Planning Commission and Seattle School District commissioned a report in 1962, "A
Guide for School Planning." The broad objective was comprehensive planning to decide
where to place new schools by assessing the quality ofcurrent schools according to
certain criteria. 33 While the report addressed traffic features, playfields and major arterial
31 The courts did not use the term de facto until Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board ofEducation
(1971), but I utilize this term to describe Seattle's situation as schools separated by race by practice because
district actors began to use the term prior to Swann (see following section).
32 Taylor, The Forging ofa Black Community: Seattle's Central Districtfrom 1870 through the Civil
Rights Era.
33 "A Guide for School Planning: Part II," City of Seattle Planning Commission and Seattle School District
Number One, Seattle, 1962, Accession A1998-13, no box, no folder, Litigation Case Files, Archive and
Records Management Center for Seattle School District No.1 (hereafter LCF).
47
highways, nowhere did the report mention racial segregation in determining a rating of
permanent school facilities. 34
Racial tensions surrounding housing, employment, and education issues began to
grow in response to these unequal developments and the to advent of civil rights activity.
In the early 1960s, multiple city groups began to formulate ways to address the growing
racial tensions in Seattle and pursue agendas through the Seattle School Board. For
example, the Municipal League resolved that the school board should "adopt a policy of
promoting a more balanced racial representation in all the elementary and secondary
schools.,,35 Civic Unity formulated an early acknowledgment ofracial tension that
included the fIrst kernel ofpolicy that included the schools' role in racial integration.
The District continued to interpret their role in segregation by blaming housing
and naturalized racial problems as something out of the realm ofthe schools. It was
Board policy"... not to initiate or promote ordinances and legislation on matters not
primarily the responsibility of the public schools.,,36 The district rejected early calls for
busing students to different schools because there was "little sense in transporting pupils
to so-called advantaged schools only to return them daily to the same deprived
environment.,,37 This rejection silently defmed the "deprived environment" of black
34 The rating system included points for teaching stations and circulation, central facilities, service and
sanitary, size, location, and improvements. On a 200-point scale and out of 109 schools, 25 schools scored
over 180 points and 12 schools scored below 100 points (with a low of 62). Nowhere did it mention that
these 12 schools represented racially segregated neighborhoods. Ibid., p. 35.
35 Municipal League, "Minutes," 1961, quoted in Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle,
Washington 1954-1968".
36 Ibid., 103.
37 Ibid., 88.
48
students as not only an inappropriate realm for the public schools' attention, but as a
social location that could not be helped.
With a push from Civic Unity, the District tentatively pursued compensatory
education programs and a voluntary racial student exchange. Compensatory education
programs addressed academic deficiencies and allowed the district to directly help
disadvantaged children, based on the assumption that these programs sought "to improve
the quality of education for the disadvantaged children...often predicated on the
assumption that deficiencies in a child's background are the main deterrent to leaming.,,38
The Seattle Times applauded the District for "approaching the issues solely from the
standpoint of providing such [disadvantaged] schools with educational tools...not dealing
with social, economic, or cultural forces.,,39 Furthermore, in 1964, Civic Unity and the
Urban League separately pushed the District to agree to a voluntary exchange between
Ballard and Garfield High Schools, in any early effort "to promote sportsmanship and
mutual respect".40 This policy move did not challenge the established narrative because
it maintained the separation of the schools from social problems by crafting a completely
voluntary or suggested policy to appeal to those interested in easing racial tensions and
promoting a vision of Seattle as a progressive city.
38 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Racial Isolation in the Public Schools, CCR Clearinghouse
Publication No.7, (Washington D.C., March 1967).
39 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
4°Ibid.,70.
49
Assessing the City Establishment Narrative Constellation
Actors within the school district and city groups crafted a narrative that divided
racial segregation into two categories: "segregation" and "racial separation." By
narrating segregation as something the school district should confront when it resulted
from intentional discrimination, the District defmed the event in Seattle as "racial
separation," a situation outside the school district's control. The district specifically
defmed the role of the public schools as education, defined as academic skills gained
through classroom curriculum and measured by academic performance. This was
accomplished by defming school issues in terms of academic categories like curriculum
or sub-standard performance and then by packaging the fear ofracial tension as solvable
by policies addressed to enhance "democratic" behavior and "inter-group relations." For
example, the Municipal League "shelved" its interest in desegregation in 1961, investing
itself in things like reading and juvenile delinquency.41
The school and city actors defined a role of the schools as promoting inter-group
understanding, easing tensions, and endorsing mutual respect. Thus, the narrative
defined public institutions' role as one ofeasing the public waves ofracial tension,
without addressing segregated schooling. Therefore, a state institution interested in equal
education focused on tools to enhance the education ofthose students falling behind
(through compensatory education programs) because it is not schools' role to make up for
a child's "socially" deprived environment.
41 Ibid., 137.
50
In combination, these narrative connections rested on an unsettling contradiction
that would haunt the district in upcoming years. The District built the "race" problem
upon a fundamental and highly contested assumption that only intentional discrimination
was a public problem. Therefore, while housing discrimination was a public problem, the
results of housing segregation, as entirely separate from the public schools, then affected
the schools' realm and role only in terms of its by-products: lower academic quality and
racial tensions. In effect, this public narrative publicly bolstered and destabilized the
District's attempt to maintain a distinction between social (tension) or economic
(housing) problems and the public realm of the schools. The District directly
acknowledged and created a space for the district to address racial tensions and problems
associated with racial inequality when the effects ofthese "social" factors caused tension
or lower achievement within the public realm ofthe schools. Therefore, they could
publicize a concern with "racial tension," but defer the idea that segregation was a public
problem that had dimensions other than merely racial tension.
The Civil Rights Challenge: Desegregation is a Fact
The city establishment's public face ofprogress did little to please the civil rights
groups in town and pressure mounted quickly in the early 1960s.42 Seattle civil rights
42 Quintard Taylor argues that Seattle "proved to be the crucible for "'black and red' coalition politics,"
with the city's strong traditions oflabor radicalism and the more recently organized civil rights groups
intersected. These groups decided that organization and direct action was necessary to fight discrimination
and segregation in Seattle. As time went on, Quintard Taylor argues, black Seattle was "unquestionably
affected by the massive southern civil disobedience campaigns in the early 1960s." By 1963, the
established civil rights organizations began to seek more formal and regular contact with the District to
confront the problems of de facto segregation. Civil rights leaders in Seattle formed the Central Area Civil
Rights Committee (CACRC).
51
activist Reverend John Adams recalled, "'by 1963 the Civil Rights Movement had fmally
leaped the Cascade Mountains. ",43 Civil rights groups, unified under the Central Area
Civil Rights Committee (CACRC), began to challenge the multi-layered system of
segregated education, employment, and housing. "Normal" school issues like what to do
with old buildings, for example, turned into debates about racial segregation and became
spaces through which political identifications and meanings were built. As the civil
rights interests in town heightened their local activism, they specifically articulated their
definition ofthe segregation problem in response to the city establishment's lack of
action and narrative separation ofschools from economic or social discrimination.
The formation of the CACRC resulted from the first organized protests in
Seattle.44 Reverend Mance Jackson ofMt. Zion Baptist Church initially convened the
CACRC in 1962 to address job discrimination. The Oregonian reported that the CACRC
was unique on the West coast for creating such a unified front.45 John Adams became the
leader ofCACRC after Reverend Jackson was transferred to Atlanta shortly after it
convened. Adams was considered "the most persistent and forceful of the civil rights
leaders who came before the school board in the early sixties.,,46 Under Adams, the
CACRC became a "'consolidated front and got the ball rolling'" on desegregation by
43 John Adams, quoted in Quintard Taylor, "The Civil Rights Movement in Seattle, 1960-1970," All-
Student Assembly for the Martin Luther King Holiday Observance, Lakeside School, Seattle, Washington,
January, 2003.
44 Larry S. Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement"
(Washington State University, 1975).
45 Ibid., 96
46 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
52
linking Seattle civil rights groupS.47 Alongside CACRC, the local chapter ofthe
Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) also became a prominent organizing force, led by
two individuals, Walter Hundley and Jean Adams. Hundley would later join Adams as
leader in the CACRC.48 While guided by direction from the national chapter, CORE
provided a prominent organizing force for civil rights demands and basically initiated the
thrust of CORE's national campaign to integrate retail establishments in Seattle.49
Together, these groups utilized demonstrations, picketing, pamphleteering, boycotts,
agitation, and negotiations.
These groups along with the Urban League defmed segregation as a fact in Seattle
with every social institution responsible for solving segregation. The Urban League
continued to put greater pressure on the District to fIrst admit that de facto segregation
existed in the schools. The Urban League's Education Committee Chairman Leonard
Schroeter commented upon the necessity of admission, acknowledging that the District
had taken steps in the area of"culturally deprived students,"
However, neither the School Board nor the Administration, as such, have yet
given recognition to the fact ofgrowing de facto segregation, per se, in the public
schools in our city. Until this is done, any program designed to meet the problem
of de facto segregation will be inadequate, simply because the problem must be
posed or isolated before the problem-solving can be applied and become
effective.5o
47 John Adams quoted in Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social
Movement".
48 Ibid., 77.
49 Ibid., 80-81.
50 Schroeter quoted in Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
53
For Schroeter, symptoms of segregated schooling, such as sub-standard performance,
could not be solved without addressing the foundational problem as de facto segregation.
Compensatory education or vocational training to solve the dropout problem would prove
inadequate until the fundamental problem of segregation was solved. 51
Despite the initial focus on job discrimination and redlining, representatives from
the CACRC maintained a close watch on school district activities and attended every
school board meeting in 1963.52 The local chapters of CORE and the NAACP along with
clergymen of Seattle organized a demonstration march on June 15, 1963 specifically
targeting school and housing segregation. The same groups organized an interracial rally
the following week at the Municipal Building to show a unified stance against both
housing and school segregation. Prior to significant school segregation debates, the battle
over open housing fomented in Seattle in the early 1960s. The district's reliance on
housing patterns as the phenomenon to blame for racial separation made the district's
response to the open housing debate closely watched.
The School Board faced a problematic hitch when they decided not to publicly
endorse an open housing ordinance. In early June 1963, the Urban League pressed the
district for a public statement against discrimination in housing because and wanted the
district to submit a formal resolution and petition to the Mayor and City Council to
implement an ordinance prohibiting discrimination in housing, given their previous
51 This view did not represent all civil rights actors in these early debates, as various parent groups in the
Central Area initially focused on incorporating more vocational training to rectify the educational
deficiencies of black students. However, this difference reconciled initially under a unique unification of
civil rights groups in Seattle.
52 Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement".
54
acknowledgments that segregation was a housing, not a school, problem. The board
responded that they believed "that it should not inject itself at this point into a matter
which is the proper concern of other governmental bodies" and did not immediately make
bl' I' 53a pu IC reso utIon.
In response to this citywide pressure, the school board called a meeting on June
18, 1963 "'to discuss equal educational opportunity'" in front of a crowd of one hundred
and ninety individuals. 54 The civil rights actors used the space to publicly articulate the
meaning of racial segregation as harmful to all students in the school, black and white.
The Seattle NAACP presented a formal statement extending the logic of segregated
schooling beyond the black community, '''Segregated public schools deliberate, de facto,
or a combination of both are psychologically and educationally harmful to Negro and
white children... While school officials are not responsible for segregated housing, they
are responsible for segregated public schools whatever the cause may be. ",55 The Urban
League furthered the narrative by arguing the district must '''remedy this situation which
has detrimental effects on both white and non-white students. ",56 This was a significant
narrative move, linking racial segregation to all, not just black, children's well being.57
53 Ibid. For discussion on the fair housing movement see Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical
Analysis of a Social Movement", Taylor, The Forging ofa Black Community: Seattle's Central District
from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era.
54 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 108.
55 NAACP quoted in Ibid., 109.
56 Ibid., 109.
57 The NAACP argued that it was the schools' responsibility to provide compensatory education to meet the
deficiencies of minority students, and suggested the District redraw "gerrymandered" school zones to
integrate all schools.
------------- _. __ . --
55
Assessing the Civil Rights Narrative Constellation
These sentiments show the construction of a narrative of irrelevance between
intention and segregation by arguing that the public schools must take affIrmative action
to end segregated schooling no matter their prior intentions. The civil rights groups,
namely the institutionalized bodies like the NAACP and Urban League, often organized
these early discursive sentiments around principles constructed as fundamental links. For
example, 'segregation will have detrimental effects on students,' framed segregation as
directly associated with either educational or psychological harm to segregated students.
Therefore, desegregation took priority over other courses of action, such as compensatory
education or vocational training. Furthermore, by linking segregation to both white and
non-white students, this narrative further created a societal necessity for integration,
rather than only compensatory education or vocational programs, which target only
minority students. Programs addressed at the plight of minority students do not take into
account the detrimental effect of segregation for society as a whole.
The Schools Voluntarily "face the race ;ssue"S8
In response to pressure from the CACRC, the Board admitted the schools were
segregated, without any official action. This public response did little to alter their
narrative constellation because their recognition of de facto segregation was not
connected to a role for the schools in its amelioration. This led to increased resistance by
civil rights groups, including direct actions tactics that increased their visibility
58 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 135.
56
throughout Seattle. In response, the District formed an advisory committee that led the
formation of a voluntary racial transfer policy.
After much debate at the June 18, 1963 meeting, which included a decision
whether or not to back an open housing ordinance, the Board officially recognized "gross
racial imbalance" in certain Central Area schools, and that "discrimination in housing is a
major cause of these situations of racial imbalance."s9 The Board also officially
recognized that de facto segregation did in fact exist in their schools. Board Member
Frances Owen qualified the admission, '''we must be careful to differentiate between
legislative segregation and de facto segregation. De facto segregation has been a matter
over which we have had no control. ",60 The Seattle Times reported that this was the first
official recognition of de facto segregation in the schools and the fIrst time a
governmental body had produced a public airing of grievances. These statements came
with the continued resistance by the Board to broach specific plans or initiate solutions to
these problems.
The CACRC began threatening "direct action" that included school "study-ins,"
and School Board "sit-ins." In response to these heightened demonstrations, the decided
to establish the Citizens' Advisory Committee for Equal Educational Opportunity (CAC)
in July that would report directly to the Board ''to work with it on the problems of equal
educational opportunities, with particular reference to the Central Area, and to review the
59 Ibid., 11 O.
60 Ibid., 110.
57
many diverse recommendations calling for specific actions.,,61 The Board gave the CAC
free rein to take initiative in framing potential programs of action.62 The CAC delivered
their first report to a crowd of 300 people during a two-hour meeting on July 25, 1963.
The CAC did not hide their intentions, even in front of a crowd reported to be majority
white. They had found ten schools segregated with enrollments of at least forty percent
black students, and presented a resolution asking the Board to '''adopt a policy of ending
segregation immediately by whatever workable solutions are available. ",63 After
recommending thirteen general policy changes, including student transfer, neighborhood
realignment, boundary changes, pre-vocational education, and a full-time interracial
coordinator, the CAC officially presented the idea ofvoluntary transfers in a special order
of business meeting in August 1963.64
The School Board approved the Voluntary Racial Transfer (VRT) plan at a
meeting held on August 28, 1963. The form of their approval reinforced their narrative
links between the role of the schools and racial equality. For example, the Board
implemented the VRT in order to lessen "racial imbalance" and provide "the opportunity
61 CAC quoted in Ibid., 117. This committee represented a marked change in normal school district politics
with the institutional incorporation of a citizen body through which policy could be developed. This set a
trend for citizen advisory committees to have direct involvement with the school district that would
continue throughout desegregation battles for the next two decades.
62 Ibid., 120-122. The CAC sub-committees studied methods of changing the enrollment patterns at
neighborhood schools to achieve integration, the feasibility of transporting students out of their
neigh\>orhood schools, and re-drawing attendance boundaries to prevent segregation.
63 CAC quoted in Ibid., 123.
64 Ibid., 124.
58
for students to have the benefit ofknowing members of other races.,,65 The VRT was
basically an open-enrollment plan that allowed junior high and high school students to
transfer to other schools for any of three stated reasons and allowed elementary students
in certain areas to transfer to other designated areas for stated reasons as well.66
Most city groups approved of the VRT, including the Municipal League, the
Urban League, and the CACRC. There was no immediate organized opposition among
citizens or parents, though the public received the VRT with varying degrees of
enthusiasm. Most likely a reason for approval among such a diverse array of groups and
people was the fact the VRT allowed the district to "adhere to the neighborhood school
concept" and put no demands on any parents to send their children to another schooL67
In the end, the Board did not necessarily act "as a pace-setter for reform," by maintaining
a separation from segregation's cause. District policy changes were constructed to aid
the social benefits of desegregation, without assigning a defmitive role ofthe schools as
ameliorating segregation. This embedded the assumption that without discriminatory
intent, racial "problems" were merely social, cultural, or economic problems. Therefore,
despite admittance ofde facto segregation, the District did not take on the role to solve
anything but its symptoms.
65 Ibid., 132.
66 Through this policy, the voluntary transfers were permitted from designated "leaving schools" based on
space available at "receiving schools." At the elementary level, there were eight "leaving schools," and
seventeen "receiving schools" with space available. At the secondary level, students could transfer for
three reasons: "to enroll in the pre-vocational courses previously announced;" "to take advantage of
specialized programs not available in his home school;''''if the transfer will reduce the racial imbalance in
the school he leaves and in the school to which he transfers to, if the school which he wishes to go has
room for additional students." Ibid, Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social
Movement".
67 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 132.
59
In a special order of business, Board member Owen took time to reaffIrm the
district's faith in neighborhood schools, even with their desire to promote racial
understanding: '''The School Board wishes to emphasize that no parents-Negro or
white-will be required by this policy change to send their children to any schools
outside their regular attendance area. ",68 The Seattle Times also emphasized its support
of"the neighborhood school concept as fundamental to American education.,,69 In the
spring of 1964, the Times also "hailed" the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to review a
lower court ruling on racial imbalance, caused by '''factors outside the province of
education'" as a '''victory for the usual concept ofthe neighborhood school. ",70
In response, groups in the Central Area actively promoted the VRT in the short
time period before school was to start on September 4, 1963 through a variety of
neighborhood meetings to explain and publicize the transfer program. The NAACP
launched a transportation fund raising drive along with a campaign to raise awareness.7l
Civil rights groups were pleased that the district admitted to segregation, but were
unsatisfied with the lack of "teeth" involved in the VRT. For one, the policy enacted a
unique burden on black students. The Northwest Area President of the NAACP in 1964,
Jack Tanner, called the transfer policy "'terrible'" and said, "'it has shifted the burden
68 Record 60, p. 59 (SSR) (Underline in original).
69 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
70 Seattle Times, February 4, 1964 p. 8 quoted in Ibid., 164.
71 Despite the late-summer school board decision, 238 of the city's 7,000 black students participated, along
with seven white students who transferred to Garfield High because of its academic reputation.
(Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis ofa Social Movement".; Taylor, The Forging
ofa Black Community: Seattle's Central Districtfrom 1870 through the Civil Rights Era.)
60
from the School Board to the parents ofNegro children, who are not equipped to cope
with the problem.",72 Most were often too poor to pay for the discounted bus tokens,
plus "'so many of the open schools are so far from the Negro residences that attending
them is next to impossible.",73 John Adams articulated this burden, "'if the school
district intends to provide actual, rather than token educational equality for all students, I
believe it is obligated to pay for transporting some students away from racially
imbalanced schools.",74
Neighborhood Rights Challenge
As a side note, but one that helps explain the broader significance of the narrative
of neighborhood schools, the initiation ofthe VRT happened at the same time as the
approval Seattle's first open housing ordinance. This new law made discrimination in
public or private housing a misdemeanor punishable by a fine. Immediately after, open
housing opponents initiated a successful petition campaign to place the measure on the
ballot for the March 10, 1964 citywide election, upon which they rejected the ordinance
112,000 to 53,000.75 Much like opposition to changes in school attendance policy that
did not adhere to neighborhood zones, white homeowners framed the open-housing
72 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
73 Adams, quoted in Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement,"
97.
74 Ibid.
75 Quintard Taylor, "The Civil Rights Movement in Seattle, 1960-1970," All-Student Assembly for the
Martin Luther King Holiday Observance, Lakeside School, Seattle, Wa, 7 January 2003.
61
ordinance as threatening to their individual rights. In the weekly Argus, reporter Philip
Bailey editorialized,
'In America for the fIrst time in history... almost every man can own his own
home ... Suddenly these homeowners are asked to surrender part ofthis gain that
has been centuries in the making for something called open housing ...For this
surrender the voter gains nothing but the feeling that he may be helping oppressed
negroes. The homeowner today is not willing to weaken his right to privacy and
freedom ofchoice FOR NEGROES. ,76
In this narrative, home owning was naturalized as an individual right in opposition to
rights ofothers, namely black citizens, to choose their own home.
The relationship the majority of Seattle's white citizens had to their property was
equivalent to the relationship to the neighborhood schools. Both were symbols ofrights
guaranteed to them because they believed they, individually, did not actively
discriminate. Suleiman Osman argues that this non-ideologically based discourse
developed in response to New Deal liberalism; "the neighborhood reflected a new spirit
of localism that was neither exclusively Left nor Right.,,77 This was not a necessary but a
generated connection, forged within debates over housing and school segregation.
Especially in Seattle, where the notion of intentional discrimination had not yet been
accepted, white oppositional narrative held tightly to rights associated with home owning
while also orienting neighborhood as a "safe enclave" or symbol ofcommunity values.
The narrative that arose within white oppositional discourse combined the notion
of "traditional neighborhoods" with attachments to rights in opposition to the loss of
76 Bailey, quoted in Quintard Taylor, "The Civil Rights Movement in Seattle, 1960-1970," All-Student
Assembly for the Martin Luther King Holiday Observance, Lakeside School, Seattle, Wa., 7 January 2003.
77 Suleiman Osman, "The Decade of the Neighborhood," in Rightward Bound: Making America
Conservative in the 1970s, ed. Bruce 1. Schulman and Julien E. Zelizer (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2008).
62
rights symbolized by open housing or desegregation. In this way, the notion of
"neighborhood school" was implicitly racialized because its increased use in oppositional
narrative reflected an awareness and attachment to privilege embedded within the
segregated institutions ofhousing and schooling. Again, these attachments did not arise
from natural predispositions, but were created and used to address a context where these
people understood their political identifications founded upon their reactionary positions
as homeowners or parents. Simply being a homeowner did not engage the predisposition.
For example, many people in Seattle who owned homes in predominantly black
neighborhoods also discursively associated their desires for "neighborhoods," yet in
terms ofcommunity activism, safe havens, and local power. For many in the black
power movement, neighborhoods meant local control and community, a space for black
citizens to govern their own communities in response to perceptions ofoutside
governance that did not reflect their goals. Likewise, the white parents who volunteered
their children for racial transfers also did not understand their identities as "rights-filled
homeowners." For white opposition to open housing and desegregation, "neighborhoods"
were crafted as oppositional symbols of individual rights that "naturally" rebutted
challenges to historical privilege.
Assessing the Interacting Narrative Constellations
The interaction between the developing narrative constellations shows the
solidification ofdistinct interpretations of the role of the schools and the meaning of
racial inequality. The alterations in policy did not activate alternative connections the
63
District made between their role and racial inequality. The District extended little effort
to address the civil rights claims that desegregation was necessary for all society (white
and black), regardless of the District's intentionality. For example, the District had only
sent transfer policy announcement to schools with "substantial Negro enrollment and
[not] to Caucasian schools,,78 and did not mandate transfers for anyone. In the end,
Board member Palmason noted the Board felt the new policy "kind oflet us off the hook
a little bit. This was a positive thing that people could accept. .. [people] felt good inside--
-we were doing something.,,79 In an attempt to appeal to civil rights interests, the VRT
program institutionalized an offering, per se, to aid the social problem of racial
imbalance, while maintaining institutional distance from strict responsibility through its
voluntary nature.
The District solidified its connection between de facto segregation and "racial
separation," thus securing the admission without taking responsibility for the situation.
The endorsement of the open housing ordinance also further secured the admission ofde
facto racial imbalance as something that further separated the school from other realms
such as economics (housing) in this case. The voluntary transfer policy also put
emphasis on the value, not the necessity, of integration. Otherwise, the district might pay
for transportation or create mandatory transfers. The school district's role was not one of
social reform but ofaddressing educational concerns in the community, potentially
78 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 144.
79 Dr. Pa1mason quoted in Ibid., 144.
64
opening access to better educational programs than one would have in their neighborhood
school without securing means to get there.
Lastly, by implicitly afftrming neighborhood schools the District also defined
neighborhoods as private, natural sites of pre-defmed rights wholly separate from
educational questions. That is, the District maintained its separation from the private,
"social" realm of both segregated black and white neighborhoods. According to this
narrative, the situation of the home or segregated neighborhood from which a student
may come did not require the public schools attention, except to provide appropriate
education for all students. However, this act performed different functions for minority
and white segregated neighborhoods. The district did not take responsibility for social,
cultural, or economic disadvantages in minority segregated neighborhoods, but implicitly
validated the social, cultural, and economic advantages situated in white neighborhoods
as "private" issues that did not have a connection to schooling. However, the act of
admitting to de facto segregation opened space for continued civil rights demands to
connect this kind of segregation to racial inequality that demanded ameliorating efforts.
Narrative Expansion and Reaction
In the ambiguous space created by the VRT policy, civil rights groups expanded
their efforts to exacerbate the issues of school segregation. This section explores the
radical school-restructuring plan proposed by the Seattle Urban League ("The Triad
Plan," 1965) and subsequent development ofreactionary narrative constellations
expressed within both grassroots black and white community. The Urban League
65
fundamentally challenged school board policies such as compensatory education and
voluntary transfers with the Triad Plan with an entirely new vision for the schools
centered on the necessity of racial integration. The Triad Plan was met with fierce
grassroots white opposition, District rejection, and a subsequent increase in civil rights
activity, which included a rise in black power activity. The combination of these
interactions revealed irresolvable tensions within the District's narrative constellation that
allowed for re-connections between previously linked ideas about the schools role and
racial integration. The District attempted to secure its voluntary policy by sustaining their
narrative links, but the subsequent interactions signaled the collapse of the legitimacy of
their specific narrative constellation to define the role ofthe schools in racial segregation.
Challenging the Establishment Narrative: The Triad Plan
In contrast with the relatively quiet public response to the VRT, the Urban League
lit a political fire with their proposal in 1965, titled "The Triad Plan," or "A Proposal for
Re-Organization of the Elementary Division ofthe Seattle Public Schools." Pieroth
argues that this proposal "succeeded in jarring the city from complacency and in evoking
greater public opposition and outcry than any other issue with which the District had yet
be involved."so The Triad Plan brought the issues of compensatory education, voluntary
integration, and the neighborhood school into clear focus and demanded the district's
immediate role in social change. The policy idea challenged the entire structure of
80 Ibid., 193.
66
schooling that they saw as constitutive ofa segregated system.81 The new battle over the
proposal activated a furor over the destruction of the "neighborhood school."
The Triad Plan developed a direct critique and remediation of the neighborhood
school concept, arguing, "we must take a long, hard look at our traditional, neighborhood
concept ofelementary education and be prepared to make any fundamental structural
changes found necessary.,,82 Maybe the most fundamental aspect of the Triad Plan was a
new way to think about the geography of schooling, specifically the neighborhood basis
of student assignment. In order to challenge the naturalization ofneighborhood, the
Triad Plan referred to the Central Area neighborhood in a way to re-envision the idea of
"neighborhood" as an "enclave of poverty," evoking the idea that a neighborhood is not a
naturally valuable entity.83 The Triad Plan broadened the idea ofwhat a neighborhood
school should look like by re-organizing schools to ensure racial integration.84
81 The plan gained the support of the black community as well as the Asian community (Ann LeGrelius
Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation ofSeattle's Schools (Seattle: Madrona Publishers,
1981).
82 The Seattle Urban League, "A Proposal for Re-Organization of the Elementary Division of the Seattle
Public Schools: To Promote: Quality, Economy, Equality" Autumn, 1964, pp. 3-5, Accession A2005-15,
Box 10, Folder "Desegregation- Urban League," Administrative Working Files, Archive and Records
Management Center for Seattle School District No.1 (hereafter cited as AWF.)
83 Ibid., 6.
84 Each triad organized schools into a "community elementary unit," comprised of three schools. Each
triad included a presently economically disadvantaged school, one in the middle, and one very advantaged.
The three schools would house different grade levels: one for first and second graders, one for third and
fourth graders, and one for fifth and sixth graders. The entire group would travel together into a larger
educational park, which assured a level of integration traditional neighborhood enclaves could not.
(Ibid" 37.)
67
The "Triad Plan" linked urban social problems to education problems in a
"'simultaneous attack on cultural deprivation and social segregation... ",85 In this
narrative, social change was primarily and essentially linked to the role of the schools.
The president of the Urban League James Kimbrough argued, "obviously, social change
is the over-riding purpose ofeducation ... social change always involves some discomfort,
some pain, some controversy.,,86 In contrast to the separation between public and private
issues maintained by the District, the Triad Plan argued, "schools were originally
organized and now exist for the very purpose ofproviding training which is not or cannot
be supplied by the home and other institutions of society.,,87
The Triad Plan embodied a collapse of the constructed division between
academics, social conditions, and economics. Its underlying philosophy expressed social,
economic, and academic goals as one: the purpose ofeducation is " (1) the enrichment of
the ongoing life of the student, (2) preparation for adult work and citizenship roles, and
(3) promotion ofdemocracy through equalization of opportunity.,,88 Therefore, the entire
school system must playa role in solving social and economic disadvantages because
segregation affects all parts ofsociety. Equal opportunity results from eradication of
racism and a commitment to economic opportunity.89 According to the Triad Plan,
85 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 194.
86 Ibid., 203 (emphasis added).
87 The Seattle Urban League, "A Proposal for Re-Organization of the Elementary Division of the Seattle
Public Schools: To Promote: Quality, Economy, Equality" Autumn, 1964, pp. 3-5, A2005-l5, Box 10,
Folder "Desegregation- Urban League," (AWF).
88 Ibid., p.2.
89 Ibid.
68
programs that did not fall in line with these principles could not fundamentally alter the
situation of unequal schooling. For example, the document berated compensatory
education programs for ignoring essential social factors related to poor academic
performance and not understanding "the factors of deprivation, discrimination, and
discouragement combine to handicap any rule-of-thumb application of education
procedures.,,9o "All too often," the Triad Plan continues, "proposals for meeting the very
special needs of disadvantaged pupils are prematurely disqualified because of. .. artificial
separation ofthe problem of social segregation and under-achievement ... ,,91
Furthermore, the Urban League did not separate economic as private matters
either. The designers founded the multi-layered attack on segregation on a
socioeconomic approach that incorporated a strategy of student movement that moved
entire neighborhoods of students together. The Triad Plan pushed for a concrete vision of
opportunity founded upon economic opportunity, again fundamentally linking the
economic realm as public. The structure sought to rectify the economic disadvantages
assured and sustained through segregated education. Deputy director of the Urban
League, Jerome Page, explained, "Ifyou get black people talking about desegregation, it
is basically a socioeconomic issue; for whites it is a racial issue. The Triad Plan was built
on socioeconomic desegregation.,,92 Socioeconomic integration expanded the frontiers of
desegregation beyond ameliorating illegal segregation and towards creating equal
opportunity structures
90 Ibid., 2.
91 Ibid., 2.
92 Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation a/Seattle's School, 16.
69
Grassroots Opposition
The Triad Plan garnered vociferous opposition in comparison with the relatively
non-threatening VRT plans. The possibility for the Triad Plan to be adopted was
obviously unlikely, given the reticence ofthe city to accept even the notion that their
schools were segregated. Despite this, Pieroth argues the Triad Plan concept led to a
"furor, which erupted over the contemplation of creating triads from neighborhood
schools.,,93 The Triad Plan's new arrangement of "neighborhood" threatened many
parents in Seattle. Though the Triad Plan received little press and was never seriously
considered by the District, the District received more phone calls after the presentation of
this plan than at any other time and 3,497 letters ofopposition, which ranged in sentiment
from "rational, philosophical, and legalistic to hateful, vitriolic, and racist,,,94
The frrst rash of public response tried to re-assert the segmentation of private and
public matters in response to the narrative collapse between "social" and "public" hoped
for within the Triad Plan. The combination ofexplicit elitism and specific individual
rights narratives attempted to naturalize the distinction between the public and social
realms for the benefit ofthose to which the distinction privileged. The narrative re-
emphasized three contingently related ideas. First, the schools' primary role is to provide
academic excellence. For example, with "The Triad Plan" one parent argued,
"'individual excellence will be vilified. ",95 Some argued with a level of classist elitism,
93 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 195.
94 Doris Pieroth, "With All Deliberate Caution: School Integration in Seattle, 1954-1968," Pacific
Northwest Quarterly 73, no. 2 (1982), 54.
95 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 207.
70
arguing there was '''little merit in throwing together children from different races and
backgrounds ... every community and every nation still needs an aristocracy of brains,
breeding. ",96 Second, home and school choice is a parent's right. According to one
concerned citizen, the Triad Plan represented a '''direct violation of the traditional right of
a parent to choose the school his child will attend.",97 When not explicitly elitist, the
combination of these two elements allowed the opposition to hide its naturalization of
difference by assuming equal opportunity.
But this combination needed a third association in order to jump from individual
rights to the assumption of neighborhood schools: neighborhoods are the natural
foundations for communities and schools. This assumption disassociated differences in
race and economic background from geography and therefore neighborhoods. For
example, the PTA expressed concern with the Triad Plan in terms of how it was not
educationally relevant, not because they cared if their kids went to school with kids of
'''different races or economic backgrounds, but because transferring children out of
different neighborhoods would not improve education. ",98 This speaker disavowed both
racism and elitism by separating class and race from the idea of neighborhood, so as to
naturalize the neighborhood without pointing to its inherent privileges or resulting
inequalities. Home owning was therefore framed as completely separate from race and
even class when associated with school attendance because of its traditional association
with community schools. The privilege of the home area was translated as a community
96 Ibid., 206.
97 Ibid., 207.
98 Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis ofa Social Movement," 161.
71
value because little children should be going to their community's neighborhood schools.
The narrative of economic individualism inherent in home-owning rights needed the
school context to associate these rights with the naturalized community benefits of
sending kids to neighborhood schools.
{{Compulsory, Costly, and Clumsy"
The Board responded to the Triad Plan and public response by emphasizing the
"irrationality" of taking on this role, revealing an unsteady link in their narrative
connection, as they argued against the plan for reasons ofcomplexity and also fear of
citizen rejection. In May 1965, Board President Swain read a unanimous decision to the
press that the Triad Plan was unacceptable (followed by applause) with an argument
based on the role of the schools as not desegregation; '''desegregation as an end in itself
is not an objective ofthe schools. ",99 Other board members stated they rejected the
proposal because it was too complex, too hard for the public to understand, and was of
"unproven educational value that could weaken a good public school program." 100 The
Times reported that the district should reject the plan because it was '''compulsory,
clumsy, and costly. ",101 The Board also feared the alienation of white voters. Board
Member Palmason said, "It just seemed too far-reaching for us at that time...we always
99 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
100 Ibid., 198.
101 Seattle Times, April 18, 1965, quoted in Ibid., 206.
72
had this incubus ofannual levy hanging around our necks.,,102 The media implicitly
framed the Triad Plan as "irrational" in comparison to "'rational steps to provide equality
in job opportunities, housing, education-the abolition of barriers that discriminate
against all minorities. ",103
The District remained insistent their role was "educational" and not as agents of
social reform, while at the same time assuring the community that their rejection did not
"'close the door' to continued study of other proposals aimed at improving racial
imbalance. ",104 Board member Campbell noted, "'the elimination of segregated schools
is a goal, as a part of the community's genuine acceptance of integration in its major
aspects, not as a unilateral compulsory regulation ofthe School Board. ",105
The CACRC was quick to respond to the District's noncommittal stance. They
blasted the district for not understanding the long-term consequences for the segregated
areas, or the "'penned up portion of the city.",106 The CACRC, like the Urban League,
saw the lynchpin holding the District's narrative together as the naturalization of the
neighborhood schools, or "'the common law marriage ofthe Seattle Public Schools to the
neighborhood school concept.",IO? Representatives of CORE and the NAACP released a
102 Dr. Palmason, quoted in Pieroth, "With All Deliberate Caution: School Integration in Seattle, 1954-
1968," 55.
103 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".Quoted in Pieroth, 216.
104 Philip Swain quoted in Ibid.,218.
105 Campbell quoted in Ibid., 202.
106 Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement," 163.
107 CACRC quoted in Ibid., 166.
73
statement to indicate their expectations that the Board accomplish integration. They
wrote, "'On Wednesday [May, 1965], the Seattle School Board in coalition with
community resisters ofprogress, continued to perpetuate the illusion that all is well in
Seattle... adherence to the neighborhood concept is a fayade to maintain segregated
schools.",108 The CACRC and civil rights leadership continued to promote racial
transfers, but also expanded their demands to require the mandatory bussing and
increased the number ofthreats ofdirect action against the district. lo9
The CACRC called for a school boycott in the spring of 1966 to fight the refusal
ofthe Board to admit they perpetuated segregation and develop sufficient long-range
plans for desegregation. llo Seattle leaders were no doubt influenced by the success of the
Chicago school boycott, signaling the beginning ofthe Chicago Freedom Movement, just
a year before when civil rights leaders led 100,000 African-American students to
participate in a school boycott and violate an injunction filed by the Chicago Board of
Education to prevent the boycott. I I I Alongside the direct action tactics in Seattle, the
NAACP also filed suit against the district and sought a federal court order that required
the district to submit a desegregation plan among other things, such as ending alleged
108 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 214.
109 Ibid, Taylor, The Forging ofa Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil
Rights Era.
110 Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement".
III The National Archives- Archives.gov. "Education Resources on School Desegregation," available from
http://www.archives.gov/midatlantic/education/desegregation/chicago.html; accessed July 13, 2009.
74
practices such as gerrymandering school boundaries. I 12 The boycott gathered support
from local churches, clergy, and the Church Council of Greater Seattle and took place on
March 31 and April 1, 1966. Nearly 4,000 students, about 55 percent of the overall black
enrollment of the district, participated. These students reported to various "Freedom
Schools" set up in the Central District, and attended classes on black history, the meaning
of the school boycott, music, crafts, and Native American culture. I 13 The boycott proved
a strong message of political will and solidarity of the Central Area.
Subsequently, Seattle gained attention from the growing black power movement
with a powerful visit from Stokely Carmichael in 1967, the establishment of the Black
Panther Party in 1968, and a shift towards black power within the local chapter of
CORE. II4 With the increase in black power, the unifying power of the CACRC began to
erode in the Central Area. II5 The growing black power movement began to challenge the
CACRC's narrative connection between racial equality with integration. As a reflection
of the national black power movement, activists in Seattle gained much prominence
during 1967. Between November 1967 and December 1972, the Afro America Journal
was published in Seattle and was considered the "most militant daily newspaper to serve
112 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968", Richardson, "Civil Rights
in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement". .
113 Taylor, The Forging ofa Black Community: Seattle's Central District from J870 through the Civil
Rights Era, 213.
114 Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement".
115 Ibid., 239.
---------- -_ ...
75
the black community."I16 While most perspectives published were local voices, national
contributions included CORE.
Seattle black power groups forged their own segregation attack through a
narrative of separatism. By attaching black power principles to educational issues, actors
such as Stokely Carmichael challenged the very notion of desegregation as the primary
path to educational equity. At his visit to Garfield High School in April 1967,
Carmichael advocated black control ofblack schools. II? He attacked the integrationists
represented in the CACRC for destroying the black community, "What must be abolished
is not the black community but the dependent, colonial status forced upon it. .. White
people assume they can give freedom, but nobody gives freedom."II& Another local
activist, Lee McIntosh, speaking at a black power forum at Mt. Zion Baptist church in
May, 1967, directly challenged the philosophy of integrated education, "'the issue of the
school boycott last year was integration, moving Negro children out of the black schools
of the central area. It's a new ball game now.",119 In the Afro American Journal, Cliff
Hooper (an "outspoken member of the [Seattle] black community,,12o), challenged
integration in favor of self-determination, "'the black community MUST make decisions
116 Doug Blair, "Black Power and Education in the Afro American Journal, 1968-1969," Seattle Civil
Rights and Labor History Project, available from http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/news_blair.htm;
accessed July 13, 2009.
117 Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement," 261.
118 Stokely Cannichael quoted in Quintard Taylor, "The Civil Rights Movement in Seattle, 1960-1970,"
All-Student Assembly for the Martin Luther King Holiday Observance, Lakeside School, Seattle,
Washington, January, 2003, 12.
119 McInotsh quoted in Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement".
120 Doug Blair, "Black Power and Education in the Afro American Journal, 1968-1969," 3.
76
in the education of its 11,000 sons and daughters at every level.",121 Armed with a
distrust of the school system that had been ignoring civil rights demands for over a
decade, black power groups solidified support in the Central Area of those desiring
control of their own schools rather than an integration program they felt burdened black
students significantly more than white students.
The Emergence ofan Integration Emphasis
In this series of interactions between the civil rights groups and the District, the
District stuck to the narrative constellation of ideas it had used to implement the VRT. In
response to the District's lack of movement, the civil rights groups arranged a narrative
constellation that further implicated the District's role in segregation. The Urban League
defined segregation as a societal problem that caused harm for minority and white
students. Therefore, any school plan to address the effects ofsegregation needed to be
reoriented to first address the fact of segregation that included unequal resources and
opportunities, as well as social and psychological harm for all students. The plan's total
restructuring ofthe geography and philosophy was based on the assumption that the
entire structure of schooling was constitutive ofa segregated system.
In comparison, black power narratives displayed similar narrative associations
drawn between segregation to unequal resources and psychological harm for black and
white students. They accepted the primary assumption that segregated schooling was a
fundamental societal problem. However, they detached segregation's solution as
121 Cooper quoted in Ibid., 3.
77
integration and framed segregation as a structural problem because of the misallocation
of power over their schools. With control over schools, these groups hoped to destroy the
vestiges ofwhite discrimination that were revealed in unequal resources, white-oriented
curricula, and racist teachers.
The CACRC responded to the black power narrative in the spring of 1967 after
the Carmichael visit with a distinct emphasis on "multi-racial" education and integration
in response to black power self-determination. For example, the CACRC promised to
continue to address problems of segregation with an integrationist approach, highlighting
the symbol of "multi-racial" as a symbol of the universalism central to their narrative
constellation. They threatened another school boycott on May 18, 1967 and directly
addressed the concerns from the black power movement by asking the district to address
the treatment ofstudents who actually partake in transfers and also '''to retrain teachers
for a multi-racial and multi-cultural society.",122 The CACRC made it clear that, '''we
are reaffIrming our commitment to quality, integrated education because it is essential to
the multiracial world in which we live.'" 123 In these statements, the CACRC deployed
the universal language of "multiracial" and "integration" more often to emphasize their
priorities within their narrative. In contrast, nationally CORE voted to drop the phrase
"multi-racial" from its constitutional goals for membership when black power activists
assumed control in 1967. Therefore, a new groundwork ofconflict set up a clash
122 Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement".
123 Ibid.
78
between integrationists and black power ideas about what to do about segregated and
unequal schooling.
A Discursive Coalition: The City Establishment and the CACRC
In 1967, the Board shifted its public discourse and began responding more
concretely to CACRC demands in light of the growing concerns ofeffective direct action
tactics in Seattle, such as the threat ofanother school boycott, which had embarrassed the
District. 124 For the 1967-68 school year, the Board added numerous enrichment
programs for the central area schools and a long-range commitment to integrated
educational parks, or "continuous progress centers.,,125 Guided both by concerns with
integration as well as continued fears of white backlash, the District arranged a relatively
radical policy that attempted to bridge support from the CACRC to the city
establishment, in opposition to black power. After the public upheaval caused by the
Triad Plan, new superintendent Dr. Forbes Bottomly forged another radical idea that
attempted to utilize the narrative that arose from the Urban League and CACRC while
arranging different emphases in order to incorporate the narrative identities attached to
neighborhood schools and academic quality while also distancing the District from the
black power interests. Therefore, this priority shift for the District both reflected and re-
directed the discursive changes happening within Seattle pertaining to school segregation.
124 Ibid.,185.
125 Ibid.
79
This section explores the interaction ofthese new ideas, policy, and actors that
brought together a discursive coalition that implemented, albeit unsuccessfully, a
desegregation proposal that included busing. In the most immediate sense, the idea
served to galvanize the city and actually led to a lull in desegregation efforts, which
practically lasted until 1976. However, the new arrangement ofconcepts and constitutive
politics significantly altered points ofemphasis in District narrative and brought an
unlikely coalition of characters under an umbrella ofpolicy change.
At this time, the discursive coalition and its subsequent alterations in emphasis
and prioritization into policy served to settle new grounds for debate that fundamentally
shifted the future debate onto a newly arranged terrain of ideas for the greater part ofthe
1970s. This radical concept of"continuous progress" altered the arrangement ofactors as
well as ideas in Seattle. Without implementing any aspects of the plan, the city became
embroiled in debate over CP, which was essentially a debate over mandatory bussing and
the destruction ofthe neighborhood school. The debate exposed the entire city to
desegregation dialogue established by actors already involved in desegregation, but now
to vocal and organized opposition from both the white and black communities.
"Continuous Progress" Towards Integration
During the upswing in civil rights activity, the Board appointed a new
Superintendent, Dr. Forbes Bottomly. Bottomly demonstrated greater concern than
previous superintendents with the Central Area and developed his own vision ofa re-
structured school system, "Continuous Progress" (CP). Bottomly became a creative
80
agent in these coalitional and policy developments as he grafted together ideas from
competing narrative constellations about integration, neighborhoods, and social change
into a new problematic and solution by way ofa combination of alternate, or even
competing, narratives.
Similar to the Triad Plan, Bottomly's Continuous Progress concept re-envisioned
the neighborhood, but restructured the schools in order to meet the imminent needs ofa
new era without specifically defming the new era as founded upon segregation. To
respond to the dire condition of the Central Area schools and seek approval from the
spectrum of commitments, Bottomly forged a radical restructuring plan similar to the
Triad Plan without the central problem defmed as segregation. 126 More than a decade
prior to the implementation of mandatory desegregation, Dr. Bottomly, designed the
comprehensive plan to confront educational needs, new structural pressures within the
city, and segregation as a byproduct, which represented a re-combination of a variety of
political ideas and values brought together into a creative and destabilizing policy
proposal.1 27 Structurally, the underlying idea of CP was the necessity to restructure the
geography of schooling because traditional neighborhoods in Seattle did not align with
the needs of expanding and diversifying populations. Bottomly challenged
neighborhoods not through their inherent inequality, but because neighborhoods as a
basis for student assignment in such a different era was becoming anachronistic. The
126 The idea envisioned middle and high schools more like university campuses than neighborhood
buildings. Continuous progress centers, basically city-wide middle schools, would naturally integrate
students because they were not based in neighborhoods.
127 "Continuous Progress Final Report," Seattle Citizens School Progress Planning Committee, April 9,
1967, Accession A1998-13, Box 9 (LCF).
~--------------------~-- -
81
artful associations are seen in how Bottomly both used and extended ideas from
competing narratives, to include academic excellence, diversity, and social goals as
public goals.
CP attempted to re-envision the role of the schools as academic, but "academic"
as including social ideas like diversity, morality, and citizenship. Bottomly carefully
framed CP to reflect interest in quality education as the primary role of the schools. In
1968, a citizen advisory committee reported that CP "'offers an opportunity to
significantly improve the quality ofeducation available to every Seattle Public School
student. ",128 In response to grassroots white opposition to the Triad Plan, Bottomly
carefully located individual excellence and achievement as centerpieces of a restructured
system. Yet, CP extended the idea of individual achievement beyond the traditional
notion of intellectual development, the accepted role of the schools, to include the "the
development ofmoral and spiritual values, ofhigh standards of citizenship, of a high
sense of self-discipline, and of a desire to work within the legal framework ofa
democratic society.,,129 The vision ofeducation aimed to remain within the "American
ethic," or individualism, and to produce ''the urban man who has retained and refined his
dignity 0 f individual spirit."130 Within this idea, Bottomly incorporated the fundamental
assumption that the public schools h~l.Ve a role in "maturing social attitudes" and
promoting diversity because ofthe new era, for example. The role of the public school
128 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 360.
129 "Continuous Progress Final Report," Seattle Citizens School Progress Planning Committee, April 9,
1967, Section 1 (2), Accession A1998-13, Box 9 (LCF).
130 Ibid., Section 2, (4).
---------------------
82
was not to protect individual rights, but to playa part in teaching individual dignity,
democratic citizenry, excellence and achievement.
CP also included the idea that racial separation caused damage to the entire
school system. Bottomly articulated the needs ofa new era that included, but did not
hinge on segregation (like in the Triad Plan) or discriminatory intent, as the District
narrative had previously. For both the CACRC and the Urban League, current
discriminatory intent was irrelevant in the face ofclearly unequal conditions resulting
from historical discrimination. For the District, discriminatory intent was necessary to
change schooling patterns. Bottomly's narrative substituted a commitment to educational
restructuring to meet the needs of a new era. For example, Bottomly formulated the
policy in terms ofnew needs for a new era in which "freeways and arterials have carved
through traditional neighborhoods... shopping centers, high-rise apartments [and] have
affected old habits ofliving.,,131 The idea retained the concept of neighborhoods as
"traditional" and therefore side-stepped their "destruction" by showing how the broad
structures of the city, specifically located in majority white areas, were changing.
The concept secondarily incorporated the need to ameliorate de facto segregation
as a mere symptom ofthe broad structural forces affecting Seattle as a whole, because of
"new problems resulting from concentration of minority groups, poverty and urban
decay.,,132 Carefully, Bottomly did not associate attempts to eliminate segregated schools
with attempts to disrupt neighborhoods. In one section, CP argues, "the reduction ofthe
131 Ibid.
132 Ibid.
---------
83
severe racial isolation which now exists in most Seattle schools is ofvital importance at
all grade levels.,,133 However, Bottomly linked segregation in a chain of association
instead of orienting it as a fIrst and fundamental principle, as the Triad Plan did, a key
mechanism through which the concept could maintain a commitment to the "integrity" of
the neighborhood school concept and the centrality of the individual. 134
For example, this proposal envisioned the progress from grade schools to middle
schools to high schools to effectively act like a feeder system that would "naturally"
integrate children and schools. 135 The arena to solve these problems was the "Continuous
Progress Centers" that would serve as large middle schools. Bottomly took care to insist,
"The purpose of the center is not to bring about integration. It will do this only as an
added benefIt.,,136 The plan sought to confront segregation as a byproduct of the larger
structural changes and reminded everyone the voluntary transfer program was the only
policy employed specifIcally to desegregate the schools. 137 In effect, the framework of
this plan admitted problems of segregation, but to avoid backlash, abstractly dealt with
racial imbalance only in the large middle school centers where "cross-bussing and forced
mixing" could be avoided, or at least relegated to the middle school age students instead
133 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
134 "Continuous Progress Final Report," Seattle Citizens School Progress Planning Committee, April 9,
1967, Section 2 (3-4), Accession A1998-13, Box 9, (LCF).
135 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 295.
136 Bottomly quoted in Ibid., 353.
137 "Continuous Progress Final Report," Seattle Citizens School Progress Planning Committee, April 9,
1967, Accession A1998-l3, Box 9, (LCF).
84
ofkindergartners. I38 If the district could achieve a sort ofdesegregation maintaining a
neighborhood concept, they believed integration could be acceptable.
The fmal narrative extension was the re-appropriation of neighborhood to mean
something beyond physical geography while also retaining its value for the community.
Bottomly reasoned that continuous progress should '''be essentially neighborhood
schools with a voluntary program built in'" because of '"the concern ofparents,
regardless ofrace, about where their little children were assigned. ",139 CP included a
redesign ofgrades, locations, and curricula that both incorporated and challenged the
traditional notion ofneighborhood schools. CP organized the configuration of schools,
"with the conscientious attention to the integrity of home-school contacts.,,140 Therefore,
children from kindergarten through grades three or four would remain in their
neighborhood schools. CP relied on the value-laden assumption about the integrity of the
neighborhood school, by keeping neighborhood school assignment in tact for young
children. Grades four through seven would attend new continuous progress centers of
4,000-6,000 students. After grade seven, students would be grouped onto one campus for
grades 8-11, and 12-14. With gradual shifts towards larger educational complexes for
older students, Bottomly defmed neighborhoods as appropriate for younger children and
different structural school mechanisms appropriate for the needs, and socialization, of
older students.
138 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
139 Bottomly quoted in Ibid., 431 (emphasis in original).
140 "Continuous Progress Final Report," Seattle Citizens School Progress Planning Committee, April 9,
1967, Section 2 (4), Accession A1998-13, Box 9, (LeF).
85
In sum, Bottomly attempted to re-narrate both the story of the new era as well as
the value of the neighborhood school in relation to both the civil rights and grassroots
white oppositional narratives. The new era was different, but not because of racial
segregation. Neighborhood schools were not appropriate for the new era, but not because
they represented social and structural inequalities. School restructuring could meet
structural and economic needs of the late 1960s and also desegregate the schools as a
byproduct.
Opposition Response
Despite support from the CACRC and city actors, Continuous Progress received
its own rash of opposition before any policy actions were taken. While much debate after
the Triad Plan proposal focused on the destruction of "individual excellence," the
predominant white oppositional narrative to CP focused on opposition to busing and
changes to the neighborhood assignment structure. In a sentiment representative of the
general consensus among opposed white parents, "we are against the center and
unnecessary bussing, but we are not against integration. [We do] not feel that the school
district should be assigned the responsibility of social reform when it is a community
problem requiring all of [its] resources.,,141 Again, this opposition specifically separated
the public and social realms in order to oppose changes to the neighborhood concept.
This narrative avoided the overt c1assism or racism of previous opposition but
continued to assert that economic (home owning) rights are pre-public, or social.
141 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
86
Following, the narrative then could highlight the misconstrued destruction of the
neighborhood school structure because it violated the sanctity of economic rights as pre-
public. A group called Save Our Neighborhood Schools (SOS) surfaced and contested
CP at every juncture.142 SOS was a powerful group that articulated the public's fears
over the destruction of the neighborhood schools and the movement of children within
the District as one of a violation ofcontrol, or "rights" to control their own children's
lives. For example, one SOS member, Howard Schmidt, called the centers a threat "'to
the integrity of teachers and the sanctity ofclassrooms,'" though he added the real issue
was '" state control of our lives. ",143 At a different meeting, Schmidt framed his
opposition in terms of "pride" and "self-improvement" and urged the emphasis of policy
should not be put on "'''arbitrary programs which reduce proud individuals into bus-
weary, uprooted numbers in centralized schools."",144 By expressing concern for the
"pride" of not only white students (because his reference was to Garfield High School),
the narrative could avoid overt racism by highlighting concern for black students' pride
and achievement.
142 Originally, the group included black families from the Central Area interested in local control and angry
with the School Board for continuing to focus on moving only black children out of neighborhoods. Soon
after, these families realized that the other folks within SOS were also against moving black kids into "their
neighborhoods," and they broke from SOS.
143 Schmidt ran for the School Board in 1967 to oppose the centers. (Schmidt quoted in Pieroth,
"Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968," 364-373).
144 Ibid., 366.
87
Policy Development
In 1967, the school board decided to implement the idea of "Continuous Progress
Centers" in a piece-meal effort, with the support of major city interests who aligned with
the CACRC. An emerging pattern of alliance developed between the Board, Bottomly,
mainline churches, liberal city actors, and the CACRC in Seattle. The proposal created a
growing number of integrationist allies of the CACRC, including the Chamber of
Commerce, the League of Women Voters, various white parents, and numerous churches.
On March 11, 1968 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer also expressed pleasure with
Bottomly's holistic picture of Seattle's problems with racial imbalance and urged the
public to accept some of the basic changes in the proposed system. Though various
actors had differing ideas about integration, one key idea that joined them was integration
in response to the black separatist section of the Central Area activists. The Chamber of
Commerce, as a traditionally conservative element of the city establishment, ended up
supporting the Middle School plan in a move to show support for the integrationists and
. h . 145agamst t e separatIsts.
The discursive coalition was able to push through a partial integration agenda that
the CACRC alone could not have implemented. Despite opposition, the board also
gained approval for the centers in many public meetings. At every meeting, public
statements in support of the centers outnumbered statements against. 146 The Board
proceeded with small-scale proposals, and initially presented a plan on February 14, 1968
145 Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis ofa Social Movement".
146 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
88
for desegregated middle schools at the same time as a proposal to open a pilot
"continuous progress center," the Southeast Pilot Educational Center in the vicinity of
Rainier Beach Junior-Senior High. This proposal was a significant catalyst for the
broadening of support for integration within the city establishment, and the polarization
ofthe previous Central Area consensus of the CACRC. 147
City establishment actors interested in Seattle's desegregation formed the Citizens
for Quality Education (CQE), "'to generate public enthusiasm about advancing
contemporary concepts of education' in Seattle. ",148 After studying the problem, CQE
supported efforts to "move forward with a program of community wide, two-way
bussing.,,149 They remained convinced that there was enough support in Seattle for the
CP concept and went on to evaluate versions of the plan and to also support school board
candidates in the upcoming election who supported the concept.
In contrast and in reaction to this growing alliance, the recommendation for the
continuous progress pilot further polarized the Central Area community. The proposal
definitively split the black power groups and the CACRC. The CACRC commended the
Board on its actions. The NAACP agreed to drop a suit filed in 1966 because they
believed the Rainier Beach Center would reduce racial imbalance. Reverend John
147 The proposal included the closure of Mann elementary school and Washington Junior High School, and
the reduction of enrollment at Garfield. The plan was to bus black students from these schools to
predominantly white schools. The proposal shifted Madrona Elementary to a Head Start to fourth grade
school, and transferred the fifth and sixth graders from Madrona to another school. The plan established a
feeder pattern between three schools (elementary, middle school center, and high school) in line with the.
continuous progress concept. The projected enrollment for the Rainier Beach Center was 3500 students,
with the goal of no more than 25% black students. The Board ambiguously acknowledged that busing "may
be involved." (Board quoted in Ibid., 393)
148 CQE quoted in Ibid., 354.
149 CQE quoted in Ibid., 418.
-----------_. -_..
89
Adams spoke up in favor of Continuous Progress Centers at a community hearing
sponsored by the League of Women Voters in 1967. Adams urged the District to move
'''on continuous progress centers not as soon as possible and not with all deliberate speed,
but, if! may borrow the next line, "with majestic instancy."",150
Nevertheless, growing sentiment in the Central Area's "grassroots" movement
turned against the proposal in favor of self-determination and local control. As time went
on, black power narratives gained more influence in Seattle as Central Area groups began
pushing for more local control, their own school board, and increased resources for the
central area. When the school board announced the ftrst continuous progress center
would be at Rainier Beach, the CACRC held a meeting at the East Madison YMCA on
March 6, 1968 in order to promote the project.151 For Adams, this meeting represented a
serious setback to a unifted support and "'a real crisis in the community. ",152 At this
meeting, the polarization over black power emerged and showed that the CACRC could
no longer claim to speak for the entire black community. Quintard Taylor observed,
"The meeting, organized to rally support for integrated education, quickly became a
referendum on the Committee [CACRCJ and its vision for the future.,,153 Opposition
came from CORE and the Central Seattle Community Council (CSCC), said to be closest
to the "grassroots" sentiment ofthe Central Area.
150 Ibid., 366.
151 Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement".
152 Adams quoted in Ibid., 265.
153 Quintard Taylor, "The Civil Rights Movement in Seattle, 1960-1970," All-Student Assembly for the
Martin Luther King Holiday Observance, Lakeside School, Seattle, Washington, January, 2003, 13.
90
The division solidified between the narratives of integration and local control. Ed
Banks, chairman of the Garfield Advisory Committee, recalled that before 1968 the
majority of the black community would have been more receptive to these proposed
changes, but they were no longer willing to let their children be the only ones
participating in desegregation efforts. Following John Adams presentation at the YMCA
meeting, black separatists, including members of the Nation ofIslam, the Black Panther
Party, and the newly formed Black Student Union at the University of Washington,
challenged integration. A member of the CACRC, Roberta Byrd Barr recalled that after
John Adams presented his proposal, '''they [the separatists] swept him right off the
platform. ",154 In effect, the influence of Adams and the CACRC had been effectively
diluted. Local power and increased quality for Central Area schools began to trump
CACRC calls for multi-racial integrated education. The CACRC opposed a proposal for
a Central Area sub-district: "'we continue to believe firmly in a multi-racial society and
its positive reflection in quality, integrated education. A sub-district school board for the
central area may tend to polarize positions and further isolate the area from the total
school system. ",155
Given the stark lack of consensus on the Rainier Beach Proposal, on April 10,
1968 the Board approved of the pilot middle school program to convert Washington,
154 Roberty Byrd Barr quoted in Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-
1968," 350.
155 Pratt, quoted in Richardson, "Civil Rights in Seattle: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Movement".
Richardson said this was the last public statement that could be attributed to the CACRC. By January of
1969, the four leaders of the CACRC had left the committee. Others tried to maintain the committee, with
less success. Therefore, Seattle continued after 1969 without the cohesion presented by these leaders.
Adams, Hundley, and Charles V. Johnson moved on to other arenas (careers or otherwise) and Edwin Pratt
was murdered in January 1969.
91
Meany, and Hamilton schools into desegregated middle school centers and Garfield into
a magnet school. With this proposal, Bottomly attempted to bridge the narrative
constellations of all invested actors. Though the CACRC warned Bottomly that he would
see no consensus in the black community, he continued to try building a broad based
coalition, by offering the Central Area with more local control. 156 He tried to incorporate
the '''growing sense of self-determination in the Negro community...which was
manifested in a resistance to being manipulated by the ""'establishment" [... ] who search
for identity and a value system which give dignity to that identity.",157 Carefully, he did
not call this group either separatists or integrationists, but one community. The Board
eventually approved of a separate administrative planning unit for the Central Area, the
Central Area School Council (CASC).
In what John Adams called a "'craven failure of nerve'" and a capitulation to the
demands of the black militants, Bottomly avoided the issue of busing and far-reaching
integration goals with these demands for black local control as well as white opposition
to forced busing. 158 Therefore, the white community and city establishment had no
problems with this plan, likely because it did not directly affect any white students. The
P-L as a reflection of the city establishment position, commended this move as
"reasonable" and "thoughtful."
156 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
157 Dr. Forbes Bottomly, quoted in Ibid., 420.
158 Adams quoted in Ibid., 426.
--------------------
92
Given this ambiguity on such an important concern for the Central Area and the
CACRC, they displayed caution at fIrst, then outright backlash when the Board
announced they would still further delay the decision to include busing white children
into the Central Area centers. This omission tore both CACRC and remaining Central
Area support away from the District. John Adams lashed out at the Board, emphasizing
the '''futile impossibility of gaining white citizen consensus on the steps necessary to end
de facto segregation.',,159 Parents in the Central Area further chided the District for
imposing the full burden of busing of black families and the lack of commitment to
promise curriculum changes that would include minority history and culture. The
initiation of Garfield as merely a magnet school did not assure them that white students
would voluntarily transfer to Garfield in enough numbers to equalize movement.
The CASC led the fInal policy push. The CASC chose a highly respected school
principal in the Central Area, Dr. Roland Patterson, as their chief administrator. Dr.
Patterson was Principal ofMeany Junior High and an advocate of community control.
The CASC and Patterson developed a proposal for desegregation in the fall of 1970,
known as the 4-4-4 Plan. The Board approved the new plan, which reconfigured the
Central Area schools into elementary, middle and high schools in order to promote a
multi-racial middle school that became known as Meany-Madrona. Not long after this
announcement, the Board began to make plans to convert Hamilton, Wilson, and
Eckstein Junior Highs into middle schools that would be included in a mandatory racial
159 Adams quoted in Ibid., 426.
-----_._.--_..---_.- .---... --
93
transfer program with Meany-Madrona. 16o Both daily papers began extensive coverage
on this "Middle School Plan" in September 1970. It was publicized as the ftrst of three-
h . . 'd f~ d 161P ases ill a CltyWI e e 10rt to esegregate.
Reaction
The Middle School Plan had major repercussions for Seattle School Board
members and the District as they faced vocal and organized opposition to mandatory
racial desegregation. Public reaction to the "middle school busing" plan was "immediate
and stormy.,,162 Hostile crowds ftlled public meetings called by the school board and a
group of citizens formed Citizens Against Mandatory Busing (CAMB) to challenge the
plan. CAMB was a well-organized and funded opposition that initiated legal action that
delayed implementation of the plan one year after its start date of September 1971.163
A court battle saw white opposition try to re-connect the neighborhood school
again as something akin to property rights and succeeded in delaying the attempted
desegregation policy. After the court battle failed, the Board weakly implemented a two-
way busing plan in 1972 that involved only 624 students chosen at random by computer.
Despite this small number, vandals slashed tires of seventy busses to show their
opposition. By 1973, only 312 (almost all black) students participated in mandatory
160 Ibid., 462.
161 Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation ofSeattle's Schools.
162 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
163 Ibid., 463.
94
busing assignments. 164 For most involved, the Middle School Plan demonstrated a
massive political failure. 165
The case ofCA.MB. v. Palmason (1972) displayed the shift in acceptable
narratives used to fight against desegregation, despite its success in delaying the
implementation ofmandatory busing. 166 This case was an example of some of the
loudest voices in opposition to the District's actions being white parents who "have
fought any effort of the District to assign their children to anything other than their
"neighborhood" school. 167 CAMB insisted they had a right similar to a vested property
right to send their children to the neighborhood schools. 168 This "right" could not be
taken away from them by ordering reassignment of their students. CAMB argued that the
Middle School busing plan was "arbitrary and capricious.. .in that it will have a
psychological impact on primary school children because of the long bus rides.,,169
164 Quintard Taylor, "The Civil Rights Movement in Seattle, 1960-1970," All-Student Assembly for the
Martin Luther King Holiday Observance, Lakeside School, Seattle, Wa., 7 January, 2003.
165 Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation a/Seattle's Schools.
166 C.A.MB. v. Palmason, 80 W.2d 445,495 P.2d 657 (1972).
167 "Index to Defendants' Memorandum in support ofmotions for summary judgment on the pleadings and
motion to strike," Gary Roe vs. Seattle School District No.1, June 8,1978, In the superior court of the State
of Washington for King County, 10, Accession A98-13 in Box 9, CLCF).
168 Amicus Curiae Brief of Church Council of Greater Seattle. 1978, Gary Roe v. Board of Directors of
Settle School District No.1, Accession 1358-007 in Box 38, Folder 10, Church Council of Greater Seattle
Records, University of Washington Libraries (hereafter cited as CCS).
169 "Index to Defendants' Memorandum in support ofmotions for summary judgment on the pleadings and
motion to strike," Gary Roe vs. Seattle School District No.1, June 8, 1978, In the superior court of the State
of Washington for King County, 6, Accession A98-13 in Box 9, CLCF).
95
Property rights as well as their own children's psychological state were "private" matters,
that the school had the obligation to leave separate from policy matters. l7O
There was at least four other court cases in this period that also involved transfer
policies and racial problems in the Seattle School District, which were terminated fairly
quickly, but give a sense ofthe opposition's narrative orientation. 171 The similar current
running through all was fear of control lost with District policies to improve racial
balance. In other cases within the 1970s, individuals tried to challenge various
"restrictive" policies the district had established to attempt to establish racial balance.
Two such challenged the District's policy denying white children the option of
transferring out of the Garfield attendance area, a policy designed to promote the
desegregation of Garfield. 172 The issue here became the parent's lost "right" to transfer
their kid out ofthe Garfield area. This is a control issue, not a neighborhood issue.
The conclusion ofthe C.A.MB. case resulted in a ruling in favor of the School
District to implement a reasonable desegregation policy. The Court challenged the
"vested.right in any general rule oflaw or policy oflegislation which entitles him or her
to insist that it remain unchanged for his or her benefit," and surmised that it was not the
distance to school that parents really feared, given "at least 39% ofAmerica's school
children are bussed to school, that in some remote areas of the state children were bussed
170 Ibid., 6.
171 List of these cases and others in Ibid. Also cited on page 10 is the definition of"neighborhood school"
as: that school which geographically is close to your house, in your general living area, shopping area.
When I say neighborhood, X number ofmiles or blocks to school is not the issue particularly but that is the
most reasonable school geographically to attend"- cited in Mr. Krauss' deposition, who he is, I don't know.
172 Ibid., 2.
96
as much as 25 miles daily." 173 It was more likely a "fear that the child would be in a
hostile environment or that the teachers or the program would be inferior to that which
the child would expect to fmd in his or her own neighborhood.,,174 The court defmed the
right of the right ofa parent as a "limited right, since all parents in the state were required
to send their children to school," and ruled that the District had been conscientious with
the assignment plan and agreed that integration of the schools would not be possible
given residential segregation, without "some modification of the neighborhood school
formula.,,175
Despite the positive ruling for the bussing plan, the school board had little
political will to proceed with any plan that went beyond voluntary assignment. The
board implemented the Middle School Plan in the fall of 1972, involving only four
schools. In January 1973, citizens initiated a recall election of the four remaining board
members who had voted for the Middle School plan. Though this failed, this took a
political toll on the Board; three of the four either resigned or did not seek re-election. 176
Bottomly also resigned in 1973 in the wake of these decisions, leaving the school board
to implement his vision with little direction and popularity.
173 Amicus Curiae Brief of Church Council of Greater Seattle. 1978, Gary Roe v. Board of Directors of
Settle School District No.1, p. 4-6, 1358-007 in Box 38, Folder 10, (CCS).
174 Ibid.
175 Ibid.
176 Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968".
97
Conclusion
By 1967, the School Board and major civic actors went on record in favor ofa
potential future that included mandatory busing to desegregate the public schools. This
was a large commitment step given just four years earlier the Board was reticent to admit
that racial segregation existed in the Seattle Public Schools. Though the mandatory
busing effort fell to the wayside in the face ofpowerful grassroots white opposition and a
burgeoning black power movement in the Central Area, this shift signaled a significant
change in meaning of race for Seattle actors, as well as a return to the status quo. No
longer was it legitimate to deny racial segregation existed or affected the public schools.
Yet, the denial of intention retained the District's ability to admit "racial imbalance"
existed without forcing the white community to partake in desegregation efforts.
However, in the midst of these commitments, District actors came close to implementing
a desegregation policy based through the narrative of integration and the promotion ofa
multi-racial society.
Within these political developments, ideas like integration, education,
neighborhood schools, and racial segregation were activated in specific and interactive
ways to address the situation of "racial imbalance" in Seattle. Seattle actors debated
within a national context that left open a range ofpossible ways for districts to interpret
their role in addressing racial de facto segregation. Seattle establishment actors began
this period by denying the existence ofracial segregation in the schools by relying on a
specific narrative that limited the role of the schools as one of solely academic training.
When pressed by civil rights groups, the District initially extended their narrative
98
constellation to include "race" by way of "intergroup" relations, or "mutual respect"
between racial groups, and compensatory education for segregated students who had
fallen behind. This arrangement allowed for the District to address race through a non-
threatening lens that showed they were concerned with all students and respected and
encouraged differences in the community. The meaning of racial inequality within this
constellation remained connected to the idea that "race" is equivalent to discrimination or
intent, and therefore not a mandatory role for the schools. The schools had a role in
ensuring equal educational opportunity, and "education" was interpreted as academic
training.
In contrast, civil rights actors in town challenged these connections between race,
respect, and education built by the District by hinging their narrative constellation on the
fundamental assumption that racial segregation was harmful for not only minority
children's education, but also the society as a whole. For groups like the Urban League,
NAACP, and grassroots organizations like the CACRC, the schools as public institutions
had a definitive role in ameliorating segregation, whether or not it was a direct result of
intentional discrimination. These groups began to challenge the foundation of student
assignment, the neighborhood, as a concept that maintains racial inequality despite
intention. The Urban League and CACRC defmed race in structural terms without relying
on discriminatory intent, defmed the schools' role as also ensuring equal educational
opportunity, but broadened "education" to mean far more than academic training;
education included social training, economic opportunity, and citizenship.
99
How did these two different visions coalesce under a coalition that pushed an
integration policy? In light ofpowerful direct action civil rights tactics, the District and
city establishment understood action to appease civil rights demands was necessary.
However, analysis does not observe simple appeasement for these complex demands. At
this juncture, Dr. Forbes Bottomly arranged a new vision ofthe public schools to both
challenge the neighborhood basis for school segregation, but in a way that attempted to
bridge ideas coming from civil rights, civic, and grassroots white opposition. This idea
was not manifested in actual policy, but became a guiding conceptual arrangement where
the central way oftalking about racial desegregation was in terms of "integration." The
idea of integration brought the city, District, and CACRC into an unlikely coalition
because of its oppositional dynamic with the black separatist narrative.
Through narratives that challenged the neighborhood as a fundamental right and
built the neighborhood as a community value that could extend beyond physical location,
this expansion of ideas added a new layer to competing narrative constellations that
clarified and extended their own lines of logic and also triggered a much stronger
oppositional wave of argumentation that built upon these very extensions. Both the Triad
Plan and Continuous Progress showed the limits of new articulations about the
neighborhood, and therefore the strength of that attachment. White opposition framed
their resistance in terms of the centrality of the neighborhood school, where white
property-owners often mobilized "racially innocent" individual rights discourse to secure
the naturalization ofneighborhood schools. Meanwhile, black power groups rose to the
challenge ofwhite resistance and began to gain legitimacy with narratives expressing the
100
problem as fundamentally segregated schools and concurrent privilege structures, but the
solution as local control of their schools direction.
Around the same time as the national chapter of CORE shifted towards black
power with a vote to drop the phrase "multi-racial" from its constitutional goals, the
District, city and CACRC highlighted the goal of multi-racial integration. This coalition
developed and pursued desegregation, but also tried to quell separatist action in the
Central Area and white fears of busing. This period ended with a multi-layered and
tenuous set of commitments: a vision of integrated education, the maintenance of
neighborhood schools, and commitment to incorporate the voice of the Central Area.
Though the policy appearance in 1971 did not differ much from 1964's voluntary racial
transfer policy, the narrative universe of ideas and commitments represented a significant
shift with a new set of emphases relating to racial segregation in Seattle. By 1971, policy
actions had legitimated claims about the status of racial segregation in Seattle: de facto
segregation existed in Seattle; and integration was more than a valuable goal that the
school district shouldpursue because it encouraged equity and mutual respect, it was a
necessary role. The attempts to challenge the neighborhood structure proved difficult to
secure as a legitimate narrative association. Policy inaction institutionally maintained the
claims that the most important organizingfactorfor student assignment remained the
neighborhood as a traditional community stronghold.
This shift represented a collapse in the District's narrative constellation that had
attempted to incorporate ideas of integration, mutual respect, neighborhood value, and
black power. The coalition between the District, city establishment and CACRC became
101
possible, yet short-lived. The fundamental conflict about the role of the public schools
was not settled, but its narrative groundwork had shifted.
102
CHAPTER III
INTEGRATING THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 1971-1977
The years between 1971 and 1977 saw Seattle actors struggling to re-engage the
questions ofracial imbalance and racial equality in the public school arena. These years
saw significant developments in the national arena, most notably with the Supreme
Court's decision in Keyes v. School District No.1 (1974), which ruled that a northern de
facto school district could be ordered to desegregate. Discussions at the federal level also
turned 'north,' acknowledging and opening up funding for desegregating de facto
districts, while also limiting this funding to voluntary methods as opposed to busing.
These developments signaled an ambiguity at the federal level with respect to methods
and interpretations of the public's role in racial equality. In Seattle, the battle over
desegregation can be best understood as a struggle within and between three predominant
narrative constellations developed by actors to frame a story about racial segregation, the
role of the schools, and the contours of legitimate policy. The resulting mandatory
desegregation policy, The Seattle Plan, institutionalized an innovative and extensive
policy to ameliorate segregation, provide equal educational opportunity, and encourage a
multicultural society for both minority and white students. This remarkable policy
achievement was brought together by an extensive coalition, which included the School
103
District, City of Seattle, Chamber ofCommerce, Urban League, ACLU, and various local
civic groups in town.
The fact that this varied coalition could agree on a policy could be seen as a
remarkable generation of civic capacity to undertake a complex and contentious policy
event. However, understanding the policy arrangement as working because of the
development ofenough civic capacity within Seattle also lacks an explanation ofthe
specificity ofthe Seattle Plan. Yes, the Seattle Plan was built in a way that pleased a
variety of groups, groups necessary for the District to implement the Seattle Plan without
a court order. However, the meaning of the Seattle Plan and its reflection of
interpretations ofracial equality and the role of the public are uncovered"by analyzing the
discourse embedded and constructed within the policy. Likewise, understanding the
processes leading up to the Seattle Plan in terms of interest group politics fails to
incorporate the moments when interests were created, shifted, and when ideas were born.
For example, the idea ofmoving neighborhoods rather than individual students arose
within politics, not as a pre-defined interest or position and not something to discard
analytically. Finally, analyzing the way elite actors arranged the Seattle Plan to "fit"
necessary interests also hides the dynamic interaction of creative actors who worked for
months in order to develop a policy ofmeaningful impact to address racial inequality in
the schools.
The Seattle Plan was crafted by the coming together ofa discursive coalition of
actors who were able to draw together and re-arrange the competing narrative
constellations by way ofthe concept ofmulticulturalism. The result of the hours of
104
discussion, committee work, debating, and muddling through policy details was both a
layering ofdifferent understandings ofrace, desegregation, and equality and a creation of
new connections and new interpretations ofthese concepts. In the previous period, a
coalition began to develop by connecting to the idea of integration as not black
separatism, but could not tum the coalition into lasting policy. In this period, the concept
of"multiculturalism" served as a force ofdiscursive realignment that joined previously
antithetical actors and their divergent interests. By becoming a point ofreference that
could re-associate linkages within narrative constellations, this concept proved to realign
the relationship between actors as well as their ideas so that those invested in integration
could agree upon the same policy as those interested in avoiding a court order.
The new arrangement of ideas settled a new set ofnarrative claims: desegregation
was not merely a legal necessity but an educational necessity in an increasingly diverse
world; schools had a role in promoting social change important for a multi-racial
society; and individual rights could not trump the need to ameliorate historical
discrimination. In this way, multiculturalism can be seen as the meta-concept that
became the basis for policymaking that allowed people to agree on policy details in ways
they could not before. The ambiguity and multivocality expressed within
multiculturalism facilitated communication between groups ofpeople that a concept like
"socioeconomic integration" could not do at this time. Therefore, under its guise, actors
could institutionalize policy ideas surrounding multiculturalism that could mean many
different things. The polyvalence ofmulticulturalism in this period is analytically
105
significant because it provides a light into understanding how people understood their
own and others' connections between race, equality, and the public schools.
It is difficult to convey the feelings ofactors who were involved in the Seattle
plan, who saw its creation as such a surprising, creative, and momentous moment. This
analysis attempts to demonstrate this policy-making feat as a contingent and constructed
moment that arrived when actors were able to come together around certain ideas that re-
configured their own identifications with respect to desegregation. This chapter begins
with a brief discussion of the national and legal developments that represented continued
ambiguity about racial politics on the national front. Following, I detail the narrative
constellations actors created that organized similar concepts into variant arrangements.
This period witnessed a relative flurry of ideas struggling with the questions: How to
defme segregation? Why should the district desegregate? How will the district
desegregate? I follow by analyzing how the narrative constellations were mobilized into
the Seattle Plan in an unforeseen and creative way by the wide coalition of actors. These
debates filtered into a reconfiguration of the political terrain in such a way that actors
interested in individual choice, neighborhood schooling, quality education, and multiple
forms of integration became discursive partners in the task of desegregating Seattle. The
Seattle Plan's idea arrangement shifted the grounds ofdebate by both solidifying and
destabilizing certain ways to think about race and education as it came to embody
multiple and competing principles tenuously defining the public schools' role in racial
integration.
106
National and Legal Context
At the national level, debates over desegregation increasingly hinged on the
distinction between de jure and de facto segregation and the debates over mandatory
bussing. The combination ofnational reports, Supreme Court decisions, and federal level
actions can be interpreted as an ambiguous development attempting to settle similar
questions as outlined locally. The question of "why desegregate?" came down to an
argument between formal-legal and social justifications for ending segregation. The
question oftradeoffs made between private rights and ensuring educational equity was
seen in the bussing debates and settled differently in the federal desegregation
requirements represented by HEW, additions to the Civil Rights Act, and in the Supreme
Court. By 1977, actors in Seattle felt confident that their district could end up with a
court-ordered desegregation plan. Yet the questions ofhow or why or who it would
desegregate was up for much debate.
The Court Rules on De Facto Denver
One ofthe most significant developments was the Supreme Court decision on the
defacto segregated Denver Public Schools. In 1973, the Supreme Court dealt with a
Northern desegregation for the first time, in Keyes v. School District No.1, 413 U.S. 189
(1973). This case settled the question, "was Denver's school system segregated? If so,
was the segregated system caused by state action?"] For Denver and multiple other
cases, the Court ruled in favor ofdesegregation ifresidential patterns created segregated
1 "Desegregation: Brief Outline of Legal Parameters," Seattle Public Schools, General Counsel Gary Little,
n.d. probably March 1977, Accession A98-13, Box 12 (LCF).
107
schools. In decisions issued in Texas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and New York, the cities had
patterns of residential segregation, the schools assigned students "pursuant to a
neighborhood school assignment policy," and though the boards had not deliberately
intended to discriminate, "board action or inaction... caused what appear[ed] to be de
facto segregation to become de jure segregation.,,2
The Seattle School District took these developments as signs that they would
almost certainly be court-ordered to desegregate. According to the briefprepared by the
Seattle School District's legal counsel, "the lesson to be learned from [Keyes] is
strikingly plain: given the defmition of purpose or intent established by the Supreme
Court in the Keyes case, it is nearly impossible for a district with a segregated
educational system to show that it was not the district's purpose or intent to segregate.,,3
The significance for districts like Seattle that did not have a history ofde jure
school segregation was in the specific defmition of discriminatory purpose in "so-called
de facto segregation.,,4 According to the Keyes decision, discriminatory intent meant,
"that the probable, reasonable, foreseeable, natural consequences of the board's actions or
omissions to act resulted in a segregated school system."s Essentially, the Court ruled
that de facto segregation was a constitutional violation and it was up to the Board in
question to prove that segregative purpose was not its motivation if the district has a
2 Ibid., 3.
3 Ibid., 2.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
108
segregated educational system.6 Districts would not pass this test with "racially neutral"
"open enrollment" or "freedom of choice" plans because these assignment policies could
be interpreted as resulting from intentional action. 7
Despite this shift in the Supreme Court, another decision signaled another legal
layer and ambiguity in the legal stance on desegregation. Millikin v. Bradley 418 U.S.
417 (1974) signaled the fIrst major defeat for desegregation supporters since Brown I.
Charles Russo (2004) argues this case signaled a fundamental shift in the Supreme
Court's perspective. In Detroit, a federal trial court ordered a multi-district, area-wide
desegregation program because the remedies proposed by the district would have
exacerbated the segregation of the schools. The divided Supreme Court ruled that an
inter-district remedy was constitutionally impermissible unless the state or surrounding
school system were involved in discriminatory actions.8 This regional limitation severely
narrowed remedies to address increasing levels of segregation with the growth of isolated
white suburbs. Millikin limited the state to remedies aimed at individual districts,
therefore separating the arguably state-aided white movement to suburban regions, which
6 Keyes supra at 210 quoted in Ibid. See also Erwin Chemerinsky, "The Segregation and Resegregation of
American Public Education: The Court's Role," in School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back?, ed.
John Charles Boger, Gary Orfield (Chapel Hill: The University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2005).
7 Ibid.
8 Charles J Russo, 1. John Harris III, Rosetta F. Sandidge, "Brown V. Board of Education at 40: A Legal
History of Equal Educational Opportunities in American Public Education," The Journal ofNegro
Education 63, no. 3 (1994).
109
then were able to declare autonomy from problems ofracial segregation to which the
movement contributed.9
Federal Enforcement and De Facto Districts
The Seattle School District began to deal with elements ofthe Civil Rights Act of
1964 (CRA) in the early 1970s to secure federal funding for desegregation. The CRA
granted the Attorney General power and authority to bring suits on behalfof black
plaintiffs in school districts and also gave the US Secretary ofEducation the power to
collect data to document implementation ofdesegregation in school districts and also to
provide grants to help with implementation efforts. The Department ofHealth, Education,
and Welfare (HEW) was charged with monitoring compliance with Title VI and the
CRA. Title VI allowed school districts to secure funds to aid desegregation planning and
operations, and prohibited discrimination on the basis ofrace in any program receiving
federal financial assistance. 1O At the same time, Title IV barred the federal government
from correcting racial imbalance resulting solely from housing patterns and forbade
federal funds for bussing. 11
Congress enacted the Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) in 1972 to provide
funds to encourage the reduction of "minority group isolation" through voluntary
9 See Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History ofRacial Inequality in
Twentieth-Century America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005).
10 "Desegregation: Brief Outline of Legal Parameters," Seattle Public Schools, General Counsel Gary
Little, n.d. probably March 1977,3, Accession A98-13, Box 12 (LCF)
]] "Report of the Superintendent's Task Force on Desegregation Planning," Planning and Evaluation
Department, Seattle Public Schools, February 23, 1972, 330.037.c2, Seattle School District Published
Material, Archives and Records Management Center for Seattle School District No.1 (Hereafter cited as
Task Force in SSD).
110
means. 12 The funds were contingent upon district assurance to "adopt and implement, a
plan for the complete elimination of minority group isolation" in all schools with
minority group majorities. 13 HEW was directed to give equal consideration to districts
voluntarily undertaking desegregation efforts and those legally required.
An analysis of federal level discourse adds an ambiguous layer to the meaning of
the ESAA for school districts. President Nixon proposed the ESAA in May 1970 in a
Special Message to Congress, to address the "urgent" situation of both northern and
southern desegregation. 14 He wanted to encourage federal assistance for de jure districts
currently under court order to desegregate, and voluntary efforts to overcome the adverse
effects of segregation on minority groups. While not meant to "punish or reward," ESAA
directly targeted" the adverse effects ofracial isolation" and to "attain the positive
benefits of integrated education.,,15 Nixon stated, "Our goal is a system in which
education throughout the nation is both equal and excellent, and in which racial barriers
cease to exist."
12 Quoted in Brief of Amicus Curiae, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No.
J, Alliance for Education, Municipal League of King County, Mayor and Former Mayors of Seattle and
Former Seattle School Board Members in support ofRespondents, No. 05-908, On Writ ofCertiorari to the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court, available from
http://www.naacpldf.orglcontent/pdf/voluntary/both--parties/Alliance_for_Education,]ormer_Mayors_Sea
ttle.pdf; accessed on November 21, 2008.
13 Ibid., 11.
14 President Nixon, "Special Message to the Congress Proposing the Emergency School Aid Act of 1970,
"May 21, 1970, available from http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2509; accessed 21
November 2008.
15 Ibid.
111
While notable because Nixon directly stated that funds should be available to any
segregated district, "whether deliberate or not," he also directly limited the funds to non-
mandatory efforts, not methods of"imposing an arbitrary 'racial balance' throughout the
nation's school systems.,,16 Furthermore, without a level ofpunishment or reward, this
narrative clearly associates the public's role as one of aid rather than enforcement when it
came to attaining the positive benefits of integration. The narrative implies an
affirmative public role in distinguishing non-voluntary methods (busing) as inappropriate
for federal funding. Within these statements, Nixon specifically defined racial equity to
limit its association to "educational" opportunity in a move to associate "busing" as a
"new evil of disrupting communities and imposing hardship on children." 17 In a Special
Message to Congress in 1972, Nixon called for a moratorium on busing orders by the
Courts and the protection ofneighborhood schools, both in the name ofequal educational
opportunity. He wrote, "In the furor over busing, it has become all too easy to forget
what busing is supposed to be designed to achieve: equality ofeducational opportunity.
For all Americans.,,18 Nixon naturalized the sanctity of neighborhoods busing a non-
essential, "disruptive," action. The neighborhood community is essential, bussing is
"evil."
16 Ibid.
17 Nixon, Richard, "Special Message to the Congress on Equal Educational Opportunities and School
Bussing," available from
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3776&st=Nixon&stl=desegregation; accessed 1
December 2008.
18 Ibid.
112
National developments allowed ambiguity about de jure, de facto, and racially
imbalanced school districts. While Keyes warned the district of impending court order,
Nixon declared an end to busing to ameliorate segregation. While the ESAA provided
funds to encourage desegregation, it also denied funds for the "arbitrary" imposition of
racial balance in the schools. The most consistent item was the reliance on
discriminatory intent to determine the method ofdesegregation. The boundaries between
public and private remained unsettled at the national level. The District would have to
define its role as a public institution that could settle the private or public character of
racial segregation, neighborhoods, and bussing.
Constructing Narrative Constellations
This section examines the narrative arrangements developed within the District
and city regarding what to do about segregated schools after the failure of the Middle
School Plan. In the early 1970s, the school district, civic organizations, and citizen
groups within Seattle established alternative constellations of ideas about segregation,
desegregation, and the role ofpublic education. This section focuses on three narrative
constellations revealed within District administrative reports and documents and in
responses by the civil rights groups in town.
Document analysis shows District administration narrative both mirrored and
fundamentally challenged federal level discourse. For one, the District's public stance
was minimally integrationist if taken from public School Board resolutions only. For
example, in response to pressure from groups established in the Middle School days to
pursue desegregation, the District decided to draft a public resolution on desegregation in
113
1974, Resolution 1974-14.19 It resolved, again, that Garfield High School would be
desegregated and "that every school that is de facto segregated shall, during the 1974-75
school year, be paired with a school without a significant minority enrollment.,,2o The
resolution limited the district to voluntary means to accomplish both, with encouragement
to establish "frequent informal contacts" between staffs at paired schools and to further
study student assignment to enhance ethnic balance. In the end, Board member Patt
Sutton described the resolution as little more than an effort "'to keep the wolf, in the form
ofthe civil rights groups in Seattle, from the door.",21 The District did not follow up
with many ofthe provisions?2
Behind this public position, two strands ofnarrative developed interpretations of
segregation and the role ofthe schools. I label these structuraVcuItural integrationist and
voluntary integrationist narratives. The third strand, represented by the Urban League
and the Central Area School Council (CASC), included a new rendition ofthe Triad Plan
with the same set ofnarrative assumptions and associations as the previous period and a
shift in CASC commitments away from its 1960s emphasis on local controL Roughly,
the structuraVcuItural constellation mapped onto the ideas within the Urban League's
Triad Plan narrative constellation and Bottomly's original Continuous Progress narrative.
The voluntary integrationist constellation contained many integral ideas from those
19 Ann LeGrelius Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation o/Seattle's Schools (Seattle:
Madrona Publishers, 1981).
20 "School Board Resolution 1974-14," reprinted in Ibid.
21 Patt Sutton quoted in Ibid., 41.
22 Ibid., 42.
114
opposed to mandatory desegregation in the late 1960s, yet significantly shifted the
emphasis away from individual rights to voluntary integration. I explore these ideas as
narrative constellations to establish the relational and political nature ofapparently
opposing ideas combined into the Seattle Plan in unexpected or unintended ways.
District Structural/Cultural Integrationist Reports
Between 1971 and 1974, the Seattle School District published multiple unofficial
reports to convey their positions on racial desegregation. These discursive configurations
set out a partial field of ideas from which The Seattle Plan was arranged. Most of these
went far beyond the public stance in Resolution 1974-14 and provide a deeper discursive
layer to the institutional reliance on voluntary racial change. Taken as a whole, the
narrative of this piece of the published record of the district reveals four points: 1) racial
segregation was detrimental to society, 2) the defmitive role of the public schools was to
end segregated schooling, 3) the role of the public schools was a social role because
schooling affected social, cultural, and economic opportunity structures, and 4) individual
property rights could not block remedies to segregated schooling.
These documents built a narrative with elements from the "mutual respect"
narrative of the 1960s school board and the structural/economic justification for
desegregation ofthe Seattle Urban League and Central Area voices. The narrative
connected the schools' public role to ameliorating segregation despite intent. In reports
published between 1971 and 1974, the district established their schools were segregated
or racially isolated, which had an academically, socially, and economically detrimental
115
effect on all students. To begin, publications began distancing segregation from the idea
that "this is a housing, not a school problem. ,,23 To paraphrase, reports argued that
housing segregation was irrelevant because the schools also had segregative effects on
children and their life chances.
The 1971 report "Why Desegregation in the Seattle Public Schools" rebutted such
"myths" that blame housing as fundamentally misleading. Intentionally and
unintentionally, the schools "have caused or permitted changes in attendance patterns
which create, compound, and reinforce racial isolation.,,24 Boundaries, school
construction, and changing attendance patterns were just a few direct ways schools
played a defmitive role in segregating its students. The report defmed these actions as
producing discriminatory effects, but it did not use these effects to define the schools'
role. Despite intention, the school had a role to play in ending racial isolation. Even if
housing was an original cause of segregated schooling, residential desegregation in terms
of fair housing laws could not succeed in solving school segregation because "only a
small proportion of urban Negroes could afford the housing thus open to their
occupancy.,,25 That is, neutral fair housing laws would most likely perpetuate racial
isolation without more directed public action. This established the schools' role in race
as one that went beyond simple amelioration ofdiscrimination.
23 Dale Goss,"Why Desegregation in the Seattle Public Schools," Planning and Evaluation Department,
Seattle Public Scho1s, March 1971, 330.014.c2, (SSD).
24 Ibid., 30.
25 Ibid., 31.
116
Following these arguments, district publications articulated a role for the public
schools that extended into "private" realm of economic opportunity. These justifications
linked desegregation to black students' future wellbeing by pushing the discourse of
equality of opportunity toward a vision of equality of results. For example, the "Why
Desegregation" report linked desegregation to academic and economic opportunity for
black children. The report went beyond received arguments that social class composition
had a negative effect on black children's academic performance and added significant
narrative about the effects of racial isolation on black children's future economic
opportunities. Economically, "one of the effects of racially isolated schooling for
Negroes is the reduction of their adult occupational and economic achievement.,,26 The
report cites the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights "Racial Isolation" report, which
showed, "Negro adults who attended segregated schools are less likely to hold white
collar jobs or to have substantial incomes than those who attended desegregated
schools.27 Therefore, reports challenged the separation of the public and economic
arenas.
Furthermore, reports consistently associated the structural event of racial isolation
to social and attitudinal consequences for both black and white children. The
perpetuation of black and white racial isolation was not merely an academic problem for
disadvantaged (black) students, but was fundamentally assumed to increase racism and
misunderstanding as well as levels of segregation. For example, the 1972 "Report of the
26 Ibid., 30-31.
27 Ibid.
117
Superintendent's Task Force on Desegregation Planning" argued, "Majority and minority
students... forced by geographic, cultural and socioeconomic circumstances to live, to
learn, and to develop apart, are not able to experience consistent and effective
contacts... ,,28 In another example from the report, "Why Desegregation," students
attending racially isolated schools develop harmful attitudes with long-term
consequences because they,
[... ] are likely to express fear, distrust, and hostility towards members of the other
race. White students who attended racially isolated schools are likely to oppose
measures designed to secure equal opportunity for Negroes. They are likely to
live in segregated neighborhoods, and to express a desire to continue living in
such neighborhoods...Negroes who attended segregated schools are likewise
likely to fear and distrust whites. These Negroes are not likely to live in
desegregated neighborhoods and they are likely to hesitate about sending their
children to desegregated schools.29
The report argued school segregation sustains racism beyond the school setting because
racially isolated schools "will shape racist attitudes on the basis ofwhich housing will
remain segregated for more generations.,,3o With this fundamental premise, the report
concluded that policies aimed to ameliorate segregation's effects (like compensatory
education or improving minority schools) could not suffice given the structural extent of
the problem.
Again, these linkages associate racial desegregation as necessary not simply to
ameliorate discrimination, but to change behavior in society. District reports articulated
28 "Report of the Superintendent's Task Force on Desegregation Planning," Planning and Evaluation
Department, Seattle Public Schools, February 23, 1972,9, 330.037.c2 (SSD).
29 Dale Goss,"Why Desegregation in the Seattle Public Schools," Planning and Evaluation Department,
Seattle Public Schols, March 1971,31, 330.014.c2, (SSD).
30 Ibid.
118
defmitions of segregation and desegregation in ways that prompt future visions of what
desegregation should look and how one could foresee measurements of "success." The
Citizens Committee for Quality Education (ccQEi 1 developed the most persistent
articulation combining these ideas surrounding segregation, desegregation, and the role of
the public schools. The CCQE "Final Report" included definitions ofdesegregation and
integration used in the fmal Seattle Plan in 1977 and arranged an important distinction
between desegregation and integration. CCQE incorporated defmitions ofdesegregation,
cultural integration, and structural integration that invoked the role ofthe public schools
as deeper than initial amelioration of segregation. They defined desegregation as,
"eliminating defacto segregated schools.32 Next the report defmed "cultural integration"
with an extension of mutual respect discourse as an essential component ofequal
opportunity. Cultural integration,
Refers to a situation in a school in which all staff and students acquire an
understanding and respect for the history, cultural heritage and contributions of all
ethnic groups so that there is mutual respect and cultural sharing. A culturally
integrated school is one in which children ofall ethnic groups not only have an
equal opportunity to acquire knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors necessary
to be effective persons but are, in fact, demonstrating these characteristics.33
31 The CCQE was formed by representatives of many Seattle civil organizations in 1971 and granted school
board sanction to examine all aspects of desegregation and present alternative plans to the Board. The
Board gave sanction to CCQE to develop as set of recommendations to promote cultural and structural
integration of the Seattle Public Schools by September 1973. (Citizen's Committee for Quality Education,
"Final Report: Planning.Recommendations for Cultural and Structural Integration," June 23, 1971, in
Accession AI979-01, A.A4.48, Box 19, Folder 3 (AWF».
32 Ibid., 1.
33 Ibid.
119
Cultural integration is measured when all students and staff demonstrated mutual respect
and mutual understanding of one another. This definition asserted the role of the public as
one of assuring, not simply encouraging, mutual and cultural respect.
Lastly, the report included "structural integration" as a key component in ending
segregation. The defmition made a critical leap extending equality of opportunity beyond
legal elimination of segregation. Structural integration, "Refers to a situation in a school
in which the staff members, students and parents of all ethnic groups hold statuses and
roles in the social structure of the school which are equivalent to those statuses occupied
by members of other ethnic groups.34 This defmition suggests that the elimination of
segregation could be concluded when students and staff, minority and majority, held
equal levels of power in the schools. The report offered limited discussion of percentage
goals and movement patterns, but highlighted the principles of community involvement,
the need for minority students to retain a clear sense of identity and community, the
importance of affirmative action and human relations training, and the need for intensive
support from both public and private entities.
The structural/cultural narrative incorporated and extended mutual respect
narratives in combination with fundamental visions of desegregation as essential for
ameliorating racism, harmful social attitudes, and to provide economic opportunity for
black students. Thus, the narrative assumed segregation as harmful despite intention,
desegregation as fundamental for social and academic reasons, and the schools as situated
to rectify these inequalities and provide opportunity for future citizens.
34 Ibid.
120
District Voluntary Integration Proponents
Actors within the school district also formulated an alternative narrative
constellation in terms of opposition to mandatory student assignment and busing in
reaction to the formulation of integration proposed above. This constellation represented
the District's public stance in board resolutions and the national voluntary integrationist
perspective. The voluntary integrationist narrative specifically placed aspects ofa child's
upbringing into two realms: the public realm of academic training and the private realm
of "social" development, which included economic opportunity, multi-racial awareness,
and cultural attitudes. The distinct division left the role of the schools open for
desegregation only if the schools actively discriminated. Without intention, racial
inequalities merely represented the result of private choices, either social or economic.
The narrative constellation of this perspective incorporated five key points: 1)
racial integration was a valuable social goal; 2) segregation was a result ofhousing
patterns, and therefore not a role of the public schools to definitively solve; 3) the role of
the schools as a public institution was to provide quality education; and 4) the
neighborhood was the fundamental organizing factor student assignment because it
represented community values; 5) economics, behavior, attitudes, and culture are not
public roles of the schools. This narrative constellation is most clearly displayed in the
"Minority Report" to the CCQE's Final Report of 1971. This document serves as an
important discursive site to analyze because it provides a glimpse into the contextualized
and interactive character of idea construction because we can see which ideas were
121
purposefully included or excluded by comparing their recommendations for inclusion and
omission for the Final Report.
The key shift from the desegregation opposition ofthe 1960s was that these actors
expressed desires for racial integration when it came about "naturally," that is by
individual choice. Individual choice in this case meant neighborhood location, assumed
as freely chosen. They did not directly oppose the idea that the Seattle schools were
segregated, but proposed integration as a valuable social goal not an educational legal
requirement. This argument was secured through two associations: the schools as a
public institution provide academic training and neighborhoods are fundamentally and
privately necessary entities.
In contrast to the structuraVcultural integrationist assumptions, academic training
meant "intellectual development," confmed to the '3 Rs,' per se. The Minority Report
states, "It needs to be borne in mind that the primary responsibility of the schooL at all
times, is to provide for the intellectual development ofall students. ,,35 Academic training
did not extend to "social" aspects as attitudes, socialization, mutual respect, and
economic position. The Minority Report recommended eliminating all paragraphs from
the Final Report that included the "structural" and "cultural" integration ofminority
students and parents: the integration of minority educators, the promotion of multi-racial
awareness, socio-economic issues, white-impacted schools, and changes in curriculum
related to ethnic pride or heritage.36 For example, it directly suggested the district
35 "Minority Report," in Ibid.
36 Ibid., 2.
122
"should only deal with racial desegregation and not with socio-economic
considerations.,,37 The Minority report also eliminated elaborate discussions ofwhite
impacted schools and the necessity for all students "to experience and participate in
programs designed to initiate and expand multi-racial awareness.,,38 Furthermore, the
report eliminated all sections on human relations training, and included the statement,
emphasized with underline in text: "Human Relations should be a living experience and
should not have to be taught to students as a subject.,,39
The private sphere (that is the home, family, church, community) was responsible
for these socialization goals, this "living experience." "The home, the church, and the
community have a shared responsibility to teach and develop moral and spiritual values
and to demonstrate standards ofcitizenship and principles ofdemocracy.,,4o Quality
education (academic 3 Rs) gained specific meaning as a public endeavor because the
neighborhood school, while intact, provided the other necessary components ofpreparing
youth for adulthood. In this way, neighborhood was not necessarily the place where
rights are constituted (as it was in C.A.M.B.'s arguments in 1970), but the place where
socialization and development are constituted. Presumably then, the home, church, and
community provide the tools to create democratic citizens. According to the Minority
Report, ''the home has the first and best opportunity as well as the first and greatest
37 "Minority Report," in Ibid., 2.
38 Ibid., 4.
39 "Minority Report" in Ibid., 5.
40 "Minority Report" in Ibid., 1.
123
responsibility for this development.,A! Therefore, the loss of the neighborhood school,
associated with desegregation, was antithetical to the values provided by the home and
community rather than antithetical to individual rights. The narrative associated goals
beyond academics with "social engineering," and disruptive to "natural" forms of
integration and the social strongholds of the home and church, aspects ofthe
neighborhood. As one citizen wrote in an op-ed, "artificial integration... maybe actually
harm(s) natural patterns of integration. ,,42 This distinction solidified the neighborhood as
the essential representation and distributor ofcommunity values, as a location that housed
the home, church, and welcoming neighbors.
This narrative could not rely simply on the separation ofpublic and private goals,
but had to develop specific equality goals as well. The voluntary integrationist narrative
asserted the role of the schools as treating all students equally in order to assure quality
education for all. To do this, the "Minority Report," for example, recommended uniform
standards ofachievement, vocational training, attendance requirements, and enforcement
of discipline.43 They felt that the only way to fairly distribute the necessity for
desegregation was through voluntary methods; these would provide equal opportunities
for any student to transfer as well as the opportunity for all students to decline to
participate.
41 "Minority Report" in Ibid., 1.
42 "Muir P. I.A. wants school taken out ofbussing plan," Seattle Times, 2 March 1978, C4.
43 "Minority Report," in Citizen's Committee for Quality Education, "Final Report: Planning
Recommendations for Cultural and Structural Integration," June 23, 1971,4, in A1979-01, A.A4.48, Box
19, Folder 3 (AWF).
124
Civil Rights Narrative Constellation
Generally, the civil rights narrative constellation maps onto the Urban League and
CACRC's positions from the 1960s. After the Middle School debacle, the civil rights
groups coalesced under the broad leadership of the Central Area School Council (CASC),
the NAACP, and the Church Council of Greater Seattle. 44 While the Urban League
remained an integral player in crafting desegregation policy, the CASC, NAACP, and
Church Council became the most active voices pushing this integrationist agenda.
Though the debate between the black separatists and integrationists remained throughout
the 1970s, the differences did not surface between 1975 and 1977.45 The shift in this
narrative took on an emphasis of "pluralism" and "multiculturalism" as an extension of
the multi-racial integrationist focus of the CACRC in the 1960s.
Essentially, the fundamental difference between this narrative and the voluntary
integrationist narrative is that integration, not equal chance, is the foundation of equal
education. Services to rectify previous disadvantages, such as compensatory education,
bilingual education, or after-school programs, are pieces ofan integration policy but not
the foundation. These groups built the narrative as a vision of an integrated, or
"pluralistic," society, promoted and ensured through an integrated educational system.
While there were differences in emphasis between the Church Council, CASC, and
NAACP, these groups shared the assumption that an integration policy was not a
44 See Appendix B for description of groups.
45 Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation ofSeattle's Schools.
125
temporary policy, but one based on a vision that fundamentally desired diversity and
pluralism to become components ofan education system for all students.
These actors primarily contested the voluntary integrationist narrative by
emphasizing equalizing the burden ofdesegregation and challenging the "neutrality" of
choice. Exceptions, foundational in voluntary programs, promoted inequity in
movement, different treatment for minority and white youth, and the idea that white
youth do not need an integration plan. The CASC argued the "wishy washy voluntary
programs" did not work and forced an unequal burden on minority children.46 The
Church Council also contested voluntary and "magnet" programs to show that these led
to inequality in educational opportunities and a burden on minority students. Voluntary
programs relied upon attraction and choice that inherently created inequality. For
example, the Church Council argued that plans that relying "heavily on 'Magnet-like'
programs to 'draw' student movement have the disadvantage ofcreating educational
inequality in the District ... [under these plan] a superior education would be provided for
about 20,000 students; an inferior education to 43,000 students.'.47 The NAACP
challenged voluntary policies that both disregarded the integrity of diversity and put the
burden on black students. Integrated education was necessary for all students, not simply
minority students. For example, the NAACP argued no area should be exempt from a
desegregation plan because an exemption of students and regions contradicts the basic
46 "Memo to Mr. Don Olson, President; and Members Seattle School Board, from Central Area School
Council" in "Desegregation: What is best for all of our children," by Ann Siqueland, Task Force on Racial
Justice in Education, Church Council of Greater Seattle," 63, 330.155.c3 (SSD).
47 "Action of the Board of Directors Church Council of Greater Seattle Regarding the Desegregation of the
Seattle Public Schools," in Ibid., 65.
126
foundation ofdesegregation as necessary "for the general health of the youth in
Seattle.,,48
The Urban League retained its focus on socio-economic integration while groups
like the Church Council shifted to an emphasis of multiculturalism. For example, almost
every time a representative ofthe Church Council spoke at school board meetings, they
affIrmed their philosophy ofpluralism, "The Church Council further affIrms the belief
that, in this rich and diverse world, each child deserves to grow up in a setting that will
increase his/her knowledge and appreciation ofvaried cultural traditions.,,49 This multi-
cultural philosophy ofpluralism remained the foundation of their desegregation proposals
and attracted multiple other groups under their coalition including the Black United
Clergy for Action, and the Asian-American Education Association.
Assessing the Narratives
The three competing narrative constellations organized distinct, yet interacting,
sets of concepts about what racial segregation meant in Seattle, the role of the schools,
and the meaning ofracial equality. Within the assumptions and recommendations related
to each of these issues, the narrative constellations expressed primary cleavages within
expressions ofwhat racial inequality and ending racial inequality meant in the public
schools. One common thread that signified the changing terrain ofconflict in Seattle was
the emphasis given to integration, whether voluntary or mandatory.
48 Ibid.
49 Record 73, 22 December 1976,233 (SSR). Observed in Records between 1975 and 1977.
127
Both the structural/cultural integrationist and civil rights narrative constellations
associated the concepts together in ways that collapsed any divisions between the public
schools and social or economic realms. The connections relied on assumptions that
segregation existed and caused lack ofopportunity and unequal education for minority
students while also perpetuating societal racism. Furthermore, segregation was
umealistic for society because ofthe growing diversity. Desegregation, then, was a
social and fundamental necessity for both white and black to end past and future racism
and promote equal life opportunities. The foundational role ofthe schools remains
academic training, yet the idea ofacademic training was connected to cultural equality
and awareness (multiculturalism, mutual respect) for all students, and economic
opportunity for black children in adulthood. The central difference between the District's
structural/cultural integrationists and the civil rights civic actors can be pictured as
differences in the strength of bonds between similar ideas. Civil rights actors began with
a stronger focus on alleviating the burden ofdesegregation from black students and
therefore primarily emphasized the necessity of integration for all students. While they
also placed a great emphasis on multiculturalism and pluralism as the foundation for the
necessity for societal integration, they also placed more specific focus on the socio-
economic role ofdesegregation. Again, the Urban League's new version of the Triad
Plan developed in 1977, retained socio-economic integration as ofequal importance with
racial integration. Following the logic ofeconomic inequality, civil rights actors assigned
the neighborhood as a source of inequality, directly revealing its socially defined nature
as essentially problematic for the public endeavor ofschooling.
128
The voluntary integrationist narrative constellation relied upon assigning the
"private" realm to include economic opportunity, cultural awareness, and social learning.
Essentially their entire narrative constellation rested on the connection between racial
segregation and discriminatory intent. Given school segregation was a result ofhousing
segregation, school integration was beyond the role of the schools. The assumption that
housing segregation should only be addressed through amelioration of discriminatory real
estate practices further relied upon the concurrent articulation of the neighborhood as a
naturalized social good. As the claim ofneighborhoods as a site ofrights had already lost
legitimacy, the security of the neighborhood as the organizing factor for the schools
depended upon are-assignment of its value. For the voluntary integrationist narrative,
the fundamentality ofthe neighborhood was based in its vision as the realm for
socialization. Therefore, disruptions ofthe neighborhood then would disrupt the
foundational place of social training for children. The character of this move became a
pervasive paradox. The public affirmation and naturalization of the boundary between
neighborhoods and schools hid its constructed character and also showed the power of its
taken-for-grantedness that allowed actors to frame the neighborhood as a naturally
"private" entity out of the reach ofpublic meddling.
Building a Discursive Coalition
This section explores how Seattle actors mobilized these narrative constellations
in policy debates to address the situation of racial segregation in Seattle. Key
developments provided the impetus for the School Board and city actors to coalesce and
129
formulate a legitimate desegregation plan in 1977. The District initially responded to the
reports analyzed above with no immediate action. Yet, after Seattle citizens dealt a
severe blow to the District's budget with a double-levy defeat in 1975, the Board had to
seek other avenues of funding. 50 The District applied for Emergency School Aid Act
(ESAA) funds in order to meet the deficit caused by the double-levy loss. This action led
to a HEW investigation ofvarious aspects of segregation within Seattle's schools, after
which the District and city establishment anticipated the probability ofcourt intervention
if they did not take direct actions to solve segregation. With the fear of court order,
invested actors began to coalesce into various groups and task forces in order to solve
segregation before the courts intervened. This section explores the events and the way
central actors interpreted and responded to the events.
Therefore, the Seattle Plan resulted from concrete imperatives that forced city
actors to address segregation in ways they previously had not. However, the meaning of
the Seattle Plan resulted from their intense interactions. Actors came to the table with
specific interpretations and expressions ofrace and desegregation, their narrative
constellations. When the actors deliberated within multiple committee meetings, school
board meetings, public forums and personal communications, we can see how certain
connections developed within the narrative constellations were activated and others de-
50 The only other double levy loss happened in 1959. Levies are submitted twice to the voters ifnecessary,
and in these cases were defeated twice (Siqueland 31). At this time, Seattle relied on voter-approved levies
to cover at least half of the cost of running schools (Cameron, 10). The district's enrollment had also been
in decline since 1969, another source of lost revenue. In 1962, District enrollment peaked at over 100,000
and by 1977 fell below 60,000 for the fIrst time since the late 1940s, Cameron 11. Between 1973 and
1974, District enrollment declined by 6.3%, which included a 2.4% decline in black student enrollment
("Racial Distribution of Seattle School District Students," in James F. Page, "The Plan for the Reduction
and Elimination of Minority Group Isolation in Seattle Public Schools." Prepared for purposes of
Documenting Eligibility to Apply Under Title vn of the Emergency School Aid Act, 16 May 1975. Seattle
School District Published Material, 330.212 (SSD)).
..----------------~- --
130
emphasized. We can also see how some connections could bring together actors who
appeared to have different goals.
Tlte Reality ofCourt Intervention
The reality of court intervention appeared possible because of the District's
negotiations with the Department ofHealth, Education, and Welfare (HEW). These
events led to concerns over the city's reception ofcourt-ordered intervention. Would this
please the black community, who had borne the burden ofdesegregation up until now?
Would the white community lash out against busing? In response to these fears, the
District articulated their reticence to wait for a court order with a specific narrative
focused on the "uniqueness" ofSeatlle and its multicultural character.
The District applied for Emergency School Aid Act (Title VII) funds in the spring
of 1975.51 Despite the lack of political will to further desegregation, they sent an
application to HEW for funding to extend their voluntary efforts. They received funds
pending HEW investigation. In 1975, a HEW investigation found the District out of
compliance with the civil rights assurances the District had agreed to in order to receive
Emergency School Aid Act funds, related to bi-lingual education and minority-staff
desegregation.52 HEW withdrew the funds until the District complied with the provisions
to transfer minority teachers out of inner-city schools (primarily in the Southeast area of
51 James Page, "The Plan for the Reduction and Elimination of Minority Group Isolation in Seattle Public
Schools, Prepared for purposes of documenting eligibility to apply under Title VII of the Emergency
School Aid Act, 16 May 1975,2, in 330.212 (SSD).
52 Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation ofSeattle's Schools.
131
Seattle). Specifically, HEW demanded 16% minority teachers in each school. The
district decided to redistribute the relatively small number of minority teachers
throughout the district, rather than hiring additional minority teachers. At the end of
these negotiations, HEW indicated it would be looking at student-assignment policy next.
In May 1976, the Seattle Times reported that the Office ofCivil Rights might pursue a
full-scale civil rights investigation in the fall. IfHEW found the District out of
compliance in the area of student assignment, the doors would be open to initiate
complaints that most likely could result with a court order to desegregate.53
Many District and city actors watched the violence in Boston and other cities
under court order and decided this was something to avoid in Seattle. Court order meant
a loss oflocal control over their schools and over specific desegregation plans. Their
negotiations with HEW left the District worried about the likelihood of federal mandates
garnering full support from Seattle's vast array of interests. Richard Andrews, chair of
the new District-Wide Advisory Committee (DWAC), warned ofa court ordered or HEW
determined desegregation plan, "It is not enough to simply desegregate the Seattle Public
Schools but rather the plan in Seattle must be tailor made to accommodate the uniqueness
ofSeattle.,,54 Andrews was concerned because ofthe process by which HEW decided the
district had to comply with federal regulations. He referred to assigning 16% minority
teachers at each school as an "archaic melting pot theory.,,55 District legal counsel, Gary
53 Ibid., Chapters 4-5.
54 Richard Andrews quoted in Ibid.
55 Ibid.
132
Little, warned the Board, "'what we have gone through on bilingual and staff transfers is
a curtain raiser to what we will go through in the fall. ",56
Another concern reflected the language at both federal and court level that limited
desegregation to the "reduction of minority group isolation." If followed exactly, federal
requirements would lead Seattle to revisit the division created between the integrationists
and separatists in the late 1960s because the focus on minority student movement
produced a burden on black students. Significantly as well, the focus on minority student
movement and the melting pot theory of redistribution did not incorporate a multi-
cultural philosophy of integration and the assurance of cultural identification. The lack of
attention to these assurances endangered public support and heightened the likelihood
that Seattle could be Boston.57
In 1976, the ACLU, aligned with the NAACP, Urban League, and the Church
Council of Greater Seattle, began discussion to pursue a lawsuit against the District in
1976. At this point, it became clear to the ACLU that Superintendent Moberly would be
uncooperative and pursued litigation. David Harrison, the Executive Director recalled,
"'I don't think anyone could maintain that without that threat the Board would have
adopted a mandatory desegregation plan. ",58 Therefore, they prepared for the lawsuit and
56 Little, quoted in Ibid.,32, 63. For example, if the District implemented desegregation according to strict
redistribution ofpercentages (as staff desegregation had to happen), the schools in Seattle would end up
with 17% black students, 9% Asian students, and 3% each Native American and Hispanic students.
57 Ibid., Chapter 4.
58 Harrison quoted in Ibid., 89.
133
communicated extensively with all city groups to keep everyone possible informed of the
potential action.
Overall, these fears fed into a sense of urgency for local control rather than having
either HEW or the courts decide what Seattle's desegregation would look like. 59 This
urgency could be seen in quick formation of many committees and task forces within the
interested civic groups in town. The Church Council of Greater Seattle formed a Task
Force on Racial Justice. The ACLU formed a Desegregation Task Force. Seattle Mayor
Wes Uhlman formed his own committees within the planning department to research and
review what was happening throughout the country. The non-profit corporation, the
Coalition for Quality Integrated Education (CQIE) and the Voluntary Racial Transfer
Steering Committee also worked with the school administration and community to assist
desegregation efforts and recruit voluntary transfers. In addition to DWAC, new
Superintendent Dr. David Moberly also set up an office of desegregation planning upon
appointment in 1976, though at this time the committee was to embark only on voluntary
plans.
Eventually, the Chamber of Commerce and the Municipal League also set up their
own task forces to explore desegregation strategies and to ensure their voice in decision-
making. These city organizations developed committees to address desegregation issues
to "catch up" with the groups like the NAACP and ACLU. The most prominent
desegregation representative of the Chamber, Shan Mullin, contacted the members of
these groups as well as the Church Council in 1976 asking them to postpone the suit
59 See Ibid., 87.
134
because, "'I felt that we should not assume that the only way to desegregate was to have
the school district fight it out in court,'" Mullin recalled.6o Mullin helped to delay court
order and bought more time for the Chamber and Municipal League to enter the decision-
making processes in the District. With this time, they were able to establish
communication networks to build trust among the active city groups and to prevent
potential adversaries from misunderstanding each other.61
This citywide network of people working on desegregation gathered a sort of
momentum that pushed desegregation along. At this time, David Harrison recalled,
"'every conceivable item that was happening in the city on desegregation was open for
discussion. ",62 Each group had a semi-stated orientation towards desegregation, for
example the Chamber did not desire mandatory busing from the outset. However, these
committees did not represent fixed positions but ended up as spaces where interpretations
and understandings about desegregation developed continually within the city.
Institutional Spacefor a Discursive Coalition
The most central group composed of city-based, citizen, and school district actors
was the District-Wide Advisory Committee (DWAC), which was formed in 1975 and
reported to the Superintendent. DWAC began as a group ofhighly committed
integrationists who challenged the District to actively seek an end to segregation and
developed into a common forum for widespread views on desegregation. DWAC had
60 Mullin, quoted in Ibid., 106.
61 Ibid., 130. The most significant of these groups was the No-Name Committee
62 Harrison quoted in Ibid., 91.
135
tried to challenge the District continuously since 1974, but Moberly's fIrst act towards
desegregation was another voluntary plan in 1976, the Magnet Plan. The District created
DWAC with the application for ESAA, with its charter revised in 1975 to expand
responsibilities to advising School Board and Superintendent.63 Members were recruited
city-wide, from over sixty organizations representing education, ethnic, and community
groups. Active membership included people from the NAACP, CQIE, ACLU, CASC,
Church Council, League of Women Voters, Asian-American Education Association, and
the Parent-Teacher-Student Association (PTSA). In the fInal throes ofdesegregation
planning, the Municipal League and Chamber ofCommerce also sent representatives to
DWAC. They became a very uniquely committed group with a high level ofexpertise.64
DWAC's research between 1974 and 1976 did not cause immediate action on the
part of the District, but it began "to construct a framework of ideas within which a unifIed
community approach to desegregation could be developed.,,65 The unique space allowed
actors to trouble the assumptions and concepts used by the District to avoid serious
desegregation talks and united actors ofwidely different original interests. Dan Levant
was elected its fIrst chairperson and took it upon himself to make numerous appearances
before the School Board. Levant describes the early actions ofDWAC in an atmosphere
driven by an unsupportive Superintendent and their administrations, "'we were blasting
the school district out of its comfort zone, into a very uncomfortable area. The intention
was to make the school district do something it didn't want to do, and you could only do
63 Ibid., 43.
64 Ibid" 44.
65 Ibid., 44.
136
that by making it too uncomfortable for the district to stay where it was. ",66 Levant met
with Dr. Moberly immediately after he was appointed superintendent, and quickly
realized that Moberly would not pursue desegregation any more quickly than
Superintendent Troxel had. Levant saw the role of DWAC as there to force the District,
with the backing of a city-wide group ofactors, to face the problem ofdesegregation, the
likelihood ofcourt order, and the necessity to develop a policy prior to lawsuit.
At this time, DWAC met regularly and brought one issue after another to the
attention of the School Board. Despite this, Moberly directed DWAC and the District's
Desegregation/Integration Committee to consider only voluntary desegregation strategies
for the 1977-1978 school year after DWAC had put together report after report
demonstrating the ineffectiveness of voluntary-only measures. Despite the growing
number of citywide advisory committees, Dr. Moberly's fIrst act on desegregation came
from within his small circle ofdecision-makers within the administration.
The chair ofthe Desegregation/Integration Committee, William Maynard,
produced a four-page "Magnet Plan" to the Board and DWAC in February 1977.67 It
emphasized choice and control, as it offered educational options to encourage students to
enroll in Magnet schools "because they want to, not because they have to.,,68 The
Magnet Plan reflected the voluntary integrationist narrative. It posed mandatory
assignment against quality education in statements like "Seattle Public Schools would
66 Levant quoted in Ibid., 43.
67 Ibid., 49.
68 "Seattle Public Schools 1977-78 MAGNET PROGRAMS and Voluntary Racial Transfer Program:
Information and Application," 4, in 330.005 (SSD).
----------- ----- ------
137
prefer to accomplish desegregation through educationally sound voluntary programs
rather than mandatory assignment.,,69 By associating voluntary methods with
"educationally sound" methods, the statement separated mandatory assignment from
quality education. The Magnet Plan included an emphasis on pluralism and diversity, but
connected these values as a parental choice. They lamented the fact that Seattle had
several racially segregated neighborhoods "where students cannot establish relationships
that reflect the multi-ethnic world in which they must function as adults," then did not
assume a role to play other than providing a choice for students "of all ethnic groups to
learn together.,,70 Again, this association noted the benefits ofdiversity without taking on
the urgent responsibility to end segregation.
The Board approved the Magnet Plan's implementation for the fall of 1977.
Some on the Board expressed hope. Bleakney stated her beliefthat it had "the potential
for one of the soundest educational advantages which could be offered to children of
Seattle.,,7! Ellen Roe lauded magnet schools as representing "options that will give ALL
parents and students educational choices." The Chamber of Commerce and Municipal
League publicly supported the plan. But the support ended there. DWAC as well as
many on the Desegregation/Integration committee opposed the magnet plan for a variety
of reasons discussed below. The idea ignited a fire ofdebate and reconsideration within
committees citywide, where they began to seriously consider a new arrangement of ideas
69 Ibid., 5.
70 Ibid., 5.
7] Record 73, 11 May 1977 (SSR).
138
in order to meet federal guidelines and implement a locally supported desegregation
policy.
Many responded to the Magnet Plan with ferocity. Groups such as the Central
Area School Council and the Urban League took issue with the values embedded in the
concept that assumed that white parents should be enticed in order to participate to end
racial segregation. Bleakney noted that some thought ofthe Magnet program as an
"escape routes for whites.',72 The Central Area School Council blasted the District for
the plan with a conclusion, "Magnets sound like advertising,,,73 For the Urban League,
"programs such as the 'magnet plan' approach the problem backwards" with the "premise
is that people should be enticed into integration under the guise of special education
opportunities,,74 Others went so far as to call the program inherently racist. One
sentiment came from a concerned parent at a Board meeting who was against magnet
schools because they reinforced racist attitudes and increased educational inequality_75
The Joint Advisory Commission on Education even said magnets "smacked of
stereotyping," calling "the very idea that there are such things as 'Black-oriented options'
and 'White-oriented options' is ... inherently racist.,,76 Similarly, DWAC saw that "as a
concept it is not inherently racist, but rather has been operationalized in racist ways (viz.,
72 "Memo from Bleakney to School Board," May 17,1977, in A98-13, Box 9 (LCF).
, 73 Central Area School Council to Seattle School District, July 1977 in A2005-15, Box 9 (AWF).
74 "Seattle Urban League: Triad Plan Summary," 7, Accession 607-7, Box 42, Folder #25, Seattle Urban
League Records, University of Washington Libraries (Herafter cited as SUL).
75 Record 73, 18 January 1977 (SSR).
76 Letter to School Board President Don Olson from Tod A. Daniels, Chairman JACE 16 February 1977,
Accession A2005-15, Box 10, Folder "Desegregation JACE," (AWF).
139
closing a Black school and giving Black children options in white schools).,,77
Furthermore, voluntary plans put the burden on black students once again. In this sense,
voluntary programs were "one-way" programs where black students tended to transfer
out of the Central Area, with the number of white students transferring in decreased since
the peak year of 1968-70.78 DWAC explained one of the "particularly deleterious
effects" was putting the burden on black student movement. 79
This independent act alienated many on DWAC who felt Moberly disregarded the
public process. The particularly fiery Levant used this opportunity to publicly resign as a
powerful political statement against the Magnet Plan. "'I can't say I was surprised,'
recalled Levant, 'but. ..I was outraged by the brutality ofthe superintendent imposing the
Magnet Plan in defiance ofeverybody else who was working on desegregation. ",80
While Levant half-expected the rest ofDWAC to resign, they remained and were able to
recruit a new chair in 1977, Dr. Richard Andrews, who proved a politically savvy
organizer. Andrews was a professor ofeducational administration at University of
Washington and had chaired the Urban League's education committee. Andrews had
been active in public school issues as a citizen advocate and understood the necessity of
77 "Desegregation Plan Criteria," developed by the Desegregation Advisory Committee, February 28, 1977,
in memo from Richard L. Andrews to Cheryl Bleakney, in memo from Bleakney to Board Members,
March 7, 1977, Accession A98-13, Box 9 (LCF).
78 Memo from Robert L. Williams, RE: report on the Status of the voluntary racial transfer program,"
January 6,1976, Accession 1358-007, Box 38, Folder #20, University of Washington Libraries, Church
Council of Greater Seattle (Hereafter cited as CCS).
79 "Desegregation Plan Criteria," developed by the Desegregation Advisory Committee, February 28, 1977,
in memo from Richard L. Andrews to Cheryl Bleakney, in memo from Bleakney to Board Members,
March 7, 1977, Accession A98-13, Box 9 (LCF).
80 Levant, quoted in Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation ofSeattle's Schools.
140
working with the administration as well as the School Board ifDWAC wanted to pass a
stronger desegregation proposal. Under Andrews, DWAC slowly developed a better
working relationship with Moberly and then a strong reputation in the city when the
Chamber and Municipal League sent representatives to meetings. When DWAC
included members from the Chamber of Commerce, Municipal League, proposals that
were not supported were not legitimate proposals.
This voluntary strategy prompted both the ACLU and the Seattle NAACP to
expand its group ofplaintiffs. The ACLU did not consider the Magnet Plan, sufficient in
any way. They filed an official complaint with HEW on May 10, 1977 alleging there was
racial imbalance and the District had ''taken action which it knew, or should have known,
would have segregative results in continuing or intensifying racial segregation in the
Seattle Public Schools."sl The action they referred to included school policies relating to
boundary construction, school staffmg, and issues associated with the Magnet Plan.
Political Organizingfor a Discursive Coalition
After the Magnet vote in February 1977, the Board continued to dance around the
topic of definitive planning and could not agree on a timetable and defmition ofwhat it
was they wanted to eliminate. The groups demanding explicit timetables and defmitions
were DWAC, NAACP, ACLU, Church Council, CASC, and three board members
(Bleakney, Suzanne Hittman, and Dorothy Hollingsworth). Generally, the Chamber of
81 Letter from Marlaina Kiner, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to Dr. Moberly, May 10.
1977, Acession A98-13, Box 9 (LeF).
141
Commerce and "Downtown" group and the rest of the Board did not want to commit to a
timetable and defmition because, as board member Richard Alexander said he "could not
agree to giving a time table if that time table literally rips this city apart so that massive
White flight out of this city is created and all that is left are minorities.,,82 Ellen Roe also
felt "that adopting [a definition and timetable] is a threat to the public and while not all
parts of the city were involved in past experiences with mandatory assignments,
repeatedly they have been threatened with such methods.,,83
The imminent court order was not the only reason for the upswing of support of
the major civic groups. Three actors played integral roles in building a citywide coalition
that could support the public's will to initiate desegregation that could even included
busing. In addition to the idea generation and organizational leadership provided by Dr.
Richard Andrews and DWAC and various civic organizations, Superintendent David
Moberly, Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlman, and Board member Cheryl Bleakney were critical
political entrepreneurs who organized the most powerful interests in town- the business
community. All understood that the involvement and support of the Chamber and
Municipal League was necessary to guarantee the support of the civic and business
leaders in Seattle. Though these four figures began with different predispositions, their
work to organize the city bolstered a supportive coalition.
By February 1977, Mayor Uhlman had decided that the only way for Seattle to
desegregate would be with mandatory student assignment. Uhlman was seen as a
82 Alexander in Record 73, May 11, 1977, 551 (SSR).
83 Roe in Record 73, May 11, 1977,553 (SSR).
142
uniquely liberal mayor when he was elected in 1969. He had been a member of the
Washington State Legislature in the late 1960s and had proposed an inter-district
desegregation plan in 1967 that included busing. His two sons had both participated in
the voluntary racial transfer program. School Board Member Cheryl Bleakney recalled
the crucial role Uhlman played in a volatile time, "the city hall, at least the mayor, were
extremely helpful. I think they were the ones who helped pull along others. Our fear was
of course public reaction and we have elections every couple years. I was scared to death
when we fIrst decided to do it.,,84 Through research and contacts with other school
districts, in early February 1977 Uhlman decided that a voluntary plan would not solve
the problem, and would certainly not satisfy the groups considering the lawsuit.85
Uhlman had been noticing, "History shows in other cities where you had some outside
entity, other than the community, running the school system, you had a problem.,,86
Uhlman went to Moberly and Mullin of the Chamber and said, "Ifwe don't do anything,
if you don't get involved, we can expect destruction ofproperty.,,87
Moberly always assumed that the District would go to court, "and that the
voluntary magnet programs were only buying the district time.,,88 Nevertheless,
Moberly's most celebrated move was how he gathered the support of the business
community, despite his personal commitment, for the eventual Seattle Plan that
84 Cheryl Bleakney, interview with author, Eugene, OR., tape recording 23 September 2008.
85 Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation o/Seattle's Schools.
86 Uhlman quoted in Ibid., 96.
87 Uhlman quoted in Ibid., 102.
88 "School Board expected to OK milestone Seattle Plan," Seattle Times, 11 December 1977, A7.
143
incorporated mandatory busing. Moberly cultivated a significant relationship with the
Chamber and the Municipal League from the get-go, so '''they would not be in the mode
ofreacting somewhere down the pike.",89 Many School Board Members retrospectively
commended Moberly's role in bringing the city together. Patt Sutton recalled, "He
certainly did a great job of putting everything together. It was a combination ofreligious
groups, business people ... a lot of behind-the-scenes work was necessary.,,90 Bleakney
also noted Moberly's leadership role, "we were lucky to have him. I don't think he
wanted to go into desegregation. He took over and did it in a very conscientious way."
When asked why the Chamber supported the plan when they did, Bleakney explained the
surprising nature of their support, "I don't know why the Chamber came along. I know
they liked Dave Moberly, maybe he brought them along. It's not something I would have
expected ahead oftime.,,91 In an interview with David Moberly, he noted his part as
well: "I think the role I had was I was able to pull together various groups, including the
Chamber, and the City, and the Mayor's office, and to be a part ofthe planning and
overview and [get them] willing to come out publicly and accept [desegregation].,,92 He
doubted the Board would have voted without the support of the Chamber, "because three
89 Moberly quoted in Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation ofSeattle's Schools.
90 Patt Sutton, phone interview with author, Eugene, OR., tape recording, 18 November 2007.
91 Cheryl Bleakney, phone interview with author, Eugene, OR., tape recording, 23 September 2008.
92 David Moberly, phone interview with author, Eugene, OR., tape recording,S September 2007.
----------------
144
members ofthat board [Don Olson, Patt Sutton, and Richard Alexander] were swayed by
the city and by the Chamber.,,93
Without the Chamber and Municipal League fIrmly committing their political
resources to the District, the Board remained reticent to advocate for specific policies.
Andrews and Bleakney also played critical roles in opening space for these actors to
interact together. In a personal interview, Dr. Moberly noted the work ofDick Andrews,
. "He played a very key ro Ie and was very good at working with the advisory group. Even
though he tended to be on the liberal end of the spectrum, he could relate to the
Downtown group. He could come in, and close the door, and let his hair down, and I
could do the same.,,94 In an act of frustration in late May 1977, Board member Cheryl
Bleakney provided an impetus for the city and District to initiate clear proposals.
Bleakney, a long-time supporter ofdesegregation who volunteered her own children for
the Voluntary Racial Transfer plan in the 1970s, made her strongest push for more
immediate action and wrote a proposal to be published in the newspaper that would call
for a defInition ofracial imbalance and a timetable to eliminate it. Bleakney decided to
write this letter to the paper after the multiple sessions the Board had with the NAACP
and ACLU about the impending lawsuit (fIled May 10,1977). In a memo written to the
Board on May 17, Bleakney expressed her purpose in sending this letter to the press: ''to
give the Board one last chance to express a strong enough commitment to desegregation
93 Ibid.
94 Ibid.
145
to avoid litigation.,,95 She knew it would cause ripples, "I knew what I was doing and I
was scared stiff ,,96
Bleakney's news column was the frrst significant public stride since 1970 to
blatantly demonstrate the inevitability of a mandatory framework for desegregation. Up
to this point, it was likely that the public's relative calm resulted from the lack of
defmitive stance, timetable and definition. However, Bleakney could not sit satisfied
with the lack ofsteps needed to accomplish desegregation, simply for fear of levy loss or
public backlash. In memo to the school board following this column, Bleakney
expressed frustration with the years of sidestepping desegregation from fear of future
levy losses and public confrontation.97 Sarcastically, she lamented their unwillingness to
listen to Suzanne Hittman's warnings in 1976 about the more immediate need for long-
term desegregation planning, when the rest ofthe Board would responded-- "mustn't hurt
the levy!" They had all feared the potential levy loss and confrontation with Moberly,
"We were in that box, and it would have taken a major confrontation with the
Superintendent to get out of it.,,98
At the Board meeting the day after the press release, May 18, 1977, Bleakney's
motion for a defmition and timetable was tabled, yet again. Other Board members,
including Board president Don Olson, were upset about her brazen press release and did
95 "Memo from Cheryl Bleakney to School Board Members, May 17, 1977, Accession A98-13, Box 9
(LCF).
96 Bleakney quoted in Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation ofSeattle's Schools.
97 "Memo from Cheryl Bleakney to School Board Members," May 17, 1977, Accession A98-13, Box 9
(LCF).
98 Ibid.
146
not think the Board should pursue mandatory measures as of yet. Olson and
Superintendent Moberly continued to push for purely voluntary measures, such as the
Magnet Plan. Both assumed the District would go to court and deal with mandatory
assignment after that. Olson felt they could "'have a plan in place that would be good
enough that it would be defensible in the courts, and that we could term it
"voluntary."",99
With a lack of responsiveness from Moberly and the Board, Bleakney directly
asked for help from the city, specifically the sympathetic Mayor Uhlman's office, and
heard about a letter ofjoint support being written to the Board from the City of Seattle,
Chamber of Commerce, Municipal League, and Urban League. This letter of support for
arrived for the Board May 20, 1977. Two days prior to the joint letter (one day after
Bleakney's memo was published) the Seattle Post-Intelligencer publicly endorsed
desegregation planning through civic engagement and city leadership, "to get
desegregation started- and fmished." The P-I specifically asked the civic and
government officials, including the Chamber of Commerce, churches, and news media to
cooperate and support school officials. The editorial board framed their position as
needing to avoid court order, but also to act as a "progressive and enlightened city" to
join together to end segregation, an "evil to the children segregated."lOO
In a letter from the key actors of the "Downtown Group," the City, Chamber,
Municipal League and Urban League declared, ''united support for your adoption of a
99 Don Olson quoted in Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation o/Seattle's Schools.
100 "City Must Guarantee Quality Education," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 18 May 1977.
147
defmition ofracial isolation and measurable goals leading to the elimination of racial
isolation in the Seattle Public Schools, prior to a Court ordered and mandated
desegregation remedy."IOI The Chamber of Commerce and the Municipal League had
endorsed the Magnet Plan, but also understood the legal vulnerability of the school
district. Their work with DWAC and their own committees' research provided them
grounds for pushing desegregation towards a specific vision with a timetable and
defmition. The letter stressed the "importance and preferability" of locally derived
solutions. 102 The media reported the letter as "pressure ... to act to get a desegregation
plan of its own underway before one is forced on it by a federal court.,,103
In the Downtown group's letter, they expressed a sense of inevitability of
desegregation and the need for community cooperation to ensure a smooth transition.
According to Jerry Skutt of the Municipal League, the primary intent of the letter was to
avoid possible lawsuit, and "In no case, to my knowledge, did we discuss the how-toS."I04
Shan Mullin (Chamber) and Mark Cooper (Municipal League) also expected the fmal
plan to be voluntary with the possibility of mandatory back-up measures. 105
101 "Joint letter to Mr. Don Olson, from: The Municipal League, The Chamber of Commerce, The City of
Seattle, and The Urban League," 20 May 1977, Accession A2005-l5, Box 9 (AWF).
102 "Weekly newsletter," Seattle Business, 30 May 1977, Vol. 62, No. 21
103 Ibid., "Civic Leaders Aid Desegregation Effort," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 25 May 1977.
104 Jerry Skutt quoted in Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation o/Seattle's Schools.
105Ibid.,11l.
148
Nevertheless, the news reported only five days later that "forced integration" was an
almost certainty. 106
The Coalition is Built
These organizing acts helped to establish grounds for a discursive coalition to join
around certain points of emphasis: visions of local control and city pride in solving
segregation. This provided a bridge between the Downtown group and strict
integrationist proponents like the Urban League and Church Council. If it were not for
the public support of the "Downtown" elites, the Board would not have had the political
will to implement a desegregation plan beyond voluntary methods. The Board was able
to produce a majority vote on June 8, 1977 in favor of defming racial imbalance and a
timetable for elimination. The letter was the deciding factor for Olson who said that
without the threat of lawsuit, there would not have been the letter, which caused him to
change his vote. He recalled,
'Here's a letter signed by some of the more conservative people in town, namely
the Municipal League and the Chamber of Commerce. They're not claiming to be
liberals by any definition. Here we have these two organizations saying, "Do
more." So we were being pushed at that point. I wasn't going to take them on
and say, "You're wrong, and I'm right.'"107
This support reflected a shift in citywide support not for anything specific yet, but to
deliberate about the shape desegregation was to take. Olson noticed, "people's attitudes
toward desegregation have changed... a critical point has been reached where the
106 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 25 May 1977, "Forced Integration Probably-Moberly"
107 Don Olson quoted in Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation o/Seattle's Schools.
149
majority of people are supportive ofdesegregation efforts.,,108 In the same meeting,
Hittman reflected "that the Seattle School District is in an enviable position with regard
to most school districts," given this amount ofcitywide support without being in COurt.109
One could argue that the threat ofcourt order allowed the more conservative
institutions to bow to the liberal groups like the ACLU and NAACP in order to maintain
city pride and enact a plan without the courts. However, this cannot explain the particular
character ofcoalition and the desegregation policy and its points ofemphasis,
prioritizations, and narrative constructions of the elements ofdesegregation. The coalition
was a political paradox that revealed multiple levels ofdeep contradictions brought
together by an array ofconservative and liberal city groups that joined disparate ideas, at
times in seemingly complementary ways, into one policy.
In sum, these events, spaces, and organizing acts built the foundation for a
possible coalition of actors to deliberate on what Seattle should do about segregated
schools. The coalition ofactors began to settle, but at this point their differences
outweighed their possible connections. While they sat in committees separately and
together discussing desegregation, these actors had not yet activated connections between
them in ways to arrange policy.
These organizing actions established a citywide commitment to at least think
about desegregation under the assumption that the schools had to take some type of
definitive action. They established the groundwork for the various narrative
108 Don Olson in Record 73, May 25, 1977,565 (SSR).
109 Suzanne Hittman in Record 73, May 25, 1977, 565 (SSR).
150
constellations to be used in relationship to each other, to articulate policy solutions
directly in response to other articulations. In this way, the development of civic capacity
to implement a desegregation policy was the development of narrative demand to
articulate ideas with the understanding that policy had to be developed. At fIrst, the city
committees developed policies with little reference or collaboration with other
committees. But, after further political organizing actions in the late spring of 1977, the
city and District began the process of narrative coalescing within the institutional space
ofDWAC.
Discursive Coalescing through Deliberation
With little institutionalized connection between city institutions and the District
and such disagreement, the coalition was far from expected. This discursive coalition's
power and meaning for policy can be most accurately depicted in terms of how actors
combined ideas in a way that produced narrative unity from multiple and competing
narrative constructions of the problems associated with segregation. The School Board
and the citywide coalition of actors spent the entire summer and fall of 1977 piecing
together a desegregation plan that was approved in December 1977. The debates over
defInitions, prioritizations, reasons, and policy goals displayed policy creation that
utilized the decades of narrative constellations, piecing them together in new ways in
order to create an acceptable policy for all Seattle. Through committee work, school
board meetings, deliberation and frustration, these actors were able to together to enact a
specific vision for the future.
151
Richard Andrews' fIrst line ofbusiness within DWAC was to develop criteria to
judge any desegregation proposal. Through the deliberation and interpretation ofcriteria,
the central actors began to build bridges between their separate narrative constellations.
The connections began to link groups in terms ofcommon agreement that the
negotiations revolved around certain concepts without fundamental agreement on what
the concepts meant. lIO This dynamic forged the path towards establishing the discursive
coalition as they eventually found enough in common with respect to the concepts to
support an overarching policy.
Andrews established a Steering Committee in response to the Magnet Plan vote in
February 1977 that identifIed thirteen criteria to frame the necessity for and defmition of
successful desegregation. III These thirteen criteria were endorsed by many community
organizations and taken to the School Board to assess the Magnet Plan when it was
proposed in February 1977. Andrews believed the criteria had a crucial effect on further
desegregation planning because with them, DWAC established specific guidelines many
community organizations agreed to. Andrews recalled, "'I really believe that the
committee's thirteen-point criteria is what predetermined what happened thereafter.",112
Within the criteria, Andrews' committee framed the necessity and defmition of successful
desegregation that could undercut the Magnet plan. Whether or not Andrews was correct
in his assessment, the criteria allowed for a broader base of support because they allowed
110 See Chris Ansell, "Institutional Change as Constitutional Process, Conference Paper, Unstructuring
Politics Workshop," (Eugene, OR: 2009). Citation approved by author.
III Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation ofSeattle's Schools.
112 Richard Andrews quoted in Ibid., 49.
152
for multiple interpretations and meanings to develop around consistently accepted
concepts.
Moberly thought ofthe criteria as useful only to examine the Magnet Plan and its
components, but Board members (namely Cheryl Bleakney) thought they needed to
develop criteria in order to further a full- fledged desegregation pan. The Board and
Moberly allowed only two "threshold" criteria to guide desegregation planning: that the
Board "would place no greater burden on minority than majority students;" and that the
Board "recognizes the need for ethnic identity ofdifferent minority students, and is
sensitive to ethnic heritage. ,,113 After DWAC reviewed various planning models, the
District accepted the following additional criteria: predictability, stability, consistent
feeder patters and keeping neighborhoods of students together. I 14
In sum, the guiding criteria for the Seattle Plan originated from the
structural/cultural integrationist and voluntary integrationist constellations and displayed
the central guiding concepts for deliberation. The fIrst two reflected the
structural/cultural integrationists in terms ofassuring equity for black students in terms of
burden and assuring multiculturalism. But these ideas could also reflect the voluntary
integrationist narrative because lessening the burden on black students was connected
with intentional racism and multiculturalism can also be connected to "mutual respect"
discourse as a hopeful goal. The additional set of criteria assigned priorities articulated
113 Ibid., 120.
114 Ibid., 121.
153
within the voluntary integrationist, which emphasized the value of the neighborhood by
assuming students should move together in a stable and predictable fashion.
As ambiguous criteria, they became important as new sites of interpretation and
debate where actors developed very different ways to achieve these criteria. The largest
differences basically came down to how to achieve these criteria: mandatory or voluntary
desegregation. The Board conducted numerous community forums and reviewed public
opinions in order to incorporate public concerns and allow for a sense of transparency in
the process. I 15 Given the impetus coming from the city and news media to cooperate
and decide on desegregation as a city, the Board worked closely with DWAC to filter
through these public stances and the decades worth of information documented by
District committees.
On the surface, this short time period saw the development of more models, plans,
definitions, timetables, and compromises. In historical context, this development meant
the contestation over a decade's worth of ideas developed by many actors. The
discursive coalition displayed a highly interactive dynamic that saw actors re-arranging
narrative constellations in ways that re-combined ideas through processes of prioritization
and emphases. Within these processes, the discursive coalition ofactors and ideas was
able to forge a new narrative about Seattle desegregation that could reach a level of
institutional reception by creating an arrangement of ideas that proved polyvalent, as they
provided nodes of attachment for multiple and apparently contradictory meanings.
lIS Between June and August 1977, individual letters came from the Asian-American Education
Association, the American Constitutional Liberties Association, the ACLU, Central Area School Council,
Chamber of Commerce, Church Council ofGreater Seattle, City of Seattle, Municipal League, Committee
for Southeast Schools, DWAC, League of Women Voters, NAACP, the Seattle Council PTSA, and the
Urban League. The Board held a series of community meetings between October 13 and November 14.
154
Policymaking: The Seattle Plan
In this section, I examine how similar and disparate ideas were re-arranged and
re-shaped into a concrete desegregation policy. I explore the contradictory character of
the Seattle Plan that incorporated antithetical ends and cross-purposes, and how these
discursive moves shaped the meaning ofracial inequality and desegregation in Seattle:
how it was to look, how it would be measured, what elements gained priority. Analysis
shows the District debated a decade's worth ofdesegregation ideas through the expansion
of questions relating to the definition of segregation and the role of the public schools: 1)
what is the defmition ofracial imbalance? 2) Why is the district desegregating- for legal
or educational reasons? 3) What combination ofmandatory or voluntary methods would
the District use to desegregate? In the subsets ofquestions and answers, the District's
attempt to incorporate a wide array of ideas led to a policy that partially resolved many of
the concerns from the past decade through quietly relegating some ideas to the
background and overtly mixing some with competing claims that appeared as sensible
compromises at the time.
The following sub-sections examine the Seattle Plan's central components. The
analysis examines the ideas that were embedded in the Seattle Plan, their narrative
histories, and deferments that accounted for the specific arrangement of ideas. The
multivocallanguage of multiculturalism provided shape and legitimacy for this policy.
Within each Seattle Plan category, we can see how the language ofmulticulturalism
could bridge division between competing constellations because as a concept, it could be
155
mobilized and meaningful in very different ways. The idea of multiculturalism could "re-
wire" connections between ideas and become an accepted point ofreference, as actors
could interpret the concept in multiple ways.II6 The multiple meanings able to coalesce
into one concept allowed very different assumptions about the role of the schools and
racial equality to temporarily unite. At the same time, the multiplicity of meaning did not
deter actors from prioritizing certain meanings over others.
Summary ofthe Seattle Plan
Analysis ofthe language in the Seattle Plan shows that the founding principles
relied primarily on establishing the role ofthe schools as ameliorating segregation and
promoting a multicultural setting for children's education without wholly disrupting the
assumption that the neighborhood was a valuable community entity. On December 14,
1977, the Seattle School Board voted on the adoption of the comprehensive Seattle Plan.
The final policy included components of five planning models resulting from joint efforts
of staff and community planners and one model developed by the Urban League. II?
School Board Resolution 1977-28 defmed School Board's goals and
philosophical guidelines, highlighting two guiding philosophies in the preamble. First,
the Board resolved, "that the best interests ofthe students of Seattle School District No. 1
will be served by providing all students with the opportunity for a quality education in a
116 Ansell, "Institutional Change as Constitutional Process, Conference Paper, Unstructuring Politics
Workshop."
117 Seattle Public Schools, "The Seattle Plan for the Eliminating Racial Imbalance by the 1979-80 School
Year," Desegregation Planning Office, Revised Edition, 13 December 1977,4,330.002 (SSD).
156
multi-racial setting." Second, the Board resolved, "that it is in the best interests of the
District to eliminate racial imbalance [... ] in District schools so as to better prepare
students to live in a pluralistic society.,,118 Actors crafting the Seattle Plan emphasized
these philosophic goals that asserted the primacy of not only equal education, but also
preparing students in and for a multi-racial or pluralistic society.
The Seattle Plan divided Seattle schools into three zones that established feeder
patterns between elementary, junior high and high schools. These student assignment
features aimed to ensure classmates remained together as they progressed from school to
school. l19 Zones combined existing majority and minority schools to achieve racial
balance in a way that provided "optimal transportation efficiency" and "a sense of
geographic identity among students in the desegregation process.,,120 The zones were
aimed to allow predictability in student movement during their school careers and to
assure children were only supposed to be away from their home attendance area for
portions of their careers.
Within these broad goals, the District elaborated their role as a public institution
by incorporating both mandatory and voluntary measures. These included affirmative
action to desegregate the schools, the provision ofmulticultural respect and opportunity,
the provision ofvoluntary choices, and the affIrmation ofthe integrity of neighborhoods
as an idea because ofhow they moved students. The Seattle Plan then prioritized
118 Record 75, December 14,1977,278 (SSR).
119 Seattle Public Schools, "The Seattle Plan for the Eliminating Racial Imbalance by the 1979-80 School
Year," Desegregation Planning Office, Revised Edition, 13 December 1977, 8, 330.002 (SSD).
120 Ibid.
157
stability, equal and quality education, neighborhoods as community values, parent choice,
and desegregation as necessary for minority students only. The following elaborates
these pieces of the policy and the ideas within established narrative constellations
incorporated and dismissed within the Seattle Plan.
Defining Racial Imbalance
The defmition of "racial imbalance" determined who was to be segregated and
how to measure a situation that is desegregated. Inherently, this then embodied the
discussions of segregation and the role ofthe schools and the development ofpriorities.
On June 8, 1977, the Board passed Resolution 1977-8 that decided upon the defmition of
"racial imbalance," as
The situation that exists when the combined minority student enrollment in a
school exceeds the district-wide combined minority average by 20 percentage
points, provided that the single minority enrollment (as defined by current federal
categories) ofno school will exceed 50 percent ofthe student body.l2l
The District combined minority percentage was 34% in 1977 therefore 54% or less
combined minority at one school would be considered racially balanced. 122 The
definition did not include a threshold for majority (white) student enrollment.
The Board wrestled with the defmition for almost a month because it had to
balance many issues such as student enrollment changes, stability in movement, and
121 "Resolution 1977-8" in Record 73, 1 June 1977, 589 (SSR).
122 "School Board expected to OK milestone Seattle Plan," Seattle Times, 11 December 1977, A7.
158
Seattle's multiple ethnic groups.123 This definition incorporated the three competing
narrative constellations. From the voluntary integrationists, the Board focused on the
desegregation of minority students and as much "stability," (or as little neighborhood
movement) as possible. From all interested in multiculturalism, the definition included
"combined minority" in order to account for their multi-racial population. For example,
Cheryl Bleakney addressed both concerns in a memo to the Board, describing her
struggle to define imbalance to "retain flexibility to serve the long-term interests of the
kids of Seattle - a definition which will offer a measure of stability and recognize our
uniquely rich mixture of ethnic minorities.,,124
First, the Board chose the term 'racial imbalance' over 'racial isolation' or
'segregation.' As shown before, this term had been used by the Board and by the CRA in
the 1960s to describe the situation ofde facto segregated schooling. District legal
counsel Gary Little suggested they avoid the term "segregation" because it had "come to
have so many meanings as defmed by different courts and governmental agencies.,,125
123 This defmition was a complicated issue because several definitions existed, including those by the State
of Washington and the ESAA. The State of Washington defined segregation as a situation when the
population of a school building includes forty percent or more of a single racial minority group. The ESAA
defined racial imbalance as a situation when the combined racial minority percentage in a single school
exceeds fifty percent, a goal the District implicitly agreed to for funding (Record 73, 11 May 1977 (SSR)).
124 Memo from Cheryl Bleakney to School Board Members, 6 June 1977, Accession A98-13, Box 9 (LCF).
125 Record 73, 25 May 1977, 563 (SSR). Many community groups had developed their own definitions.
The Church Council defined racial balance in "pluralist" terms, where students should be assigned to
schools on the basis ofnumerical equality that could include a multi-racial (rather than bi-racial) setting.125
The Urban League recommended a "plus-or-minus fifty percent of the average minority population" in
their 1964 Triad Plan. 125 The NAACP offered a guideline for full integration as equal racial percentages at
each school. Furthermore, there had been only two Supreme Court cases dealing with "tri-racial
populations," both ending up looking at the minority population as a whole.125 DWAC adopted a definition
termed a "dual definition" to meet the needs of Seattle's multi-racial community. They defined racial
balance in "tri-racial school" as a situation where the combined minority population would not exceed
seventy percent, with no more than forty percent of a single minority. In schools with a single "ethnic
159
The tool used to measure "racial balance" inserted connections made by the
voluntary integrationists about the role of the schools and ameliorating segregation while
also maintaining links to the structural/cultural and civil rights integrationists with
provisions of "multiracial balance." The District defined the situation ofracial balance as
one of formal (or numeric) equality rather than cultural or structural integration, and
therefore measured racial balance numerically. In hopes of addressing their unique tri-
racial population, they arrived at a "dual definition" to measure numerical equality,
because it could "provide a multi-ethnic balance in the schools" and could "work toward
a multi-ethnic educational system.,,126 The policy idea hoped to encourage mutual respect
for Seattle's diversity and to incorporate flexibility for changes in student population,
with the expectation ofa continual rise in minority enrollment. Also by incorporating
flexibility, rather than a strict definition ofdesegregation as equal percentages of
white/black!Asian, the defmition hoped not to revisit the backlash from the minority
community concerned with equalizing student movement.
Beyond the asserted flexibility, the definition did not include measures to account
for cultural integration beyond numerical diversity and therefore embedded a voluntary
yet beneficial vision ofcultural integration as something that should be encouraged but
not mandated. While the policy included human relations training, the implementation of
multicultural curricula, and affirmative action in employment to encourage cultural
minority," the minority percentage would not exceed twenty percent plus the district-wide minority average
(Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation ofSeattle's Schools.)
126 Record 73, 1 June 1977, 589 (SSR).
160
integration, the defmition did not include ways to measure this. 127 Therefore, while
accounting for the goals ofmulticulturalism, the defmition prioritized numerical
desegregation and therefore the vision for the role ofthe schools as ending minority
segregation, with ambiguity about promoting societal integration.
The approval of this defmition further deferred significant aspects fundamentally
associated with "segregation" within the narrative constellations ofthe Urban League,
Church Council, DWAC, and the CASC: socioeconomic integration and white isolation.
Socio-economic factors were completely relegated outside the boundaries of these final
definitions even as they remained important factors to many actors deep into the fall of
1977. In June 1977, the School Board was working under the assumption that they
would seek "a broad socio-economic mix as well as racial mix in our schools.,,128 Board
members and DWAC included socioeconomic indicators for desegregation up until fmal
revisions of the plan were made 1977. This was partially because of the District's
renewed interest in the Urban League's Triad Plan, re-written in 1977. Socioeconomic
integration was, like 1965, integral to the Urban League's Triad Plan of 1977. The fmal
plan drawn up in November 1977 by DWAC also included socioeconomic factors as
instrumental in achieving equity in student movement and assuring that children would
not be desegregated only to be socio-economically isolated.
In one of the fmal Board meetings before approval, DWAC advised that
dismissing socioeconomic isolation would be "detrimental to assurances of educational
127 Seattle Public Schools, "The Seattle Plan for the Eliminating Racial Imbalance by the 1979-80 School
Year," Desegregation Planning Office, Revised Edition, 13 December 1977,20,330.002 (SSD).
128 Memo from Cheryl Bleakney to School Board Members, 6 June 1977, Accession A98-13, Box 9 (LCF).
161
success.,,129 To the dismay ofRichard Andrews and DWAC, Moberly's staff with the
help of Shan Mullin and Don Olson cut out any mention of socioeconomic integration
and within-building segregation, leaving the fmal plan to address racial imbalance only.
According to Andrews, Moberly directed staff to cut out "'Sociology 101 words,'" which
included socio-economic integration. 130 Andrews expressed disgust with the "cut-and-
paste" version ofDWAC's plan and demanded that Moberly include these elements in
the fmal plan.
Moberly, Olsen, and Mullin insisted on leaving out socio-economic integration,
though they left in '''all the historical stuff, the bilingual stuff, multiethnic curriculum,
staff training, in-building segregation... ",131 By including "bilingual stuff," multi-ethnic
curricula, human relations training, and acknowledgment of avoiding in-building
segregation, the District specifically drew the line around what could be incorporated in
the meaning of racial equality available to the public schools. This interaction led to an
agreement that the schools could address, if not solve, cultural issues associated with
historical discrimination while dismissing economic issues associated with
discrimination. The division appears to associate cultural issues with potentially
discriminatory situations that could result from the first time many students would go to
school with students of different ethnic or racial backgrounds. The inclusion of cultural
awareness components and the deferral of socio-economic integration further embedded
129 Record 75,30 November 1977,226 (SSR).
130 Andrews quoted in Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation a/Seattle's Schools.
131 Ibid.
162
the notion of the role of the schools as ameliorating historical discrimination within the
schools and encouraging multi-cultural awareness or mutual respect.
Discussions of white isolation also ended in early June after being integral to the
narrative frameworks ofmultiple groups, including the District. One problem was the
Board lacked guidelines to address definitions of racial imbalance for school with more
than one minority. There were no federal or state guidelines to deal with majority group
isolation. 132 Nevertheless, this issue was discussed, or least mentioned, often within the
context of these debates leading up to the Seattle Plan. The Central Area School Council
(CASC) developed a defmition of segregation for the Board in June 1977 that included
white isolation: "A school should be defined as segregated if it has too high a number of
students ofany race. Desegregation must involve an effort to reduce the "isolation" of
both white and non-white students.,,!33 The CASC went so far to say that a defmition of
segregation that does not include white students was racist. 134 The re-designed "Triad
Plan" also directly addressed majority isolation in terms ofdefining a majority-isolated
school and by including in their philosophy ofcultural isolation the belief that, '"the
majority child also suffers...A mono-racial environment is a social vacuum.,,!35 The
Desegregation/Integration Committee also included majority isolation in their definitions.
In March 1976, they developed a defmition ofsegregation as "the negative condition ofa
132 Record 73, 1 December 1976 (SSR).
133 Letter from Central Area School Council to Seattle School Board, 12 June 1977, Accession A2005-15,
Box 9 (AWF).
134 Ibid.
135 "Triad Plan Summary," Seattle Urban League, 14 June 1977, in "Seattle Urban League," 607-7, Box 42,
Folder 25, Seattle Urban League Records, University of Washington Libraries (Hereafter cited as SDL).
163
school population which exists when the school is racially isolated, either majority or
minority, when compared to the racial distribution ofthe District as a whole.,,136
However, according to Patt Sutton, Gary Little informed the board early on that there was
no enforceable legal precedent in terms ofmajority isolation, which was why the board
"adopted a plus/minus percent in terms of minority only.,,137 A year later, in June 1977,
it was apparent to Bleakney, "that we should recognize white isolation," but then
concluded, "That we will address the problem ofmajority isolation in later planning." 138
This is basically where the question was left. After June 1977 the idea had been entirely
deferred for later planning. 139
Racial Imbalance and the Meta-Concept Multiculturalism
The emphasis ofmulticulturalism allowed disparate actors to agree to a defmition
of racial imbalance. The common ground established by a multicultural vision was
produced by the concepts de-prioritized or disconnected from racial integration. The
deferral ofboth socioeconomic integration and white isolation were crucial elements in
the construction of meaning established by the Seattle Plan, that incorporated a vision of
racial equality as promotion ofpluralism to the detriment ofa vision ofracial equality
that was committed to ending white privilege and assuring economic equality.
136 "Memo from Suzanne Hittman to Board Members," 30 March 1976, Accession A98-13, Box 9 (LCF).
137 Patt Sutton, interview with author, Eugene, Or., tape recording 17 November 2007.
138 "Memo from Bleakney to School Board Members," 6 June 1977, Accession A98-13, Box 9 (LCF).
139 Records analyzed show no mention ofwhite isolation after June 1977. Suzanne Bittman, Cheryl
Bleakney, Patt Sutton, and Dorothy Hollingsworth were asked in interviews about debates over white
isolation. They did not recall it being an issue.
164
For one, the dismissal established a disjuncture in The Seattle Plan, with its
philosophic emphasis on cultural pluralism, and its policy orientation defmed as
correcting minority racial imbalance only. However, the disjuncture also revealed a
consistency within District discourse going back to the 1960s. While philosophically
they showed a belief in multi-cultural education and "mutual respect," the District
consistently oriented measurable policy around correcting past wrongs: minority racial
imbalance. This defmition deferred the structuraVcultural integrationist narratives that
fundamentally assumed an integration policy would be measured according to not only
numerical desegregation, but also cultural and structural integration. With the emphasis
on minority groups, the Seattle Plan framework did little new to establish a fundamental
shift in policies that were consistently directed at minority students throughout Seattle's
history.
Granted, the incorporation of mandatory white student transfers shifted the
immediate burden away from only minority student transfers. However, the dismissal of
white isolation as integral to desegregation undercut the shift because it allowed for a
non-multicultural setting so long as the setting was majority white. Under the Board's
definition, a school could technically be all white, or "white-impacted," and remain
within the bounds of the defmition. For example, the Ballard area, which was majority
white, was not included in the original plan. Moberly said, Moberly reasoned to this
group that, "We can't involve every majority school in the city," and the Board could not
165
risk "the trauma" resulting from the loss of Seattle's middle- and upper-income
residents. 140
In a similar vein, the deferral of socioeconomic integration also dismissed a
crucial element incorporated by DWAC, the Urban League, CASC and many Board
members. Without an element ofeconomic equality, ideas like 'structural integration'
were left meaningless. The District could pose a beliefthat "all ethnic groups hold
statuses and roles in the social structure of the school which are equivalent to those
statuses occupied by members ofother ethnic groups.,,141 But without an
acknowledgment ofthe socioeconomic aspect ofequal power, the policy had little chance
to follow through with this hope. What this meant for the policy was that the role ofthe
schools still remained a legal role to end segregated schooling but a suggestive role in
promoting a multicultural philosophy. The narrative built into the Seattle Plan lacked
concrete ways to undertake multicultural and structural integration by de-prioritizing
them with respect to the fundamental assumptions incorporated from the voluntary
integrationist approach.
Why Desegregate?
One facet of the final policy came down to the question of "why is the district
desegregating?" In November 1977, the Board had to decide what their public rationale
for desegregating should be and decided to address the question by asking if they were
140 Mike Wyne, "Citizens blast Moberly for bussing plan," Seattle Times, 1 December 1977, A18;
Constantine Angelos, "Desegregation plan 'will do job," Seattle Times, 4 December 1977,' A26.
141 Citizen's Committee for Quality Education, "Final Report: Planning Recommendations for Cultural and
Structural Integration," 2, 23 June 1971,330.077 (SSD).
166
desegregating for legal or educational reasons. 142 Despite the apparent urgency resulting
from the threat ofcourt order, they decided to desegregate primarily for educational
decisions, secondarily for legal. 143 Broadly, the Seattle Plan focused on eliminating
racial imbalance through ''the use of educationally sound strategies" by emphasizing
"quality integrated education" as their reason for desegregating. It met the identified
needs of equal educational opportunities, safety, choice, curriculum (including program
diversity), the "maintenance of ethnic identity for both majority and minority students,"
high expectations of academic achievement, and an "assurance that every child can
succeed in school.,,144
Beyond these intended goals, this reason for desegregating reflected and
incorporated many narrative strands and therefore supplied the policy with variant values,
contradictory goals, and unresolved tension. This decision ended up incorporating two
contradictory values embedded in the idea of"quality education," which were utilized
differently in narrative constellations drawn within debates since the 1960s. The
combination of "quality integrated education" into one concept put emphasis on the belief
that education was not quality unless it was integrated. This appears to reflect both the
District's structuraVcultural integrationists and the Urban League/CASC constellation,
which presumably would incorporate measures of "quality" that reflected integration
goals as well as academic (3 Rs) goals.
142 See Record 75, 26 November 1977 (SSR).
143 Ibid., 208.
144 Seattle Public Schools, "The Seattle Plan for the Eliminating Racial Imbalance by the 1979-80 School
Year," Desegregation Planning Office, Revised Edition, 13 December 1977,2, Footnote 5, 330.002 (SSD).
167
However, when this construction then is juxtaposed against the policy's definition
of integration ("racial balance"), a tension arose when "integration" was to be measured
in numerical terms. With an emphasis on the quality part of "quality integrated
education," success was defmed by academic quality within numerically racially
balanced schools. In contrast, if emphasis is given to "integrated," the measure of success
could imply separate and potentially independent criteria, measured in terms of both
quality academics and the level of integration. As is, the source of tension came down to
arrangements of emphasis. Quality education remained the priority goal in the Seattle
Plan. Desegregation would prove successful if it improved the academic achievement of
all youth.
This conclusion came from much debate and left much ambiguity. DWAC, for
example, maintained a subtle distinction between quality and integrated education, seen
in such demands for the Board "to not lose sight of the fact that we are desegregating the
Seattle Public Schools because it is just and right and it can improve the quality of
education for all children.,,145 They prefaced this statement by saying that a court order
or demands by HEW "must not be our paramount consideration.,,146 In this way, DWAC
joined the two goals (legal and educational), but distinctly separated them in terms of
measurement. In a similar narrative emphasis, the NAACP, ACLU, Church Council, and
Central Area School Council rarely used the term "quality education," except to
emphasize that education that is not integrated is not quality education. Within this
145 From "DWAC's Final Criteria" sent to the Board, 3 March 1977 attached in Andrews in letter to
Bleakney attached in Memo from Cheryl Bleakney to Seattle School Board, March 7, 1977, Accession
A98-13, Box 9 (LCF).
146 Ibid.
168
narrative, "quality education" and desegregation were not mutually exclusive goals. The
Urban League and others were concerned that much of the current discussion "incorrectly
and unfairly treated [desegregation] as a separate and opposed goal to quality
education.,,147 In a letter to the District, the ACLU wrote simply, "Quality education is
impossible in a segregated school system.,,148
In these frames, quality education and desegregation are measured as separate,
equally essential, goals. For example, without equality, academic quality is irrelevant. If
one were to measure the success ofquality, integrated education, two measures could be
employed: one to examine the quality of integration, one to examine the quality of
education. The measure of academic achievement would not necessarily take priority.
Similarly, other groups utilized the idea of "cultural pluralism" to describe a
quality educational experience, where a multi-cultural experience was an integral aspect
of a child's education and socialization. This version of "quality integrated" was
prioritized in the Seattle Plan. Primarily, the League of Women Voters, the Church
Council of Greater Seattle and the Asian-American Education Association (AAEA) used
this narrative. The Church Council founded their philosophy on the belief "in this rich
and diverse world, each child deserves to grow up in a setting that will increase his/her
knowledge and appreciation of varied cultural traditions.,,149 In a letter to the Board, the
147 "Triad Plan Summary," Seattle Urban League, 14 June 1977, in "Seattle Urban League," Accession
607-7, Box 42, Folder # 25 (SUL).
148 "Letter from ACLU to Seattle School Board," 25 August 1977, Accession A2005-15, Box 9 (AWF).
149 Church Council, "Desegregation and the Law," in "Church Council of Greater Seattle," Accession
1358-007, Box 38, Folder 18 (CCS).
169
AAEA also developed their pluralist philosophy as it pertained to education, "We believe
that children of all races and ethnic backgrounds must learn that these [multicultural]
values are worthy; that these values need a distinct place in the public schools.,,150
Multicultural values were separate from educational values, but integral to a definition of
successful educational training.
In contrast, the "Downtown group" emphasized the reason to desegregate as
maintaining local control to avoid lawsuit, but they framed this concern specifically in
terms of the maintenance of quality education and city pride, assumed to relate to the
city's growing diversity and progressivism. The Downtown group highlighted equity and
education as goals integral to the public schools' role and in enhancing the city's
reputation, and arguably its future stability in terms of race relations ensured through
multicultural settings. For example, their joint letter stated, "an integrated education
offers children a chance to share self-knowledge and learning experiences so that they
can comfortably and compatibly adjust to the pluralistic society of which Seattle is
justifiably proud.,,151 A member ofthe Municipal League's Education Committee, Jerry
Skutt, reflected this interest in desegregation, "'because of my strong feelings about the
quality of education in this city. [Without avoiding court order], I felt there would be a
detrimental effect, not only on the quality ofeducation, but on people's perception of the
city.",152 Mayor Uhlman also wrote, "we must strive to enhance the quality of
150 Letter from Asian-American Education Association to Seattle School Board, 25 May 1977, Accession
A2005-15, Box 9 (AWF).
151 Ibid.
152 Skutt quoted in Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation o/Seattle's Schools.
------------------- - -----
170
educational opportunities, provide equitable treatment for all students, maintain an array
of educational choices for parents and students, contribute to the attractiveness ofour city
as a place for all people to live...,,153
However, they also created a distinct separation of quality education and
integration that ended up with an entirely different emphasis than the Urban League. In
the series ofletters written to the Board in the summer of 1977, we can see these actors'
narrative moves to segment desegregation as a policy that can hopefully align with
fundamental educational goals. The Chamber wrote to the Board that they believed "it is
essential for the school board to see to it that the quality of educational programs is
maintained while desegregating the schools. Quality curriculum is imperative to provide
the kind of credibility that the school system needs.,,154 Reminiscent of past narrative
separations, this move connected the role of the public schools legally to desegregate,
naturally to educate. Desegregation, as an add-on, is necessary because of the impending
lawsuit and maintaining pride in Seattle's increasing diversity, but is not integral to the
function of the schools.
Justificationfor Desegregation and the Meta-concept Multiculturalism
The School Board was careful to meet the needs of all actors in their decision to
make the Seattle Plan "an educational plan fIrst, a desegregation plan second." However,
quality education remained the priority goal in the Seattle Plan; desegregation would
153 "Letter from Your City, Seattle to School Board," n.d. probably after 20 May 1977, Accession A2005-
15, Box 9 (AWF).
154 Letter from C. Mike Berry to School Board, 18 July 1977, Accession A2005-15, Box 9.
171
prove successful if it improved the academic achievement of all youth. With this
ambiguous stance, the Board bridged the existing divisions between those primarily
interested in retaining quality academic programs as well as those who believed that an
educational plan was as necessary as a desegregation plan. In terms of measurement,
however, the Seattle Plan did not definitively defme measures of success, leaving the
contradictions and tensions resulting from the re-combination ofaspects of the narrative
constellations. Therefore, those like the Downtown group, who distinctly separated the
goals of integration and academic education, and those like the Urban League, who
defmed education in terms of integration, became narrative partners. The bridge, again,
was the multivocality ofmulticulturalism. Multiculturalism became a node around which
the Downtown group agreed as they associated it with city pride, attractiveness, and the
necessity to avoid court order. Multiculturalism became a node that also situated the
structural/cultural and civil rights integrationists, who linked it to their vision of
education as inseparable from integration and equality within a diverse society.
Re-arranging Neighborhoods- Fixed Area Assignment with Options
After defining the goals and philosophies of racial balance and the reason for
desegregating, stakeholders debated the strategy of student movement. The central
conflict at the end of planning was the decision to go with a mandatory student
assignment plan or a voluntary plan with a mandatory back up. The Board implemented
mandatory assignment as the frrst method ofmovement with a voluntary option
supplement for parents to choose another school's program. This policy incorporated
172
ideas from each constellation, and again emphasized the role of the schools as ending
segregation and further segmented the role of the schools as fundamentally about
academic training with the hope ofbringing about social change through the maintenance
of the neighborhood attendance pattern through the allotment of"choice" for parents to
opt out ofmandatory desegregation assignments.
By October 1977, only two civic groups had publicly stated preference for
mandatory assignment, the Urban League and the Church Council. With more parents
coming to meetings, expressing their fears of busing, it proved difficult to implement
mandatory assignment that would include busing without an uproar. Board member Patt
Sutton recalled, "many of the parents were genuinely scared of the idea ofhaving their
children removed from their school. I felt bad for them, because it is scary.,,155 This
formulation points to the sustained centrality ofthe natural value ofthe neighborhood
school felt by many parents. Many parents came to meetings during November and
December 1977 to chide the Board for "putting the burden ofdesegregation on children,"
to threaten lawsuits because mandatory assignment violated individual parents' freedom
of choice, or to express their fears ofthe destruction of "strong neighborhoods." Most
opponents remained tied to voluntary integration, distinctly disconnecting housing
segregation as a problem for the schools with statements like "This is a community,
rather than merely a school, problem.,,156
155 Part Sutton,phone interview with author, Eugene, Or., tape recording, 19 November 2007.
156 "Parents disagree on desegregation plan" Seattle Times, 6 December 1977, A4; "Why put burden of
desegregation on children," Seattle Times, December 7, 1977.
173
DWAC's core committee, which included representatives from the Municipal
League, Urban League, NAACP, Asian community, and the Church Council, developed
the final student assignment plan. IS? Andrews felt that if he could get these individuals to
agree on one mandatory model, '''it would have a strong enough political base to
survive. ",158 They agreed on a "fixed assignment" first, voluntary second model that
relied on moving groups (or "neighborhoods") of students between zones unless they
were able to choose an optional program that enhanced racial balance. The Board voted
on this "fixed area assignment" model, a term coined by members ofDWAC's core
committee in order to avoid the "emotional baggage" associated with the term
"mandatory.,,159 This concept institutionalized both mandatory assignment features that
would ensure the end of racial imbalance, and "options" or "choice" features that
emphasized educational quality and avenues to avoid being part ofa mandatory
assignment.
This combination of ideas established common ground between the Municipal
League's favored model, a voluntary magnet strategy, and the model favored by the
Urban League, Church Council, and CASC that resembled the Triad Plan. 160
Specifically, the plan paired one minority-impacted elementary school with a majority-
157 Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation ofSeattle's Schools.
158 Richard Andrews quoted in Ibid., 145.
159 Ibid.
160 Ibid.
174
impacted school or "triaded" three schools to attain racial balance. 161 After being
assigned at the elementary level, children from both schools were filtered into one middle
school and then to one high school that would then be naturally balanced. 162
This idea of "fixed assignment" was a way to sidestep the random calculations
associated with assigning one student to one school and was a way to incorporate the
value of the neighborhood into an assignment policy. The zonal strategy to student
movement challenged a parent's natural right to choose their children's school, but
carefully incorporated the idea that neighborhood was an important site of community
values that should not be disrupted. The challenge to geography asserted that community
values could travel with a group of children, but the narrative sustained neighborhoods as
fundamentally important for schools. Within this concept, Andrews argued, "The
individual is not assigned on an individual basis.,,163 Rather, an area or zone of students
received assignments, "based on the premise that you keep neighborhood groups of
children together.,,164 Of course, the plan also challenged the value of neighborhoods as
sustaining historical patterns of segregation, but did not challenge the inherent value, as
did such school restructuring ideas like the Triad Plan and Continuous Progress.
161 Typically, paired schools grouped the fIrst-third graders from both schools and assigned those children
to one school; the fourth-sixth graders were grouped together and assigned to the other school in the pair.
Essentially modeling Continuous Progress and the Triad Plan, racially balanced elementary schools became
"the building blocks for establishing racially balanced junior/middle and senior high schools." (Record 75,
30 November 1977 (SSR».
162 "Desegregation plan 'will do job," Seattle Times, 4 December 1977, A26. An example is K-3 graders of
Briarcliff and Hawthorne attending Briarcliff, 4-6 graders then attending Hawthorne.
163 Richard Andrews quoted in Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation o/Seattle's Schools.
164 Jerry Skutt, quoted in Ibid., 146.
175
The "voluntary backup" was the result ofa political compromise between the
Board, Shan Mullin (Chamber) and Moberly. The voluntary component prioritized
attraction and choice. A week before the fmal Seattle Plan Resolution was signed,
Moberly asked that the Plan be re-drafted in order to appease those from the public that
feared "the plan did not address quality education." He asked for a re-draft on the
subjects of"options, magnets, criteria as to how the options will work. .. and an addition
in the redraft covering advanced placement ... ,,165 Policy ideas like the Triad Plan never
incorporated educational options to attract parents to transfer their children. This was a
move to please those previously interested in the Magnet program and fearful ofthe
District focusing only on desegregation to the detriment ofeducational programs. The
Board included options programs as a necessity to make the plan attractive to eliminate
potential exit reasons for parents, and saw options programs as a way to allow parents a
level of control.
With these "options," students had the opportunity to change schools to enroll in
attractive educational programs, ifthese choices did not contribute to racial imbalance.
These included program options within schools (such as Arts Emphasis), magnet
programs within pairs/triads, all-zone magnets, all-city magnets, alternative schools, and
special programs. 166 The Board consistently cited options as an integral, even prioritized,
feature of planning even when discussing fixed assignment goals. The District pamphlet
165 Record 75, 7 December 1977 (SSR).
166 Seattle Public Schools, "The Seattle Plan for the Eliminating Racial Imbalance by the 1979-80 School
Year," Desegregation Planning Office, Revised Edition, December 13, 1977,2, Footnote 5,330.002 (SSD).
Discussion of these options pgs 12-14. Students in the pair/triad schools were supposed to get their first
choice of options or magnet programs, though other children could apply as space allowed. Children who
were accepted into programs out of their assigned zone had to provide their own transportation.
176
advertising the Seattle Plan also emphasized the array of options programs more than it
emphasized the act of desegregation. Of course, these options were technically open to
all students, but the reality of this desire was to appease middle class residents from
moving out of the school system.
Debates in the final throes of planning showed many Board members brought up
potential complications arising from the voluntary back-up for racial balance with regards
to equity of student movement, and educational quality for all. DWAC argued that the
desegregation plan with options could not place any greater burden on minority students
than majority students and the eventual zoning arrangement did as much as it could to
equalize racial transfers and ensure equitably distributed educational diversity and
options across all zones. 167 Furthermore, the options programs could create within-
school segregation, a tradeoff acknowledged by the Board in November. 168
Re-assigning Students, Neighborhoods, Parental Choice, and Diversity?
The fixed assignment student movement strategy combined with options to avoid
student assignment arranged policy commitments to challenge the neighborhood, retain
the neighborhood, and privilege parent control. This tense arrangement prioritized
desegregating schools, but emphasized the integrity of the neighborhoods and privilege
by moving children together, maintaining narrative sympathy for neighborhood values,
and including options to exit school assignments. The arrangement de-prioritized
167 Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation o/Seattle's Schools, 3, footnote 8., Record 75,
November 30, 1977,225-227 (SSR).
168 Record 75, 30 November 1977,225-227 (SSR).
177
fundamental parent control over their children's school destination, but emphasized
parent control as unavoidably important by including avenues to avoid mandatory
assignments.
The arrangement of this student assignment strategy made student re-assignment
mandatory in the name of ameliorating formal segregation. The measurement tool was
based on numerical desegregation with little measure to account for multiculturalism or
other modes of integration. Even if multiculturalism was assumed to be a piece of
justification for racial student assignment, this policy element went so far as to overtly
de-prioritize diversity with its focus on retaining the continuity and value of
neighborhoods and creating a way for parents to avoid diversity if they wanted. This
piece crafted diversity as acceptable because parents still had choice and children could
still remain within their neighborhood school or at least with their neighborhood group.
Parents, and in practice white parents, can choose diversity. This placed a stronger bond
between the schools role as promoting, not ensuring, a multicultural educational
experience. However, the connection between the dual strategy of student movement and
a pluralist society allowed for groups such as the Urban League to support the same
strategy supported by parents interested in avoiding desegregation.
Conclusion: Institutional Reception and Multiculturalism
There was a great sense ofpride with the accomplishment of the Seattle Plan
throughout the city. The implementation of this policy represented the institutional and
public reception of a wide array of ideas that were creatively brought together by a
178
diverse group ofactors. Moberly expressed this sentiment in reviewing the rationale for
the final plan in late November 1977,
Most large cities have gone the court route. They have thrown that very tough
decision to a federal court and let a judge make the decision and then lost the local
control. About a year ago we saw a tremendous resentment on the part of the
community asking that we not allow this issue to go to the court. They said, "Let
Seattle be the first city in the nation to face this very sticky, very emotional issue,
and let's do it with local control..." The decision was made by the Board [... ] to
d · 1 . h ... 169o It ourse ves WIt cItIzen mput...
The Board had public confidence and commitment to pursue a mandatory desegregation
and integration plan before a judge could decide.
Dorothy Hollingsworth highlighted the necessity ofthe whole community
backing the plan, "Ifwe had any segment that was negative ...we had enough community
support that it didn't matter." Patt Sutton recalled, "Everything came together... I
believe we truly felt that ifwe could get the kids in the same classroom together that it
would, with the same material and same teachers, that it would per se improve academic
performance for minority kids. I really believe that was almost a given.,,17o Suzanne
Bittman also recollected, "What was so unique about this area? The most unique thing is
that you could put into effect a desegregation plan ...without a court order. That was the
most remarkable thing. And that you didn't have people revolt."l71 It was indeed
169 Record 75, 26 November 1977 (SSR).
170 Patt Sutton, phone interview with author, Eugene, OR., tape recording, 17 November 2007.
171 Suzanne Rittman, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 5 December 2007.
179
remarkable that even though the plan was to move between 16,000-17,000 students (up
from 4,500 who were in the VRT program), there was very little public revolt. 172
National developments served as important boundary conditions for Seattle's
struggles with desegregation and set important boundaries for the narrative debate that
left such a level ofambiguity about de jure, de facto, and racially imbalanced school
districts, and allowed for a wide range of ideas to address these events in often-
contradictory ways. The most consistent national focus was the reliance on
discriminatory intent to determine the need for desegregation as a public function.
District debates reflected, but did not replicate, these debates over the boundaries
between public and private would continue to pervade District debates. The District was
able to craft a policy that adhered to federal guidelines but established its own set of
rules, assumptions, and priorities for the local desegregation policy.
This remarkable policy achievement was triggered and aided by critical actors
within this period, also coming from varying commitments to desegregation. However,
the process was not manipulated or overtly directed by these actors. Ofcourse, there
were power imbalances; the Chamber of Commerce was often able to trump stronger
versions ofdestabilizing the status quo from the Urban League, for example. But, the
policy was not "won" by the Chamber. The Seattle Plan was accomplished through the
creation ofan unlikely discursive coalition with divergent commitments with regards to
educational racial equality. The final policy result was not a result ofthe endorsement of
one claim over another about the role ofthe schools or one vision ofa desegregated
172 The Board planned very carefully for revolting parents and burning buses, but little destruction of
property occurred in the fall of 1978.
------------'"------
180
society, but the creative articulation of new goals that re~envisioned the associations
between racial inequality, the schools, neighborhoods, and social change.
At the most basic level, the coalition was possible because of the imminent threat
of court order and the desire within major establishment actors to avoid violent situations
they saw in Boston and other cities. However, this impetus cannot explain the
arrangement of ideas that re-envisioned the concepts and relationships between race,
equality, inequality, and the schools. Resulting from these interactive narrative
processes, actors in Seattle settled on a specific policy commitment and a distinctly
contingent set of priorities and emphases.
Therefore, if we look at the coalition of actors as a coalition of actors and their
interacting ideas, the gaze shifts from instrumental acts to avoid court order to the
unpredictable, contradictory, and creative associations of ideas that became the Seattle
Plan. This discursive coalition acts of re-association altered the meaning of ideas used to
establish the contours of the desegregation debate and their policy effects because of the
ways they were joined together and the pieces that were left out.
The arrangement of ideas established potential avenues for measuring success
because of the emphasis placed on specific elements. For example, the defmition of
racial imbalance signaled the inclusion of the goal of multi-cultural balance, yet with the
deferral ofpolicy emphasis on white isolation and socio-economic integration, the Seattle
Plan distinctly prioritized rectifying racial imbalance of minority youth, which entails a
very specific measure of "success." This prioritization most dominantly reflected the
voluntary integrationist narrative because of the similar emphasis on minority youth, yet
181
remained tied to commitments of structural integrationists who prioritize the necessity the
public role in ensuring desegregated schools.
The tense and ambiguous prioritization and emphasis set in a policy arrangement
that became the Seattle Plan settled certain aspects of the desegregation debate; namely,
the schools had a defInitive role in desegregating their school and parents' control over
their children's education could not create segregated schools or classrooms. The new
arrangement also left the meaning ofrace up for further interpretation. Would the
District re-connect visions ofrace and economic opportunity? Would the Board revisit
the inclusion ofwhite isolation in "racial imbalance?" The Seattle Plan re-arranged the
grounds for future debate, which would have to settle the ambiguous arrangements of
ideas that established narrative priorities and emphases. In the implementation and
assessment of the Seattle Plan in the upcoming years, interpretative acts would solve
some of these ambiguities and create many others.
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182
CHAPTER IV
DISMANTLING DESEGREGATION AND THE ADVENT OF
SCHOOL CHOICE, 1978-1991
This chapter examines the implementation and interpretation of the Seattle Plan's
policy goals along with subsequent developments that effectively initiated the process of
dismantling desegregation. This period begins in 1978 with the implementation of the
Seattle Plan and ends with the reconfiguration of the Seattle Plan's unsteady discursive
coalition and constitutive narrative constellation with a new arrangement of ideas, held
together by the meta-concept of school choice. This chapter explores the development of
the narrative of school choice and its ability to attain a level of commonsense
understanding not by "winning" the political debate, but by meeting the problems and
fears of a variety of differently situated identities by becoming an acceptable avenue to
meet the needs of racial equity as well as parental demands to end busing.
Through the interaction of national political developments, changes in the courts,
and local policy developments, many features of the Seattle Plan lost discursive and
institutional legitimacy. While the conjuncture of national, legal, and local developments
can help to explain the rough boundaries of desegregation policy changes in the late
1980s and early 1990s, an analysis of the discursive processes of coalition building and
subsequent policy change allows for an explanation of the particular character of these
183
changes and the interpretive power of school choice to narrow the range ofpolitically
legitimate ideas that could determine school equity policy at a time when, as Gary Orfield
described, "the nation [was] floating on desegregation."] School choice-and its
narrative partner, academic excellence-gained prominence by the end of this period as
the vocabulary through which equity would be interpreted, performed, and measured
within the public schools.
The new narrative emphasis about the role of the schools in racial inequality
included: quality education for all students takes primacy overforced integration; the
social role ofthe public schools is a futile goal; parental school choice is a viable
indicator ofequality when all parents have equal choice. The discourse ofchoice
displaced the previously dominant discourse of multiculturalism by replacing its frame of
questions, alternatives, and debates with new accepted points ofreference. School choice
as a meta-concept took part in the formation ofa new coalition as it generated spaces and
new organization of concepts to which people could identify in new ways.
The primary question for this chapter is how did school choice become an
accepted reference point for actors debating and justifying school equity policy? How
did this language become the commonsense way to talk about racial equality? How did
school choice gain traction as a signifier for multiple identity attachments and meanings
that became the center of a narrative constellation built by complementary and competing
ideas about school equality? The utilization ofchoice in narrative constructions was
nothing new in Seattle. Actors invested in Seattle's public schools had utilized a
1 Gary Orfield quoted in Lee. A. Daniels, "The Winning Ways to Desegregate the Schools," New York
Times. 17 December, 1989, A4.
184
framework of choice to fight against integration, school busing, or changes to
neighborhood school patterns since the beginning of school segregation debates.
This chapter begins with a brief historical analysis of national developments, to
explain how the Reagan administration provided a level of legitimacy for anti-bussing
ideas and the end of racial integration as a public endeavor. I follow with a brieftimeline
of key legal developments that shaped the potential for school districts to legally halt
their desegregation programs. This section includes the Supreme Court case that
involved the Seattle Public Schools in 1982.
The chapter follows with an examination of local implementation struggles and
how the school board, parents, and major institutional actors interpreted, responded, and
re-thought alterations to the Seattle Plan to ensure equity along constructed and re-
constructed criteria. During these years, the school board negotiated the tense
arrangement of priorities and emphases within the Seattle Plan through debate related to
measurements of "success" for the desegregation plan. Through these deliberations, new
actors organized new narrative constellations out of the Seattle Plan's orientation of
ideas. Certain actors played key roles in re-orienting the racial equality debate that
provided legitimacy and a feel of commonsense to certain new associations.
The next section develops the key local developments that allowed the narrative
of school choice to take power away from the legitimate competing narratives to become
the dominant frame through which the board debated policy. I analyze how the
previously powerful narrative frames-the multicultural narrative and the voluntary
integrationist narrative-broke down in the face of new ways to associate ideas about
185
racial equity, developed by actors and within District evaluations and policy changes.
Small policy changes developed to quickly respond to implementation struggles served to
re-emphasize certain connections in the Seattle PI~lll to the detriment of others. For
example, policy changes to increase options programs prioritized the attraction part ofthe
Seattle Plan to the detriment of the equity emphasis. The critical space left by the
disruption ofthe previous narrative connections was filled by the narrative of school
choice, which became the umbrella that sheltered these widely different interests because
it could include those truly invested in minority kids' education as well as those truly
invested in ending busing. A New York Times reporter writing about Seattle in 1989
noticed, "The idea of promoting choices ... represents a coming together of the political
left and right.,,2
The endpoint for the chapter signaled the arrival and power ofthis new discursive
coalition and concurrent re-arrangement of narrative constellations with power over
school policy that revolved around school choice. Reflective ofthis arrival, the Seattle
Times reported a few years later, "Today, the overriding issue for Seattle is not
desegregation.,,3 The overriding issue was academic achievement, and the means
through which board policy could accomplish this-while appearing equally invested in
equality of academic achievement-was school choice. After this period, the Board took
steps to eliminate busing with "surprisingly non-confrontational" votes, according to
2 Ibid.
3 "Choice, not busing, for Seattle's schools," Seattle Times, 25 September 1996, B4.
186
former school board member Don Nielson.4 In 1991, the Board voted unanimously to
eliminate mandatory busing within the next five years. The District moved towards this
goal "with remarkably little comment from city residents and civil-rights groups," a lack
of resistance that surprised many Board members and administrators.5
National and Legal Context
Many saw federal institutional changes and conservative Supreme Court
appointments as the most significant factor for the end of desegregation. Legal counsel
for the District in this period, Michael Hoge argued, "the real effect that Reagan had was
appointment ofjudges and how that changed the legallandscape.,,6 But Hoge also noted
many important institutional and discursive effects the Reagan administration had on the
political landscape. This period saw significant shifts in tone and federal enforcement of
civil rights legislation that provided legitimacy for anti-busing claims throughout the
nation. The moment Reagan began his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi the nation
understood him as not simply as a symbo1of states rights, but as a potential symbo1of the
end to civil rights enforcement. This section analyzes these developments and the
parallel shifts in legal interpretations that affected desegregating school districts.
4 Don Nielson, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 25 July 2007.
5 "Little response to desegregation plan- school board's hearing draws only seven speakers," Seattle Times
7 May 1992, El, "Busing's end means choice will begin," Seattle Times, 16 April1992, A8.
6 Michael Roge, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007.
187
Federal Institutional and Discursive Shifts
While Reagan pursued an end to civil rights enforcement through severe budget
cuts, Justice Department appointments, and the re-organization ofadministrative
departments, the National Education Association, the United States Commission on Civil
Rights, and prominent civil rights advocates tried to sustain the gains made for civil
rights since the 1960s. Resulting from this battle, the combination ofmore powerfully
divisive discourse served to cleave a deep wedge between those favoring structural
integration and those who wanted to see an end to busing and affirmative action policy.
The Reagan administration was able to secure the narrative tradeoff constructed between
busing and education, and not appear disinterested in equity by continuing to use a
narrative of"diversity" as opposed to busing. As this relates to Seattle, this deep
cleavage broke the discursive "middle" that held desegregation enforcement and
investment together. The cleavage shifted the discursive power towards a significantly
different coalition ofactors; those who talked about racial equality (if at all) in terms of
equal education and choice, a combination of ideas with coattails ranging from the 1960s
property rights arguments to those focusing on quality education in terms ofoptions and
school choice.
Institutionally, the Reagan administration contributed to the demise ofcivil rights
enforcement with severe funding and implementing policy that institutionalized the
tradeoff between busing and "excellence." Marian Wright Edelman accused Reagan of
trying to "'repeal or weaken everything, every single federal children's program and
188
every program protecting the poor.",7 Former Attorney general during the Carter
administration, Benajmin R. Civiletti, said "that the Reagan administration as a matter of
policy has retreated from effective civil rights enforcement."g William Taylor of the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights also said he was surprised by "how brazenly the
Reagan administration has changed positions on cases already in the courts. They're not
even making any pretense of paying respect to the need for consistency.,,9
For elementary and secondary education, the Reagan administration consolidated
fifty-seven federal programs into two block grants and reduced funds by twenty percent.
New block grants were supposed to "free [School Boards] from regulations and
domination by bureaucrats in Washington."Io As a result of these cuts, the Seattle School
District lost ninety-two percent of their federal funding by 1982. States and communities
had more discretion to handle these funds, on the assumption that "primary and
secondary education are basically local functions." 11 But given relaxed regulations
requiring spending for handicapped children, bilingual education, and desegregation
programs, it was well known that "local school authorities would tend to spend their
7 Kenneth O'Reilly, Nixon's Piano: Presidents and Racial Politicsfrom Washington to Clinton (New York:
The Free Press, 1995).
8 Charles R. Babcock, "Reagan rights under fIre at Justice," New York Times, 15 September 1981, AS.
9 Ibid.
10 Fred M. Hechinger, "About Education," New York Times, 2 February 1982, C4.
11 "The Budget cuts in summary; programs, aims and points of debate," New York Times, 19 February 81,
B6.
189
allotments on politically popular programs rather than special aid for the poor and the
handicapped."12
In addition to funding cuts, Reagan's appointees to the Justice Department had a
major impact on the civil rights agenda throughout the nation not only in how they
relaxed enforcement, but also in how they began to frame the tradeoff between education
and busing. Throughout the decade, administration officials pursued the end to racial
quotas, programs for minorities, fair housing assurances, and forced busing. Justice
Department representatives were quick to argue that their actions did not signal civil
rights retreat. William Bradford Reynolds, Assistant Attorney General ofthe Civil
Rights Division, "bristled" at the suggestion of retreat, contending that busing had not
been useful for minority students, had been a "convenient remedy," and argued, "our
position is to try to address the core concern, that some of these children are not getting a
quality education." In his review ofdesegregation cases, "one thing that jumps out at me
as the most remarkable deficiency in the litigation is that there is no effort to develop a
record on educational quality... The stock answer is that the law requires desegregation,
s~ we have to move people.,,13 Deputy Attorney General Edward C. Schmults articulated
the tradeoff, "We're trying to redirect thinking to try to improve enforcement. On
schools, for instance, we'll focus on education, not busing people around willy_nilly.,,14
12 Ibid.
. 13 Charles R. Babcock "Reagan rights policy under frre at justice," The Washington Post, 15 September
1981, AS.
14 Ibid.
190
Reynolds further added that he felt the "courts have latched onto" busing as a convenient
remedy, "but what are we doing when we come to the end of the bus ride?" 15
Reagan also furthered the cleavage in the desegregation agenda through a shift I
public discourse to describe education. The best example is the conceptual arrangement
embedded in "A Nation at Risk." The Reagan administration furthered this discursive
turn of this narrative in the report published in 1983 by Reagan's Commission for
Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk. This report and its assumptions were widely
circulated throughout the nation. For example, the Washington Business Roundtable
developed a similar report following A Nation at Risk, 16 to promote excellence in
education and circulated "Talking Points" from the Republican National Committee
about the report within Seattle.]? In effect, this report. told the nation that the public
schools were at risk because of a "crisis" in academic achievement. In effect, this
narrative played a dual role-one ofreframing a national educational crisis in terms of
academic achievement while at the same time disparaging integration.
The Commission named "excellence" as the role of public schooling, implying
that desegregation was not the role. This meant a tum of attention to such issues as merit
pay, charter schools, and private school tuition vouchers. The effectiveness ofthis
narrative turn is found in the specific associations drawn between equity, individuals, and
15 "Obeying the law, Reagan style," New York Times, 19 September 1981, Section 1(22).
16 T.A. Wilson, "Statement on Education Priorities," Washington Roundtable, Seattle, 12 November 1984,
in A1995-06, Box 18, File "Washington Roundtable 1984-1989," Ous Angelos Files, Archives and Records
Management Center for Seattle School District No.1 (Hereafter cited as OAF).
17 Republican National Committee "Talking Points," Vol. III, No.9, 8 July 1983, in A1995-06, Box 18,
File "Nation at Risk 1983-87," (OAF).
191
society that dismissed discussion ofdesegregation or race in any way. For example, the
preamble to A Nation at Risk reads,
All, regardless ofrace or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and
to the tools for developing their individual powers ofmind and spirit to the
utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts,
competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgment needed
to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not
only their own interests but also the progress of society itself. 18
First, the statement placed the individual student as the focus ofeducational policy.
Phrases such as "by virtue of their own efforts" and "to manage their own lives," sent the
message that it is up to the individual, not society, to determine the success of individuals
in the education system. Therefore, the alternative, group entitlements or quotas,
necessarily contradicted the assumption of individualism in this vision ofpublic
education. The report implicitly conveyed the role ofpublic education then is to provide
a "fair chance" for individuals, not groups, to secure the progress of the nation, "not their
own interests."
Despite the Reagan administration's aggressive re-framing of the role of the
public in civil rights and education, various groups fought hard to maintain an alternate
narrative. For example, the United States Commission on Civil Rights positioned
themselves as a "constant irritant to Mr. Reagan," publicly reporting that Reagan had cut
the Federal budget for civil rights enforcement in 1982.19 Many publicly questioned the
assumption that race was a thing of the past, "Ifracial attitudes are better, why is the state
18 National Commission on Educational Excellence, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational
Reform, (Washington D.C.,: U.S. Department of Education, 1983), available from
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRiskiriskhtml (accessed January 31,2008).
19 Robert Pear, "Reported planning to name 4 to rights panel," New York Times, 22 May 1983, Section 1(1).
192
of poor blacks deteriorating?" the New York Times asked in 1983.20 In response to
Reagan's anti-affIrmative action appointees to the USCCR, others also argued for a
national economic bill of rights. For example, in response to A Nation at Risk, the
National Education Association published "Three Cities that are Making Desegregation
Work," Seattle being one of them. The report described the process leading up to its
initiation, its early successes in implementation, and especially lauded the community-
wide support integral to the Seattle Plan that included the business community.21
Washington State Superintendent ofEducation, Frank Brouillet, also responded in kind
with his own report critiquing the national debate over excellence as lacking balance and
~ . . d . nconcern lor mmonty e ucahon.
But in terms ofcoalitions, for example, "there was no such coming together
around a need for some kind ofeconomic bill ofrights.,,23 The new combination of these
narrative concepts provided increasing legitimacy to local opposition to busing. Given
that the state of Washington had approved an anti-busing initiative in 1978, narratives
coming out ofthe Reagan administration that focused on anti-busing hit home with many
Seattleites. For example, in a public school board meeting late in 1980, an angry parent
drew applause from the crowd when she reminded the school board ofReagan's pledge
20 "The movement's unfmished business is a tough agenda," New York Times, 28 August 1983, Section 4
(5).
21 A Report of a National Education Association Special Study. Three Cities That are Making
Desegregation Work. (Washington, D.C.: National Education Association, 1984).
22 Dr. Frank B. Brouillet, "Achieveing Excellence for All," Washington State School Directors'
Association, 9 December 1983, in Box 18, File "Nation at Risk 1983-7," (GAF).
23 "The movement's unfmished business is a tough agenda," New York Times, 28 August 1983, Section 4
(5).
193
to cut the amount ofbusing.24 Former Seattle Public Schools legal counsel, Michael
Hoge, relayed the direct effect he felt the Reagan administration had on Seattle. For one,
he argued that the fierceness behind the administration's anti-busing efforts "gave
comfort to people ... and encouraged them to keep [anti-busing efforts] up," according to
Hoge.25 The public acutely understood Reagan's mandate to rollback busing, Hoge
noticed, "there was no real attempt to camouflage what they were doing.,,26
The way Reagan and his administration directly and aggressively attacked busing
by asserting its irrelevance, told people to focus attention on a different and more
important "crisis"-academic achievement. Both bolstered one another in a way to shift
the public gaze away from race and desegregation and toward the "real" problem of
individual academic achievement, which was also harmed by wasting money on an
integrated society. To Hoge,
An element of national political leadership has made looking at the world with
blinders on respectable [...] You can't make the arguments made at the national
level without pretending we've resolved our problems... when national leaders
are saying those things, it's respectable for people to believe it and now worry
about it.27
The effectiveness ofReagan's narrative turn can be seen in this dual shift; the narrative of
a "crisis" in excellence in the schools was only legitimate in so far as racial inequality
was deemed solved or irrelevant.
24 "Parents Hit Deseg and Closures," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 13 November 1980.
25 Michael Hoge, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
194
Legal Developments
This section provides a brief outline ofmajor legal developments relating to
desegregating school districts between 1978 and 1991. I begin with the developments
leading to the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the Seattle Plan in 1982 and then
briefly examine court developments that would come to determine when it was legally
justifiable for the school board to dismantle its desegregation policy.
Initiative 350
Immediately following the Board vote for the Seattle Plan in December 1977, the
grassroots Citizens for Voluntary Integration Committee (CiVIC) organized a citizen
initiative to essentially ban busing students for desegregation purposes. Washington's
citizens voted in favor of the initiative in the fall of 1978 and the District immediately
took the issue to court while pursuing the implementation of desegregation. The battle
made it to the Supreme Court, where the Court eventually voted 5 to 4 to nullify the
CiVIC anti-busing plan. The initiative drive attempted to initiate the cleavage between
busing and education while retaining an expressed desire for integration. The politics
surrounding this court case symbolized a shift in the political winds, despite the eventual
ruling in favor of busing. The Reagan administration became involved rhetorically and
as amicus to the State of Washington and used the narrative forum to affirm its retreat
from busing. Furthermore, Justice Powell's dissenting opinion provided a window into
the formation of a new competing narrative around the concept of racial classification
and individual freedom that could potentially change the result of these types of decisions
given a racially neutral setting.
195
The initiative drive began while the school board was finalizing the Seattle Plan
in the fall of 1977. Citizens for Voluntary Integration Committee (CiVIC) drafted and
circulated an initiative petition immediately following the initiation of the Seattle Plan in
the winter of 1977-78. Initiative 350 specifically prohibited all the mandatory
desegregation strategies of the Seattle Plan, namely the action of bussing a student to any
school beyond his or her "nearest or next nearest" for the purposes ofdesegregation.28 1-
350 permitted local school districts to assign students to a school other than the nearest or
next-nearest for most reasons except desegregation and allowed desegregation programs
only ifthey were court-ordered.29 Members thought that the initiative could survive a
court challenge because they were not voting against integration, but against forced
busing. 30 In April 1978, members ofCiVIC campaigned strongly in eastern Washington,
arguing the Seattle Plan would cost $12.5 million for Washington citizens. Chairman of
CiVIC Robert Dorse told one crowd at a rally, "We see a bus buildup that is
proportionately larger than what's really required.,,3] CiVIC employed the voluntary
integrationist narratives of the 1970s, which focused on the fact that forced busing
destroyed neighborhoods and did not improve education. Ellen Roe, the only board
member to vote against the Seattle Plan and a member of CiVIC, framed the support for
28 Constantine Angelos, "Desegregation-plan changes appear headed for approval," Seattle Times, 7 March
1978, A8. The original ballot title read, "Shall public educational authorities be prohibited from assigning
students to other than the nearest or next-nearest school with limited exception?"
29 State ofWashington v. Seattle School District No.1, On Appeal from the United State Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit, Brief of Appellees, No. 81-9, October Term, 1981, p. 9.
30 Ibid.
31 Constantine Angelos, "School-integration foes take their message east," Seattle Times, 4/1/78.
196
the initiative as a representation of the "chaos people feel now," 32 and as a symbolic of
the fact that the Seattle Plan was "not even wanted by most Seattle citizens.,,33
Despite the active school board campaign against the initiative, the Washington
electorate passed 1-350 in November 1978 by a 2-1 margin. The initiative failed in
Seattle's predominantly minority 3ih Legislative District and in the predominantly white
43rd District. 34 The Board decided to initiate litigation, with only one member in
opposition, Ellen Roe, who cited concerns with COSt.35 District legal counsel Gary Little
advised the board that the initiative would be interpreted as a state action to re-segregate
the schools, which would violate the fourteenth amendment and could even lead to court-
ordered desegregation. 36 The official board statement prepared to initiate litigation began
with their commitment to the original reasons they voted for desegregation, "for both
educational and legal reasons" and because "educationally, the Board believes that
realistic training for citizenship in this pluralistic society should reflect the real world's
diversity ofethnic backgrounds.,,37 The groups active in the push for desegregation came
back to meetings in full force to make sure the District would fight 1-350 as a symbol of
32 Record 76, 15 November 1978 (SSR).
33 "Memo from Ellen Roe to School Board MemberslDavid Moberly, re: "Dissension in the ranks and How
to Handle It," 6 April 1978, A98-13, Box 9 (LCF).
34 The 37th and 43rd Districts were the ones scheduled to be joined in the 1972 Middle School Plan, (Br.
App, SC 1982, pg 9.
35 Record 76, 8 November 1978 (SSR).
36 "Memo from Legal Counsel to Moberly and School Board: Legal Position of Seattle School District No.
1 if Initiative 350 Becomes Law," 15 August 1978, in A2005-15, Box 15, Folder "Deseg. Initiative 350
Community and Governmental Relations" (AWF).
37 Record 76,8 November 1978,92 (SSR).
197
segregation. The Church Council reminded the Board of their moral responsibility at the
same time as the Urban League pushed the Board for their ''unwavering support.,,38
Federal Court Battle
In the U.S. district court, the Seattle, Pasco and Tacoma School District charged
that 1-350 discriminated on the basis ohace in violation of the 14th Amendment, and
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They also charged the State and the United
States had caused purposeful segregation.39 The parties included the school districts
against the State of Washington along with the head of CiVIC. The case witnessed
multiple interveners, and after a trial that produced over 2,000 pages of transcripts and
250 exhibits, Judge Donald Voorhees found the initiative unconstitutional relying
primarily on two cases where State law prohibited or burdened efforts to remedy or
protect against discrimination (Hunter v. Erickson (1969) and Nyquist v. Lee (1971).40
Initiative 350 followed because it prohibited all techniques to remedy segregation, while
at the same time created exceptions for other significant reasons for busing (such as
proximity to school and sibling attendance). Though, they could not ascertain whether
the votes for 1-350 had segregative intent, the court determined that one purpose of the
38 Record 76, 29 November 1978, 124 (SSR).
39 State ofWashington v. Seattle School District No.1, On Appeal from the United State Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit, Bri'ef of Appellees, No. 81-9, October Tenn, 1981, p. 9.
40 "Last stop for anti-busing initiative," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 21 March 1982. 1982, 11.
198
initiative was to terminate effective desegregation, leaving court-ordered policies the only
recourse.
41
The State of Washington, under the new Republican leadership of Govemor John
D. Spellman, with CiVIC as amicus, sought review of the case in the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals. The only constitutional issue discussed by the Court of Appeals was the
District Court's conclusion that Initiative 350 embodied an "invidious racial
classification.,,42 The court argued that even a law which appears racially neutral may
violate the equal protection clause it ifcauses a disproportionately adverse impact on
racial minorities that could be traced to purposeful discrimination.43
Following the Court of Appeals decision, Seattle desegregation supporters tensely
looked towards the Supreme Court trial after the State of Washington decided to continue
with the case after Judge Voorhees ruling in 1981. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
reported on the significance of the 1982 case: "in the anti-busing climate that has
flourished under the Reagan administration and in the 97th Congress, court watchers say
the final decision made on 350 will undoubtedly set the mood for future school
desegregation efforts.',44 In a tum ofevents from the Carter administration, the Reagan
Justice Department filed as amicus with the State ofWashington.45 The Reagan
41 State ofWashington v. Seattle School District No.1, On Appeal from the United State Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit, Brief of Appellees, No. 81-9, October Term, 1981, p. 12.
42 Ibid.
43 State ofWashington v. Seattle School District No.1 (No 81-9), Oral Argument of Kenneth O.
Eikenberry, Chief Justice Burger, March 22, 1982.
44 "Last stop for anti-busing initiative," Seattle Post-lntelligencer, 21 March 1982.
199
administration used the national platform to show its determination to oppose busing, and
by doing so, also pitted themselves against local school boards (and local control) by
promoting the state ruling over local decision-making. The New York Times called this
an "unusual" tum to oppose a "model" plan that was locally developed and actually
k· 46wor mg.
In 1982, the Supreme Court upheld the ruling against the initiative with a 5 to 4
vote, because with Initiative 350, "the state places an unconstitutional burden on racial
minorities within the governmental process.,,47 The majority opinion centered on the fact
that the exceptions to 1-350 permitted school boards to assign students away from their
neighborhood schools for "virtually all of the non-integrative purposes required by their
educational policies." The Court concluded with Hunter v. Erickson that "the core of the
Fourteenth Amendment is the prevention of meaningful and unjustified official
distinctions based on race.,,48 In an interpretive moment, the Court acknowledged that,
"it should be equally clear that white as well as Negro children benefit from exposure to
ethnic and racial diversity in the classroom.,,49 However, the Court emphasized the role
45 In the summer of 1981, Washington State Attorney General Kenneth O. Eikenberry, a "long-time Reagan
worker and supporter," sent a letter to a former assistant to the President to "use his White House influence
to sway the U.S. ill from its "lamentable" stance in opposition to anti-busing Initiative 350. Twelve days
later, the U.S. ill announced it was switching sides in support ofI-350 and against desegregation busing (in
Ibid.).
46 Stuart Taylor, Jr., Special to the New York Times, "U.S., in shift, urges high court to back an antibusing
law," New York Times, 11 September 1981, AI.
47 Washington v. Seattle School District No.1, 458 U.S. 457 (1982).
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid. (emphasis added).
200
of desegregation as, "at bottom inures primarily to the benefit of the minority child, and
is designed for that purpose." White, or "majority children," may benefit, according to
the Court, from desegregation that could teach "members of the racial majority 'to live in
harmony and mutual respect' with children of minority heritage.,,5o
The dissenting opinion, written by Justice Powell, provides a light into an
increasingly legitimate competing narrative, given the 5 to 4 decision. Powell attempted
to take this case out of the line of desegregation cases. Following the logic ofSwann
(1971) and Bakke (1978), Justice Powell argued that 1-350 was a racially neutral policy
that did not interfere "with the power of the state or federal courts to remedy
constitutional violations" because there is no constitutional requirement for a school
district to integrate in the absence of a finding of unconstitutional segregation. 51 Utilizing
the logic of University ofCalifornia v. Bakke (1978), Powell argued, "In the absence ofa
federal constitutional violation, requiring race-specific remedies, a policy of strict racial
neutrality by a State would violate no federal constitutional principle.,,52 In Footnote 6
Justice Powell wrote, "Indeed, in the absence ofa fmding of segregation... Extensive
pupil transportation may threaten liberty or privacy interests." 53 Powell re-cast the
concept of racial classification: "Moreover, when a State or school board assigns students
on the basis of their race, it acts on the basis ofa racial classification, and we have
50 Ibid., 6.
51 Washington v. Seattle School District No.1, 458 U.S. 457 (1982).
52 Ibid., 458 U.S. 492.
53 Ibid., Footnote 17,458 U.S. 492.
201
consistently held that' [a] racial classification, regardless of purported motivation, is
presumptively invalid and can be upheld only upon an extraordinary justification.",54
Powell challenged the connections between racial classification and minority groups
through the assumption that racial classification did not need intention to be considered
unconstitutionaL
The Washington Post reported the message from the Court as "an uncertain
trumpet" for racial equality and the mechanisms to achieve such.55 At the same time, the
Court decided 8 to 1 in favor of a California proposition that amended the California
constitution as to the remedies the court could impose in a school desegregation case. 56
The Court supported the voluntarily adopted mandatory desegregation policy because the
initiative placed an unconstitutional burden through a racial classification built into the
political process, they also ruled against the California busing plan as it went beyond
federal requirements. The Court decisions signaled a consistent reliance on the
54 Ibid, Footnote 6, 458, U.S. 501.
55 "High Court Issues Mixed Rulings on School Desegregation Case" The Washington Post, 1 July 1982,
A8. At the same time the Court decided upon this case, they also decided 8-1 in favor of a California
proposition that amended the Californi'a constitution as to the remedies the court could impose in a school
desegregation case (Linda Greenhourse, "Courts back California busing ban: overturns related law in
Washington," The New York Times 1 July 1982, AI4).
56 The California voter-approved Proposition 1 prevented the busing of 40,000 students in the Los Angeles,
who were originally ordered by the state court beyond federal desegregation requirements. Basically, the
California proposition limited the state courts to the Federal courts' remedies to ameliorate segregation.
The proposition, the Court argued, did not bias the playing field against minorities because it mandated the
state courts to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment as the Federal courts would. Justice Blackmun detailed
the difference between the two cases: the California electorate repealed an antidiscrimination law that was
not required by the Federal Constitution and that was enacted by the electorate in the first place; the
Washington electorate approved a law that re-ordered the state's educational decision-making processes "to
the detriment of people who are members ofminority groups." In the LA case, the only dissenting opinion,
Justice Marshall, argued that the Proposition 1 was similar to the Washington initiative because Proposition
1 "changed the rules of the game" for those seeking to defend their right to integrate schools through "a
substantial reallocation of state power" in this case only (Linda Greenhourse" "Courts back California
busing ban: overturns related law in Washington," The New York Times 1 July 1982, A14).
202
framework of discriminatory intent and racial classification as the culprits of
constitutional violation.
Supreme Court Developments After 1-350
During the 1980s, many school districts considered modifications to either court
ordered or voluntarily adopted desegregation plans. The courts heard cases relating to the
possibility of modifications that could result in an increase ofracially imbalanced
schools. According to an attorney-client communication in 1987, the legal issue for
Seattle became the "legal limitations on modification or termination ofa voluntarily
adopted plan that has been reasonably successful in maintaining desegregated schools."s7
Prior to making changes to the Seattle Plan, the district looked into student assignment-
oriented acts that could possibly indicate segregative intent. In 1987, legal counsel
advised the Seattle School District that if they altered their student assignment policy, the
courts were likely to issue a preliminary injunction to maintain operations under existing
desegregation plans pending trial.
Early in the 1980s, the courts found that mere implementation ofa desegregation
plan was not sufficient to release a district from court order. To be declared "unitary," a
district had to remedy all effects of prior discrimination (United States v. Texas
Education Agency, 1981) to be released of its desegregation order or necessity to
57 David J. Burman, "Standards Governing Complete or Substantial Termination of a School Desegregation
Plan," Confidential and Privileged Attorney-Client Communication, July 17, 1987, in no accession number,
no box number, at time of retrieval, Archives and Records Management Center for Seattle School District
No. I.
203
desegregate further. 58 According to Keyes (1974), the term "unitary" was defined as a
district, "In which all of the students have equal access to the opportunity for education,
with the publicly provided educational resources distributed equally, and with the
expectation that all students can acquire a community defined level ofknowledge and
skills consistent with their individual efforts and abilities.59
Despite this definition, Seattle school district legal counsel wrote, "the law in his
area is unclear and in flux.,,60 Prior to 1991, for example, the Court had consistently held
that neighborhood attendance policies could result in unconstitutional school segregation,
even if this resulted from discriminatory public housing practices. 61 However, the Court
began moving away from this position before 1985. In both Bell v. Board ofEducation
(Akron) in 198262 and United States v. Yonkers Board ofEducation (1985), courts
required some proof that school authorities had cooperated with or contributed to
segregated housing. According to Yonkers, "If any trend in the law can be discerned, it
consists of an increasing focus on whether some meaningful connection exists between
the policies ofpublic housing officials and the policies of school board officials.,,63
However, cases following did not maintain a clear declaration as they explored
school districts' intentions to desegregate. For example, in Riddick v. School Board
58 United States v. Texas Education Agency (South Park), 647 F. 2d 504, 508 (5th Cir. 1981), in Ibid., 62.
59 Keyes v. School District No. I (Denver), 540 F. Supp. 399, 403-04 (D. Colo. 1982), in Ibid., 61.
60 Ibid., 60.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 United States v. Yonkers Board ofEducation, 624 F. Supp. 1276 (S.D.N.Y. 1985), in Ibid.
204
(Norfolk, Va.), (1986), the court released the school district from its court-ordered
desegregation plan originating in 1956 and approved of its new student assignment policy
that resulted in about one-third ofNorfolk's elementary schools becoming predominantly
minority. The court found that busing had contributed to the reduction of white students
in the public schools by fifty-percent and the loss of parental involvement in the public
schools and decided that the district had done all it could to remedy the problems, to no
avail, and therefore allowed the district to implement the voluntary assignment plan. In
contrast, in Board ofEducation ofOklahoma City v. Dowell (1986),64 the tenth circuit
court ruled that the school board's modification to its court-ordered desegregation plans
of 1977 and 1972 violated the order because it resulted in a "resurgence of
segregation.,,65 Presumably, the distinction lay within the foreseeable level of re-
segregation that could occur with changes to desegregation plans. In the Norfolk case,
segregation levels remained and would remain consistent despite attempts to desegregate.
Despite this distinction, the 1990s saw several Supreme Court cases in the 1990s
relax requirements for school districts to stop desegregating. The first reconsidered the
Tenth Circuit Court's decision on Board ofEducation ofOklahoma City Public Schools
v. Dowell (1991), as it dealt with a school district that would likely result in resegregation
with the end of the desegregation order. Though evidence indicated that termination
would lead to resegregation in Oklahoma City's schools, the Court ruled that a court
64 Dowell v. Board ofEducation ofOklahoma City Public Schools, 795 F.2d 1516, cert. denied, 479 U.S.
938 (1986) 10th circuit court.
65 Oklahoma City, 795 F. 2d at 1522 in David 1. Burman, "Standards Governing Complete or Substantial
Termination of a School Desegregation Plan," Confidential and Privileged Attorney-Client
Communication, July 17, 1987, 76, in no accession number, no box number, at time of retrieval, Archives
and Records Management Center for Seattle School District No.1.
205
order should end if the school board had "complied in good faith" and "the vestiges of
past discrimination have been eliminated to the extent practicable. ,,66 The Court held a
district could be declared unitary when "local authorities have operated in compliance
with [a desegregation decree] for a reasonable period is proper.,,67 The second, Freeman
v. Pitts (1992), considered a Georgia school district ordered to desegregate various
aspects of the school system. The same school district was also considering constructing
a facility that would likely benefit white students more than African Americans. The
Georgia district had met the requirement to desegregate pupil assignment and held that
district compliance with a portion of the court order was enough to be released the
desegregation decree. The Court also held that the federal court could not consider the
new facility and its discriminatory effects because the construction was not part of the
original decree.68
The Supreme Court decisions displayed an uncertain terrain upon which districts
could constitutionally lift their desegregation policies until the 1990s. With Dowell and
Pitts, the Court decisions relied upon a framework that required discriminatory intent to
guide decisions about the constitutionality of segregated schools, and further solidified
the allegiance of the schools to comply with the Fourteenth Amendment, rather than
fundamentally and actively pursuing diversity or equality within the schools. This
66 John Charles and Gary Orfield Boger, ed., School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? (Chapel
Hill: The University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2005).
67 Dowell v. Board o/Education o/Oklahoma City Public Schools, 498 U.S. 237 (1991).
68 Boger, ed., School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back?, 39.
206
ambiguity allowed the District to maneuver both in ways that upheld busing and
mandatory integration as well as ways to begin to ease definitions of racial imbalance.
National-Legal Summary
Two trends governed the direction of desegregation at the national level. The
federal administration attempted an obvious retreat from busing and desegregation,
fought the whole way by those invested in continuing with the civil rights gained since
the 1960s. By the 1990s, the courts pointed towards more relaxed standards governing
the declaration of unitary status for school districts. Despite the growing sentiment at the
national level away from desegregation as the measure of equity, these developments did
not give the Seattle school district declarative guidelines as to how to continue or
eventually how, ifat all, to revise the Seattle Plan's student assignment guidelines. The
level of national indeterminacy provided the District room to maneuver with respect to
both sustaining their desegregation policy and consider the end of it by the later 1980s.
This indeterminate space also allowed for a politically legitimate opposition to busing to
grow in Seattle and utilize some of the same constructions posing busing against
education, and problematize the idea of "racial classification" as the District was further
removed from the obvious discriminatory housing practices that bolstered school
segregation.
207
Interpreting Implementation, Re-casting Narrative Constellations
In the spring of 1978, planning issues for desegregation immediately brought the
unsteady discursive arrangements in the Seattle Plan to the surface. The section begins
with a description of the initial implementation successes and problems and the way
District actors interpreted implementation and how these interpretations addressed the
critical vulnerabilities in the Seattle Plan. The section examines Seattle's implementation
struggles and how the school board, parents, and major institutional actors interpreted,
responded, and re-thought alterations to the Seattle Plan to ensure equity along
constructed criteria. I analyze how the competing narrative constellations embedded
within the Seattle Plan dealt with the tense arrangement of priorities and emphases with
implementation and how the beginnings of alternate narrative constructions began to gain
traction.
These new narratives resulted from and built off of ambiguities in the Seattle Plan
and framed alternate visions of racial equity that both undermined and reconstructed the
Seattle Plan's discursive coalition's narrative framework, providing the groundwork for
the collapse of the Seattle Plan's arrangement of ideas and priorities. Even for the most
predictable fault line in the Plan, actors gave conflicts new meanings despite familiar
language, eventually recasting new interpretations of racial equality, segregation, and the
role of the schools. The following sub-sections analyze key prioritization debates related
to the frrst major review of the Seattle Plan in 1983 that pointed out the structural
inequities resulting from the priorities placed on options and choice for parents in place
208
of ensuring equity along all measures. I end with a brief discussion of the beginning of
an alternate narrative that began to gain institutional footing in the mid-1980s.
Initial Implementation: Balancing Equity and Attraction
In the first few years of implementation, the primary conflict arose from the
disjuncture between assumptions articulated in Seattle Plan planning concerning equity in
student movement and the emphasis on educational options to attract middle class white
parents. Before 1983, the district had not dealt with some of the structural inequities that
resulted from the Seattle Plan's "attraction" priorities, which tended to increase the
voluntary options component rather than equity in student movement and desegregated
classrooms. These actions created a schism between original assumptions that guided the
Seattle Plan, which included: mandating equity in student movement, prioritizing
options/magnets at schools involved in pairs/triads, and ensuring that options benefit all
students in the schools they were placed. 69
Overall, the implementation of the Seattle Plan was an initial success in terms of
widespread acceptance, despite the 1-350 campaign. The school year began without
violence or disruption in the fall of1978.70 Michael Roge noticed that "for quite a
69 Record 76, 29 November 1978, 129-134 (SSR).
70 The most immediate concerns for the school board in implementation were declining enrollment,
majority students not attending school when assigned to south-end schools, under-crowded schools, cuts in
some staff and programs, and less attractive schools in the southeast (Ibid.). Other problems included extra
space in southeast, east central and southwest at the intermediate level, and insufficient space at elementary
level (District-Wide Advisory Committee for Desegregation, "Long-Range Facilities Planning Attention:
Impact on Desegregation," 1 November 1979, in 330.202.c2 (SSD)). The board realized they were
"walking a tightrope to balance conflicting needs" of all district students, especially not being under court
209
number ofyears, the whole establishment in town pretty much agreed or at least went
along with the idea that [mandatory assignment for desegregative purposes] is something
we ought to be doing in spite of its inconveniences and costs and downsides.,,?l The city
establishment rose to the challenge ofI-350 and continued to work with the school
district to see desegregation succeed. The City and District maintained a joint committee
to address larger problems, and commitment remained in tact despite changes in both
mayor and superintendent in 1979 and 1981 respectively. In two signs ofpublic
confidence, the levy election in March was a success, giving the district a much-needed
$34.5 million in critical funds for district operations in 1978 and the public elected two
pro-desegregation candidates over two strong neighborhood schools/voluntary integration
candidates two years later.72
Early measures pointed to student assignment successes as well. The
Desegregation Evaluation Report written after the Seattle Plan's first year showed that
even though only twelve percent ofthe District's enrollment was reassigned, they had
done an effective job desegregating the schools in the first year. The retention rate for
white students was 96 percent, for minorities it was 100 percent, and overall for those
affected by new assignments was 91. In 1979, approximately 4,000 students were
order and having the flexibility to make changes, and attempted to tinker with the plan to meet these needs
as they arose.(Record 76,7 March 1979, (SSR)).
71 Michael Hoge, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007.
72 Even those involved in CiVIC campaigned for a successful levy, stating levy defeat would only harm the
overall quality of education, given the fact the Board would follow through with desegregation with or
without the levy ("Voters to decide on school levies," Seattle Times, 14 March 1978, "Questions about
busing," Seattle Times, 26 December 1980).
210
attending new feeder patterns, 5,000 students were attending schools as voluntary racial
transfers (which included enrollment in options programs), and the number of racially
imbalanced schools was reduced from twenty-seven to fifteen. 73
In 1983, new Superintendent Donald Steele assigned the District Review
Advisory Committee (DRAC) to perform the first comprehensive evaluation of the
Seattle Plan. 74 DRAC measured the Seattle Plan's development in terms of how aspects
of the Seattle Plan affected equity beyond elimination of basic numerical segregation. In
1980, the board accorded priority to "Five Basic Principles" that outlined the priorities of
the District at this time: 1) provision of equal opportunity of all students for quality
education in a multi-racial setting, 2) effectiveness of elimination of racial imbalance, 3)
consistency with the principles of the Seattle Plan, 4) equity in movement out of home
school area between majority and minority youth on a District-wide basis, and 5)
recognition of the need for ethnic identity ofminority students and sensitivity to ethnic
heritage.75 This review retained the focus on desegregation and multiculturalism.
73 Office of Instructional Program Evaluation, "Desegregation Evaluation Progress Report: Changing
Enrollment Patterns Under the Seattle Plan," Report No. 79-8, April 1979, available from Government
Publication Division, University of Washington Libraries.
74 Desegregation Review Advisory Committee, "Final Report: Desegregation Review Advisory
Committee," 22 September 1983,330.267 (SSD). Also see Record 81, 16 November 1983 (SSR) for board
discussion ofDRAC Final Report. Superintendent Donald Steele first convened DRAC on November 18,
1982 in order to evaluate whether or not the Seattle Plan met its goals. Membership comprised a variety of
constituent groups within the City of Seattle plus members appointed by each member of the school board
and the Superintendent. The District supported DWAC with two staffmembers, Dr. Colin Williams and
Dr. Wayne Foley. DRAC reported to the Superintendent.
75 Ibid., 21. An additional fourteen criteria were established to measure features of the primary five.
211
According to the evaluation, no school was racially imbalanced by 1981.76
However, DRAC reported multiple levels of inequity taking place within the Seattle Plan.
Generally, DRAC highlighted two categories- inequities in student movement and
inequity within options programs. Specifically, the report found inequities in in-building
segregation, access to specific programs, disproportionate suspension levels for black
students, the maintenance ofmajority-impacted schools, and inequity in the burden of
student movement.77 DRAC defined equity in student movement to assure that "school
groupings of students attend school in their home neighborhood half of the time and
attend school out ofneighborhood the other half ofthe time," that "an equal number of
majority and minority students are moving for desegregation purposes... and participate
in the plan" and found "on the whole the burden for desegregation is borne heavily by
minority students.,,78
Much ofthis inequality resulted from the options programs. DRAC reported,
"that a structural conflict existed in the Seattle Plan when it was adopted by the Seattle
76 Ibid., 18.
77 Ibid., 17-21.
78 Ibid., 19-20. For the 1980 school year, there were 4,031 white and 4,511 minority student transfers, with
minorities composing 42.3percent of District students. Therefore, busing proved to be disproportionately
shouldered by minority students ("School aide denies bias in busing plan," Seattle Times, 20 November
1980). In 1979, out of the District's enrolled 53,885 students, 5240 attended schools other than their
assigned schools because of transfers to options programs or voluntary racial transfers. Of these students,
1933 reduced racial imbalance at both sending and receiving schools, while 684 worsened racial imbalance
at both schools. District-wide retention rates for minority students were at 100 percent. While the net
effect of movement was movement to enhance racial balance, 13 percent were allowed to move that
reduced racial balance (Office ofInstructional Program Evaluation, "Desegregation Evaluation Progress
Report: Changing Enrollment Patterns Under the Seattle Plan," Report No. 79-8, April 1979, available
from Government Publication Division, University of Washington Libraries). In 1983, approximately
60percent ofminority students attended school out of their home area, while about 40 percent of white
students attended school out oftheir home area (Ibid., 20).
212
School Board and it still exists."79 DRAC reported, "the proliferation of'options'
throughout the District" and the current administrative approach to student assignments
and transfers has made it easy for a student to transfer from one school to another without
regard for the impact of such transfers on desegregation effort."so For example, during
the 1982-83 school year, 46 percent of students assigned to paired and triaded schools did
not attend their assigned school. SI Rather than enhancing desegregation, the "option
programs have been placed in a manner which has a greater tendency to undermine the
mandatory component ofthe Seattle Plan than to reinforce and support it."s2 The report
noted that prioritizing options also led to the situation where "valuable District resources
are being channeled out of the mandatory component ofthe Seattle Plan into other areas
including the massive voluntary component."S3
DRAC established recommendations based on ensuring multiple levels ofequity
and multiculturalism within the Seattle Plan. DRAC found, not surprisingly, that options
programs "favored" white students over minority students, which contributed to
segregated classrooms. Many of the most popular options program, especially the
popular gifted-student program, Horizon, became obvious enclaves ofwhite students and
79 Ibid., 19.
80 Ibid., 11.
81 Ibid., 22. This percentage represented "white flight" families that chose options programs instead of
their assigned schools.
82 Ibid., 19.
83 Voluntary transfers cost about twice as much as mandatory transfers (Ibid., 11-12).
213
segregation within schools. 84 Therefore, DRAC recommended elimination ofvoluntary
option programs that do not meet racial guidelines, elimination ofHorizon, tightening
student transfer guidelines to reduce the number of students opting out of mandatory
assignments, and strengthening the schools in the mandatory pairs/triads with more
resources, staff, and relocated options. 85
At this time, board meeting discussion showed most board members and
interested actors expressed the desire to continue to meet both the goals ofequalizing the
Seattle Plan and ensuring attractiveness in programming. However, the narrative debates
reveal significant differences in prioritization that became less reconcilable with time.
Therefore, while the unsteady balance arranged within the Seattle Plan's narrative
constellation retained strength to continue with implementation, new struggles resulted in
significant shifts that began to re-arrange ideas and emphases and the needs of
desegregation.
Analysis of the school board debates following the DRAC review and initial
implementation struggles shows that the Board struggled with five major goals to solve
the structural inequities: equalizing the voluntary options; equalizing the numbers of
84 Horizon was a program set aside for the top one percent of test takers. It became an embodiment of
desegregation's problems. First, it became a symbol of within-school segregation, so was framed as
frustrating the problems ofsegregation and minority achievement. Horizon was the most popular option
among white parents, and its classrooms contained predominantly white children within a desegregated
school in a predominantly black neighborhood. Then, the District addressed this by allotting space in
Horizon programs for the top 1 percent of each racial/ethnic group. This was welcomed by minority
groups, and was attacked by majority white parents. Statistics showed positive results of those entering the
Horizon program without scoring high enough on the exams, and then scoring high enough to enter again
the next year. Ofthe sixteen Horizon programs, only three set minimum requirements for equal
representation. In non-Horizon programs, minority enrollment was less than 37 percent in all options
programs except for two (Early Childhood Centers, ORCA, and AES) (Ibid., 34).
85 "Desegregation: Is it Working? What lies ahead," Seattle Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 11 September
1983; "Desegregation-panel minority dissents on report," Seattle Times, 27 September 1983.
214
minority and majority students bussed; reducing the number of students bussed;
contemplating the goal of decoupling paired/triaded schools; and changing the definition
of racial balance. "Decoupling" paired/triaded schools meant they would no longer be
involved in mandatory student assignments. Changing the definition of racial imbalance
to allow more minority students at one school would allow more schools to be labeled as
"desegregated," and therefore appropriate schools to de-couple. The following sub-
sections describe the competing narrative accounts of implementation that signaled small
breaking points that began to distance previously linked ideas in the multicultural
constellation.
The Attraction Narrative Constellation
Initial numerical desegregation successes accompanied declines in enrollment and
fears that desegregation was a cause of "white flight." School officials began to
transform the framework of attraction as excellent education into a framework of parental
choice in order to position the public schools, and the Seattle Plan, specifically as
equivalent to, or better than, private schools. Despite many assurances and pleas by
school district officials that the Seattle schools' education was equally high in quality as
the private schools, the media reported that the public often perceived the busing plan as
a "stain" on the school district, and as a tradeoff for quality education, based on interview
and polling data.86 In these early years, District actors emphasized academic options as
an integral priority within the Seattle Plan as attractions for white students to stay in the
86 "Seattle schools fight poor image," Seattle Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 25 March 1984.
215
public schools and to assure the public that the Seattle Plan was not only a desegregation
plan, but also an opportunity to improve the Seattle public schools' educational
programming. In these early years, various District actors framed options as
independently popular and separately valuable from the goals ofdesegregation. They
became engines ofattraction and excellence, rather than avenues for natural student
movement.
The attraction narrative de-emphasized equity and subsequently gave options
programs and school choice a level of independent value, un-related to actual levels of
academic quality within the District. Actors' initial framing ofoptions as attraction
mechanisms re-asserted the schools' role in ways reflective ofthe voluntary integrationist
narratives and reflected a growing schism in Seattle Plan's discursive coalition connected
by visions ofmulticulturalism, as it challenged the assumption that quality education was
not possible without integration. Within these implementation years, options to enhance
desegregation became a symbol of school choice to quell parental fears and became
mechanisms of inequality that both detracted from between-school and within-school
integration. Actors found difficulty in ridding the narrative connections that tied options
and school choice with quality education, despite findings that these led to inequality.
Actors' use ofacademic quality and school choice, both integral to the Seattle Plan, now
began to "re-wire" their connections that placed greater emphasis on these ideas in
comparison and to the detriment of integration.
The attraction narrative helped to solidify narrative connections in Seattle Plan
debates that separated educational quality and desegregation as two separate goals for
216
two separate groups ofpeople: options for white parents and desegregation for minority
youth. Within this attraction narrative, options to enhance desegregation became a
tangible mechanism ofexcellent educational programming to compete with private
school flight. Ways ofconstructing parents as "consumers," shows how actors
emphasized a significant role for the schools as attracting white parents. School officials
increasingly framed parents as "consumers ofeducation," or "patrons" who could opt for
private schools, which were in position to "sell their customers on the value oftheir
product.,,87 For example, Moberly's annual report in 1980, he emphasized quality
education within the options programs as "critical to holding upper and middle income
patrons in the Seattle School District.,,88 Superintendent Don Steele championed costly
policy strategies on improving accessibility to and increasing the number ofoptions
programs in the city because, "if it helps to attract students back into the public schools
then it will be well worth the expenditure.,,89 City institutions tried to do the same; actors
such as Mayor Charles Royer tried to convince the public that the public schools were
better than the private schools, primarily because ofthe options programs, and the Seattle
Times reported that Seattle offers more options than the suburban schools. 90 The Seattle
87 Ibid.
88 Dr. David Moberly, "Superintendent's Annual Report," June 1980,6, 021.094.c.1. (SSD).
89 Record 81, 23 October 1983 (SSR).
90 "Seattle offers more options than do suburbs," Seattle Times, 25 March 1984.
217
Times tried to re-frame the public's fear as well, noting "that the Seattle Plan has
spawned a benefit rarely afforded to parents of public-school students: choice.,,91
Assessing the Attraction Constellation
The attraction constellation was built through connections that drew emphasis
between academic excellence and non-minority "consumers" and a disconnection drawn
between "quality" and "integrated" education. Thus, the priority for the school in this
constellation was a connection between white parents and their perceptions of the
District, increased through mechanisms ofcontrol, or choice. The constellation also
further deferred any latent connections between "integration" and "white isolation." This
constellation attempted to re-cast the plan that involved busing, as providing a "rainbow
ofchoices" for the rest of the public uninterested in busing.92
The Diversity Narrative Constellation
Throughout the 1980s, the District retained a firm yet contested definition of
desegregation as incorporating both the social role of integration and along with
educational equity. In the wake of the DRAC review, many, if not all, board members
maintained narrative connections between equity and diversity over attraction. Reflective
of the cultural/structural integrationist narrative of the 1970s, this narrative tried to
counter the attraction narrative and arguments that desegregation (busing) was a tradeoff
91 "The flip side ofbusing is Seattle schools' rainbow of choices," Seattle Times, 12 March 1984.
92 Ibid.
-------------"
218
for educational quality by emphasizing the social or diversity-oriented aspects of
desegregation (multi-cultural education, preparing students a pluralist world), integration
for all students, and equalizing the structural inequalities presented by DRAC. This
narrative tried to disentangle the measurements of academic attraction and desegregation
that were so carefully being cast as opposing alternatives by the Reagan administration
and local district actors. In contrast to the 1960s and 1970s civil rights narrative
constellations, these actors responded to initial implementation struggles with the
development of an interpretation of "success" that separated the goals of desegregation
and academic quality as two, equally viable, and separately measurable goals. That is, it
was not that education could not be quality without being integrated. This constellation
directly aligned separate measurements for "quality" and "integration."
Now, the diversity, pluralist, and multicultural elements of integration became the
concepts through which these actors argued for its continuation. For example, School
Board Resolution 1983-27 expressed the assumption that "a desegregated education is
essential to prepare students adequately to participate in the labor market and as citizens
in our pluralistic democracy.,,93 Dr. Colin Williams, district staff support for DRAC,
argued that black children who have been exposed to the majority community have the
"inestimable advantage" of "just knowing the right people.,,94 Along similar lines,
Suzanne Rittman focused on exposure in terms of the white kids. She hoped to be able to
measure desegregation's effects on the majority community as well:
93 Robert 1. Nelson, "Superintendent's Preliminary Recommendations for the Implementation of Seattle
Plan Improvements," 17 February 1984,330.196 (SSD).
94 "Desegregation: Is it Working? What lies ahead," Seattle Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 11 September
1983.
219
When we see them in their adult life and as leaders, will they tolerate housing
projects that will exclude people? Will they have practices in their businesses that
will not exclude people? That's the proof of the pudding. Will they be citizens of
the world?,,95
Mayor Charles Royer also noted "the cultural diversity that the plan has brought to the
city's schools is one of the greatest advantages of education here.,,96 As the Status Report
of Seattle Plan Improvements in 1985 argued, the "ultimate measure of the District's
integration efforts," should be "reflected in the ability of Seattle School students to be
economically productive and to effectively exercise their rights as democratic citizens in
a complex multiethnic society and world.,,97 These statements asserted desegregation as
necessary to further social goals (economic opportunity and diversity), thus posed
"ultimate" evaluative measures in terms of economic productivity of all students and
culturally competent attitudes to democratically participate in society.
This narrative established a new relationship between these social goals and
academic goals to counter the tradeoff argument that combined and then prioritized
academic quality over desegregation, as if a zero-sum formula. For example, Vassar
responded to questions about the Seattle Plan's improvements to academic achievement:
"a desegregation plan isn't an educational plan.,,98 In a personal interview, T.J. Vassar
articulated the vision that desegregation was not just about moving kids around, and was
an integral part of education both socially and economically,
95 Ibid.
96 "Seattle Schools fight poor image," Seattle Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 25 March 1984.
97 Dr. Colin Williams, "Status Report, 1985-1986, Seattle Plan Improvements: Year Two," 13 January
1986, in AI995-06, Box 8, File #2 (GAF).
98 "Desegregation-change talks begin," Seattle Times, 24 November 1987.
220
I always thought we could do both, I always thought we could be able to give
people quality education as well as diverse or at that time an integrated
education... It wasn't just sitting next to white people. I always thought that
when you have people who are more influential and powerful in schools with
people who are less powerful, that sort ofevens things out and the resource
allocation is more even and therefore the education is more even.
Rather than framing a quality education as equivalent to an integrated education, Vassar
posed the possibility of having both integration and education, but as separate goals.
Vassar tried to eliminate the connection at this point to avoid a desegregation plan
measured in terms 0 f academics.
Within policy debates, actors crafted this narrative specifically in responses to
actors utilizing attraction arguments to "decouple" schools (ending mandatory
assignment between schools) and to change the defmition of"racially imbalanced," not
because they were successful in desegregating students, but to decrease the number of
students being bussed. In response to calls to "decouple" paired/triaded schools, Board
member T.J. Vassar argued, "schools should be uncoupled when they are no longer
viable in assisting their paired or triaded schools with racial balance.,,99 Vassar believed
that the discussion about de-coupling should not be a goal in itself, but something to
discuss if the pairs/triads are not doing what they are supposed to do (maintaining
desegregated schools). Likewise, Barbara Beuschlein did not agree that the District
should pursue de-coupling for the sake ofde-coupling, but declared she "is looking
forward to the time when some Seattle Public Schools can be decoupled because
99 Record 81,16 November 1983,318 (SSR).
221
neighborhoods are integrated."lOO For both board members, reducing mandatory busing
through decoupling schools was an event to look forward to because desegregation had
worked, not something to do in order to enhance the attraction of the public schools for
those who did not want to be bussed.
In response definitional change proposals, Vassar tried to convince the board that
there was more at stake than a defmitional change to reduce costs by reducing busing.
Changing the defmition of "imbalanced" in order to reduce busing did not align with the
goal ofa definition of "balance" in order to desegregate schools. Vassar, and others,
looked at these attempts as attempts to attract more parents, rather than to enhance
integration. Vassar immediately re-framed their attempt to recast the defmition in order
to meet attraction demands by declaring, "The board is about to take a philosophical giant
step away from its seven-year commitment to desegregation busing."IOI At a public
hearing, one Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) member from Whitworth fram~d the
change to the defmition as an act ofdismantling desegregation: "You can hold firm at
what has been fought for and won over many years or you can begin dismantling the
Seattle (desegregation) Plan. Ifdismantling is your intent and your goal, then we ask you
to have the guts and forthrightness to do it now."I02 For these actors, a change in the
100 Record 81,21 October 1983.
101 '''Racial balance' divides 2 blacks on board," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 March 1984, AS.
102 "School board hears views on racial balance," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 29 March 1984.
222
definition did not create an easier route to desegregation nor did it provide increased
racial equity, it simply meant a withdrawal from the goals of integration. 103
Assessing the Diversity Constellation
Therefore, this diversity narrative connected and emphasized the role of the
schools as a dual-role, as embedded in the Seattle Plan, but drafted a schism that asserted
the public as fundamentally and instrumentally social and academic, but that the social
and academic must be measured as separate goals. This separation opened up a new
tension with the fact that now both the attraction and diversity narratives separated
education from desegregation. The attraction narrative combined them when measuring
desegregation, but inherently separated their place in the role of the schools. That is, they
measured desegregation in terms of academics because only the academic aspect of
desegregation was a role of the schools. This diversity narrative separated the two in
terms of measurement, but prioritized each as fundamental roles of the schools.
Crafting a New Equity Narrative Constellation
Policy deliberation in the mid-1980s became a re-negotiation of the space left
between the attraction and diversity narrative constellations that utilized the same space
cleaved between education and integration but re-filled this space with a new way to
envision equity: academic achievement. District policy changes witnessed actors attempt
to incorporate both the attraction and diversity narratives, by balancing the tradeoff
103 See, for example, "Integration plan might cut need for school busing," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22
March 1984; '''Racial balance' divides 2 blacks on board," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 March 1984, AS.
223
debate represented by the attraction narrative with a distinct emphasis on the structural
inequities reported by DRAC. Actors developed this alternate interpretation of equity to
critique inequities discovered by DRAC and to implore the inequity built into the options
programs. Additionally, the narrative provided a way to think about equity goals by
clearly emphasizing the need for all students to be equally, academically, educated. The
resulting narrative constellation re-wove the goals ofequity with academic achievement,
emphasized academic equity, and retained legitimacy because the concern centered on
students who were not beneficiaries of the realms ofacademic excellence within the
schools (options). Concurrently, this narrative narrowed the role ofthe schools as
academic and cleaved previous measures ofequality away from their narrative
constellation.
Revised policies, for example, tried to re-frame the options, rather than
disbanding them, to retain their original purpose: to enhance desegregation by attracting
more white families to options in minority-impacted areas or incorporating more
minorities into options. Some actors critiqued the fundamental character of the options as
producing inequality. For example, Board member Richard Alexander suggested at a
board meeting, "the administration [should] worry most about educating the students who
are presently enrolled in the Seattle Public Schools rather than providing programs which
will attract students back from private schools."lo4 Similarly, the P-I critiqued the
options programs for draining staff resources, top students, and staff from the "regular
schools, including those in and out of the mandatory busing plan." They critiqued the
104 Record 81, 24 October 1983 (SSR).
224
idea to move options to mandatory paired/triaded schools because it still left some
schools "as haves and some as have-nots.,,105 Spruiell White, president of the Urban
League in 1983, also pointed out the inequities in the special options, and explained that
while the numerical desegregation phase of the Seattle Plan had been accomplished,
"quality integrated education" still is just a dream for most city school children,
especially for minority youngsters who "seem to dominate" regular and remedial classes
but are scarce in the advanced courses. I06
More often, solutions centered on the availability ofmore options for students
within the District. A representative ofthe North Central School Council, Ellen Duffield,
argued to the board, "Quality education programs should be available to all children.
Choices for variety in educational experiences should not mean choosing between
excellent educational programs and poor ones.,,107 A citizen attending a board meeting in
1983, suggested equalizing options like Horizon; "The enrichment provided in the
Horizon programs should be given to all District students without an examination. The
lower 95 percent of students can benefit more from the enrichment of the Horizon
program than the top students who often have many advantages at home."IDS
Board decisions reflected a tension within this framework as they clearly
emphasized attraction as priority and subsequently framed equity concerns in terms of
105 "Sour notes in city schools," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4 October 1983.
106 "Desegregation in Seattle: 5 Years Later," Seattle Times, 11 September 1983.
107 Record 81, 2 November 1983,291 (SSR).
108 Ibid.
225
maintaining yet equalizing options. Board Resolution 1983-27 addressed these structural
difficulties and proposed to desegregate all options programs (or phase them out), and
ensure equity of movement by means of program placement to make options available to
those attending paired/triaded schools. ID9 On March 21, 1984 the school board approved
a $2.2 million plan to "correct flaws in Seattle School District's desegregation busing
plan," which included forty-eight new academic choices available in 34 schools. IID To
correct busing, they added options. The district also re-divided the city into four zones
and limited transfers within the zone that students live in. Previously, students could
choose options programs from any zone. III In these policy changes, board policy placed
options in these schools to award for those participating in mandatory transfers, therefore
hoping to equalize options as well. The media reported this was done to "bring back
students to those schools that have lost enrollment since mandatory busing began.,,112
Within these policy goals, the Board was careful to frame options as not simply
attractors, but also an educational advantage that should be available to all students.
Board member Michael Preston was integral in constructing this equity
framework as politically legitimate. Out of the three African-American board members
109 Record 81, 16 November 1983 (SSR). "Desegregation-panel minority dissents on report," Seattle
Times, 27 September 1983.
110 "$2.2 million plan OK'd to correct flaws in schools' busing program," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22
March 1984.
111 Minority tipping schools were K-5 or K-6 schools where "the ethnic balance is close to or exceeds the
limits pennitted by the School Board's definition of racial imbalance" (Robert L. Nelson,
"Superintendent's Preliminary Recommendations for the Implementation of Seattle Plan Improvements,"
17 February 1984, 1,330.196 (SSD)).
112 "$2.2 million plan OK'd to correct flaws in schools' busing program," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22
March 1984.
226
in the 1980s, he was the only one who fought to end busing. Instead, Preston consistently
argued for policies to achieve equity in academics in direct opposition to those
emphasizing any part of the mandatory assignment plan. In critical narrative moves, he
challenged the necessity to create different situations for those bussed and those not,
while at the same time advocating for equal educational advantages for all schools. For
example, Preston emphasized providing more money to "smaller" schools (under-
enrolled, minority) to equalize education. This was a counter argument to equalizing
student movement in order to increase white enrollment at these under-enrolled schools.
He turned the argument towards the benefit ofminority students. He consistently
supported his recommendations with a focus on equalizing education; "money will be
well spent to improve the quality of education in the smaller schools because these
schools can provide a more personal experience for children than larger schools."l13
Preston's most significant policy recommendation was the change to the
defmition of a racially imbalanced school, designed to "foster less student movement"
and limit "the amount of disruption" caused by busing. 114 He was able to do this by
framing busing as linked to, even causing, inequality. In an unusually long statement to
the board in 1983, Preston carefully outlined his reasoning, framing the change in direct
relationship to equity, arguing that the District's desegregation definition "appears to be
contrary to the goals outline in Brown v. the Kansas Board ofEducation decision, "
113 Record 81, 24 October 1983,267 (SSR).
114 Record 81, 16 November 1983, 315 (SSR).
227
because far fewer majority students were transferred to "distant schools.,,115 With this
narrative move, he called on Brown in order to fight for a definition of racial balance that
allowed schools to be racially segregated because the Plan resulted in unequal student
movement.
Changes to the definition of racial imbalance became the focus of many board
debates, which navigated the tension between increasing attraction and focusing on
integration. In these debates, Preston creating another tradeoff, between busing and
"stability," arguing parents, white and black, favor stability over mandatory busing. He
noted, "there appears to be a growing desire for fewer mandatory assignments in the
District" and said, "parents want stability in the schools and a say in what schools their
children attend.,,116 Preston drafted a proposal for a definitional change in a way that
emphasized attraction, "[the defmition] should send a message to the public, especially to
the white kids who opt out of the system now, that they wouldn't have to move around so
much."ll? Board Resolution 1983-27 modified the defmition of racial imbalance to
"complement the process of unlinking residentially desegregated pairs/triads.,,118 This
resulted in a slightly higher percentage of minority students allowed in a school to be still
considered "balanced." In the spring of 1984, the board also approved of a more
significant proposal to change the defmition of racial imbalance, initiated by Michael
\15 Ibid.
116 Ibid.
117 '''Racial balance' divides two blacks on board," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 March 1984.
118 Record 81,16 November 1983 (SSR); "Desegregation-panel minority dissents on report," Seattle Times,
27 September 1983.
-- --------_._. -----
228
Preston. T.J. Vassar represented the resistance to the change and urged the district to
consider the "proposal of this magnitude" because "we're thinking about going back to
the very heart of the busing plan.,,119 Specifically, the definition said that a school is
racially imbalanced if it had 50percent of any one minority, or if the minority total
exceeds the district minority average by 20 percent. 120 With the district minority average
at 49 percent in 1984, a school could have 70percent minority and be balanced. These
recommendations to adjust the definition of segregation did not aim to provide greater
racial balance, but lower thresholds to meet their self-imposed requirements.
Preston consistently emphasized minority student achievement to justify relaxing
desegregation requirements and busing. Preston argued though a definitional change
could leave a school with 80 percent minority students as racially balanced, "there would
be many advantages to having schools in which minority students comprise
approximately 80 percent of the population." He argued, "that the minority students
would not be culturally deprived should they be in the majority in a school" or that
"minority children are harmed by being placed in schools where they comprise 20% or
less ofthe student population.,,121
This was possible because Preston did not connect "cultural" or "social" benefits
to desegregation; he framed the benefits of desegregation solely in academic student
achievement terms. Therefore, he essentially displaced the multicultural role of the
public schools by making it irrelevant. At the end of the board debates to implement
119 "Integration plan might cut need for school busing," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22 March 1984.
120 "New segregation definition: Some big issues unchanged," Seattle Times, 13 April 1984.
121 Record 81,16 November 1983,315 (SSR).
229
change to the Seattle Plan on November 16, 1983, Preston concluded with an exemplary
statement:
I hope that in the future minority students will be well enough educated to be able
to have jobs which will enable them to afford to move into the higher income
neighborhoods so that the School Board and other public entities will not have to
speak ofdesegregating neighborhoods by using public housing projects. 122
By associating education with economic success, Preston fIrst implied a link between
economic opportunity and academic success. In a similar statement fIve years later,
Michael Preston exemplifIed the complexity this argument:
By teaching children how to read, and to think, and keeping them invested in
public education where they are still willing to participate and be part of the
system, we have the opportunity to create a new economic class ofpeople. Then
neighborhood integration will be fIscally possible with the availability ofhousing
and the open mindedness ofreal estate agents because people will be able to
afford to move into more expensive housing stock. .. Ifwe continue on our present
course, our options are to continue producing a permanent underclass of
uneducated and hostile individuals who will be relegated to certain geographic
locations, and low economic status, and the necessity for busing will go on, and
d 123on, an on.
Preston hypothesized the schools' role in preceding and determining economic as well as
social success by also defming the end result ofunequal academic achievement resulting
not only in economic failure but also "hostile" behavior. Concurrently, he alludes that
integration is a good idea but separates this idea from the realm ofthe schools.
Integration is benefIcial when people can have the tools to make the choice to integrate.
Note that Preston used almost identical language to two sets of actors in the 1970s
and re-crafted two, completely different, strands of ideas into one narrative storyline. He
122 Ibid.
123 Michael Preston, "Board must look to future to consider all-voluntary plan," Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
10 July 1987.
230
associated racial inequality with the development of an underclass with no opportunity
for advancement. The Urban League and Central Area School Council in the 1970s,
linked the root cause ofracial inequality to structural segregation and often referred to the
purpose ofracial desegregation as socioeconomic opportunity. Preston posed the root
cause of an economic underclass as a lack in minority achievement, whether or not
minorities attended segregated schools. Above, he associated neighborhood integration
with the event ofpeople able to afford expensive housing. This implied integration
would happen when it is fiscally possible for black families to move into higher-price
neighborhoods. The creativity of this dual narration is Preston's articulation of the
schools' role as not forced integration, but in ensuring an educated black population who
can then become economically advantaged because of their education.
Assessing the Equity Constellation
These interpretations ofpolicy problems and racial inequality resulted in the
creation ofan alternate narrative that gained power because it re-wired concerns within
both the attraction and diversity narratives to create a new storyline. This narrative
incorporated direct concerns for racial equality while separating the schools role as solely
academic, and therefore distancing the schools' role in integration, which had already
been separated as a separate goal within both the attraction and diversity constellations.
With the creative influence ofMichael Preston, an alternative equity narrative could
implore desegregation as irrelevant while at the same time assuming the schools' role
was to ensure the academic success ofminority youth. As these actors crafted the
231
association between options with academic excellence, the narrative allowed for those
interested in attraction to also identify with the narrative opposed to desegregation but in
favor ofequalizing education for all students.
Comparing the Narrative Constellations
These board debates revealed consequential shifts in narrative explanations of
problems and definitions ofracial inequality. In response to the attraction narrative,
Vassar exemplified the narrative crafted to assert the dual role of the schools as both
social and academic (3 Rs) and emphasized the necessity for including integration and
quality education within the role of the public schools. Despite the similarity with the
narrative of, for example, the Urban League ofthe 1960s-70s, Vassar slightly re-arranged
the integrationist ideas to separate academics and desegregation as two differently
measurable goals in order to counter those who began to critique the Seattle Plan because
it did not raise the achievement levels of minority youth. With critics crafting a narrative
tradeoff between quality education and busing, Vassar attempted to separate the two to
avoid the tradeoff debate.
Actors also attempted to address both the tradeoff and equity concerns through
new narrative associations. Despite the board's early defeats of most ofPreston's early
proposals and recommendations to consider equity and reduce busing, Preston's
alternative narrative that presented the measure of equity to be academic achievement had
gained a level of legitimacy in the public eye. When Preston began to utilize this equity
narrative in the early 1980s, he could not justify dismantling desegregation when most of
232
the invested actors did not believe it was a politically savvy, or constitutionally
permissible, action. Given the legal context, the district would most likely not be able to
show the courts a legitimate attempt to create racial balance in the schools because of the
obvious structural inequalities within the Plan. Yet, Preston was able to cobble together
the beginning ofa narrative that included a challenge to mandatory desegregation
because of its disregard for minority children's quality education. This narrative began to
recast alternatives to equity and desegregation that quickly frayed the unsteady edges of
the Seattle Plan's discursive coalition. The following key developments aided the power
of the alternative narrative beginning in the mid-1980s.
Effectively, these new interpretive arrangements disrupted some of the tenuous
connections grafted in the Seattle Plan. The "multicultural" center was losing its hold as
a meta-concept that drew disparate actors and ideas together under one policy. In the
face of white flight, concerns in the black and white community with busing, inequities
within the Plan, and new actors, the cleavage created between academics and social
issues enlarged within these implementation struggles.
Equity (Policy) Reconsidered: Gathering a Discursive Coalition
Certain developments gave more power to the argument that desegregation was
not providing quality education for minority students despite numerical desegregation.
This section explores these developments that were utilized by actors, such as Preston,
who framed problems ofdesegregation in equity terms, but measured equity in terms of
educational quality (achievement). These new connections began to gain institutional
233
influence over policy and also began to create new ways for actors to situate themselves
in school issues. The new equity constellation began to organize the re-association of
ideas used to respond to these developments, which joined and took power away from
previous narrative associations. Actors who both argued for integration and challenged
busing began to expand their policy influence by the way they braided together three
separate trajectories as if they were indistinguishable elements: racial equality, academic
achievement, and school choice.
The interpretation of these idea developments allowed for a new vision ofpolicy
alternatives that became accepted as a new commonsense language that recast the role of
the schools, the meaning ofracial equality, and therefore the place for desegregation.
The reconsideration of "equity" within this new narrative constellation combined and
siphoned offelements from previous competing narratives elements that defined the
Seattle Plan and the subsequent implementation debates; it emphasized equity for
minority education, parental choice, and achievement; and it siphoned off any concern for
integration and relegated the "social" role ofthe public back to the private realm. The
emphasis constructed in the combination of these ideas was integral to their legitimacy in
implementing policy ideas in a time when the possibility ofcourt intervention remained
possible.
The academic equity narrative translated into a new foundation for a discursive
coalition with addition of school choice. Various interrelated developments allowed the
framework of school choice to become a meta-concept that oriented new identifications
around school equity policy. First, the Seattle Plan's discursive coalition began to break
234
down physically, as fewer representatives ofcivil rights interests frequented school board
debates. This resulted in fewer actors expressing alternate narratives representing visions
of the public schools as promoting social, economic, and academic roles. Second, school
policy and national school rhetoric associated and measured racial equality as equity in
academic achievement. When desegregation did not prove to alleviate the "achievement
gap" between blacks and whites, actors chided the desegregation plan as unsuccessfully
implementing racial equity. This embedded a schism within the Seattle Plan's discursive
linkages by displacing the role of the schools as a social role and defining equity policies
in terms of academic achievement.
Third, the role of options was then integral to the development of the school
choice narrative. Equity began to be defined in terms of access to options, or expanded
choice, that the Seattle Plan was not able to ensure, given the structural inequities and
constructed irrelevance of desegregation for equalizing academic achievement. The
Seattle Plan engendered options and a subsequent debate about the structural inequalities
inherently embedded in the options programs, which resulted in the continued
prioritization of options as excellent academic tools, under the assumption that they could
be equalized. Thus, rather than disbanding the options as mechanisms of inequality, the
District expanded options to increase the opportunity for educational excellence. The
following sub-sections describe these interrelated developments that aided the
construction and legitimacy of this alternate narrative that eventually dismantled the
Seattle Plan's discursive basis for coalition and policy.
235
The Seattle Plan's Discursive Coalition Begins to Disband
The unsteady, yet solid, discursive coalition that arranged the Seattle Plan began
to show signs of strain by the mid-1980s. Many of the groups represented by the Seattle
Plan began to show dismay or disinterest with desegregation. The careful crafting of a
new interpretation of equity and desegregation was politically boosted by actors who
aggressively pushed desegregation in the Seattle Plan formation, who changed their
views on desegregation, or simply stopped showing up to policy debates. For example,
black leaders in Seattle increasingly expressed discontent with desegregation. This began
as early as 1981, when the most prominent voice to introduce an alternate narrative
discussion, Professor Derrek Bell, spoke in Seattle and pronounced that, "busing doesn't
work." He argued that schooling was still unequal, despite busing, and said "integrated
schools might be as oppressive as the segregated schools" because "both took away
choices by assigning students to schools on the basis ofrace.,,124 Likewise, board
member Michael Preston began his fIrst years on the Board in the early 1980s with the
obvious intention to impress upon the school district that improving education of black
youth was more important than desegregation. 125 With more reports in the mid-1980s
showing the maintenance of an "achievement gap" between white and black students,
more public calls came to improve education and forget about busing. 126
124 "Busing doesn't work, black law dean says," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 23 May 1982.
125 '''Racial balance' divides 2 blacks on board," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 March 1984, A5.
126 "Black students need more help," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 14 November 1985, AlO; "Blacks attack
busing," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 20 November 1985. In 1976, the median percentile in reading for the
state's black fourth graders was 32, compared with 63 for white pupils. In 1984, the percentile had risen
236
During this time, the business community also began to show reticence to support
busing over academic achievement. In 1984, a group of businesspeople, parents,
minority and church groups formed a coalition called The Education Campaign in order
to discuss issues and lobby the legislature. This campaign included the League of
Women Voters, the PTA, and business leaders who were integral in the Seattle Plan
acceptance of the 1970s. Joining these groups, the Washington Roundtable, composed of
the top executives of the thirty largest corporations in Washington, became the most
prominent member of the Campaign and helped to finance the coalition's yearlong
effort. 127 Roundtable president, Richard S. Page, expressed the group's goal, "These
business leaders are concerned with the quality of public education in the state of
Washington," with recommendations to look at "issues" of teacher pay, collective
bargaining, teacher tenure, "the roles and missions ofvarious educational institutions,"
and governance. 128 Another co-sponsor of the group, Roberto Maestas ofthe King
County Minority Executive Director Coalition, said, ''the [academic] situation for
minority students in the state has not improved dramatically since minority students
staged a sit-in at Franklin High School 15 years ago," and promised to "ensure that the
upcoming review ofeducation treats the causes of racism in the public schools rather than
for blacks to 42 percent but the gap between white and black remained at 30 percent ("School Busing: A
long way to go," Seattle Times, 2 March 1986, B3).
127 "Groups unite to suggest improvements to education," Seattle Times, 31 March 1984.
128 Ibid.
237
the symptoms.,,129 For Maestas, the "symptom" he described was segregation. For him,
busing was merely a solution to the symptom.
The board witnessed a reduced presence of those highly vocal and active
representatives from the Church Council, the Urban League, the Central Area School
Council, and even the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union. Seattle Times
reporter Constantine Angelos began a 1984 article with the query,
It used to be when the Seattle School Board held a hearing on a desegregation
issue, the place was full and the testimony lasted for hours. Last night it only took
a half hour for eight persons to testify on a proposal by board member Michael
Preston that would broaden the board's defmition of what constitutes a racially
imbalanced school. And no one from a traditional civil rights group showed
up.l30
T.J. Vassar recalled, in a personal interview, "Some of the old guard [NAACP, CASe] in
the city still wielded a lot of influence, but that influence was beginning to dwindle ...
Communities didn't have the leaders they used to have."l3l Dorothy Hollingsworth also
described the situation in retrospect, "I think many of the social organizations became
less forward in making demands. Because I think the community, some of them, began to
think it was not accomplishing as much."l32 Vassar and Hollingsworth described theories
related to why the demands became quieter, namely the dissolution of the Central Area
leadership circle beginning in the late 1960s. Vassar explained, "In part, it was because
of some of the successes of affrrmative action. More people [sic] were getting jobs. In
129 Ibid.
130 "School Board hears views on racial balance," Seattle Times, 29 March 1984.
131 T.J. Vassar, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 7 September 2007.
132 Dorothy Hollingsworth, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 December 2007.
238
the past you couldn't get jobs, so you would work for NAACP, the Urban League. So
now people were making money, moving out of the central area.,,133 Nonetheless, there
is no evidenced consensus on this development.
However, these groups and sentiments had not disappeared for good. An anti-
busing movement in the late 1980s sparked the "old [civil rights] guard" back into action.
In 1986, a group of parents formed "Parents Against Forced Busing," to push for an open
enrollment plan to encourage neighborhood schooling and end the Seattle Plan's busing.
At this point, the district assured the public that they would make no recommendations
that would re-segregate the schools. Preston, as Board President in 1986, told the press
that he is in favor of dropping schools from busing in some situations, but added the
caveat, ''there's the catch: I would not favor any action which would have the effect of
resegregating schools.,,134 Preston said, "It is better to continue self-imposed
desegregation than to let a federal court dictate the terms.,,135 The NAACP threatened to
block any effort to re-segregate the schools. 136
In response to PAFB, most board members expressed their commitment to busing
and their adherence to the idea that integration was necessary. Susan Harris told Lawless
at a board meeting, "Ifyou can tell me how we can create an integrated society without
133 TJ. Vassar, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 7 September 2007.
134 Ibid.
135 "Proposal to scrap busing greeted coolly," Seattle Times, 9 January 1986.
136 Ibid., "NAACP warns it will fight any effort to change busing plan," Seattle Times, 6 February 1986.
239
busing, I'm sure we'd all like to know how to do it.,,137 Ellen Roe advised Lawless to
"review the efforts of those who opposed busing earlier," presumably to show PAFB that
simply because more citizens are calling for changes in mandatory busing the district
cannot abandon desegregation plans for reasons that could appear to end in un-checked
re-segregation.
The Disproportionality Study
The turning point for the legitimacy of the alternate narrative that emphasized
quality education over busing and securely linked academics as the means to racial equity
came about with a report released in 1986, locally known as the "Disproportionality
Study.,,138 A former school board member at this time recalled, "The galvanizing thing
was the Disproportionality Study.,,139 The results ofthe study and following
recommendations detached integration from achievement, not as separately measurable
goals as Vassar framed, but as competing alternatives.
Superintendent Nelson formed the Disproportionality Task Force in August 1985
in response to community pressure to address the issue ofdisproportionate achievement
levels between racial and ethnic groups in Seattle. 140 The task force included thirty-nine
137 "Proposal to scrap busing greeted coolly," Seattle Times, 9 January 1986.
138 Seattle Public Schools Disproportionality Task Force "Recommendations for the Elimination of
Disproportionality," September 1986, in 138.004.c.l (SSD).
139 Anonymous, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 25 July 2007.
140 Record 85, 22 September 1986,2 (SSR). Among others, in 1985, the Coalition for the Education of
Black Children had called for a district-wide review of grades to determine why black students'
achievement "was lagging compared with other ethnic groups" ("Black coalition seeks district-wide review
of grades," Seattle Times, 12 November 1985).
240
members, half from the district and half from the community. The task force developed
over 150 recommendations and presented these to new Superintendent William Kendrick
in the spring of 1986. This was the fIrst time the District had disaggregated its
achievement data by race and/or ethnicity controlling for income levels. 141 The study
disaggregated data according to nineteen ethnic groups measured along categories
including academic achievement and dropout rates, among others. The Task Force
presented information publicly and to the board in April 1986 and showed that black
students performed or measured substantially worse in most categories measured.
The most powerful narrative that interpreted the Disproportionality Study follows
that ofthe academic equity narrative began by Preston, among others. The report did not
mention desegregation in either positive or negative terms, and defmed differences
between racial or ethnic groups in terms of"disproportionality." The use of the term,
"disproportionate" eased the transposition ofequity narratives because actors distinctly
separated issues ofracial equality from segregation and its association with racism or
discriminatory intent. To explain, "disproportionate" alleviated the need for an agent
who caused this result, leading actors to want to address and frame its "root" cause as
unequal academic conditions for achievement. Framing unequal achievement in terms of
disproportionality narrowly confmed the questions asked about inequality to the school
setting only. This deferred any intention or agent ofdiscrimination that caused the event.
These conditions could include a wide range of school-related issues, from lack of
minority teachers, attitudes of teachers, lack ofexcellent programs for minority students,
141 The State had disaggregated this data before, revealing constant achievement gaps, but they had not
controlled for income ("School Busing: A long way to go," Seattle Times, 2 March 1986, B3).
241
unequal resources, and family conditions. For example, just after the Disproportionality
Study results went public, the P-I cited multiple reasons for the achievement gap and
other measures ofdisproportionality. While also including continued racism among
teachers and students as a potential reason, the disproportionality study measured
disciplinary action, teacher expectations, single-parent homes, lack ofrole models for
black children, lack of involvement by the black community, and lack ofminority
teachers. 142
The combination of both social and academic causes for disproportionate
achievement levels signaled a specific directional arrow between social conditions and
schools. With the tum offocus to achievement, alternate factors could account for lack
of achievement in black children when disassociated with segregation. That is, without
the causal arrow pointing from segregation to behavioral issues, e.g., lack of role models
can be a causal factor of low academic achievement. Therefore, without connection
between this "home" condition and the schools, the schools can presumably address this
issue (by providing role models, counseling, etc.) or take care of its academic results (low
achievement).
In Seattle, by the mid-1980s, more actors were distancing the schools from social
or cultural factors, directing their solution to the home. Many actors exemplified this
"focus on the family." In 1985, the Seattle Times quoted Lacey Steele ofthe NAACP
impart part ofthe problem ofblack achievement on parents: "Parents, I repeat, parents,
must become involved in the educational process. Black students must be taught by
142 "Success for blacks still lags," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9 April 1986.
242
parents and by the community that education is important.,,143 The Coalition for the
Education ofBlack Children noted after the disproportionality study, "We don't have
time to tamper with busing per se. [The fIrst priority] is to make sure all children achieve
no matter where they are. Our priority is to make sure schools work." 144 Michael
Preston also said "parents and community members must reinforce the work of the
schools in local neighborhoods so that it is not just the schools that are asking children to
speak standard English and change other behaviors.,,145 Once resistant to "societal"
problems like segregated housing, school and civic actors began to ask the broader
society to take care of "individual" problems manifesting in the schools.
Board response also showed disconnections between the schools and social
issues. In the "Educational Plan to Eliminate Disproportionality," they agreed upon the
defmition of"disproportionality" as "the overrepresentation of the number ofstudents of
a particular ethnic group in any given area ofeducation such as disciplinary action or low
academic achievement.,,146 In this statement, the Board framed education specifIcally as
academic by associating "overrepresentation," previously used to describe a racially
imbalanced school, to academic achievement or disciplinary action. They sought to
eliminate disproportionality to "increase the academic achievement and socio-cultural
literacy skills ofhigh-risk students.,,147 The mention of "socio-cultural," previously
143 "Black coalition seeks district-wide review of grades," Seattle Times, 12 November 1985.
144 "School busing: A long way to go," Seattle Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2 March 1986.
145 Record 85, 22 September 1986, 8 (SSR).
146 Ibid.
243
linked with multiculturalism or pluralism, now was directly and only connected to
"literacy" of "high risk" students. Reflective of the trends in the Courts and many
narrative constellations, these actors again began connecting efforts to address racial
equality in terms of minority students "lacks" in achievement or cultural competency,
when they manifested in academic results. The other recommendations addressed staff
training, intervention for high-risk students, remedial learning, teacher intervention, an
overall increase in monitoring, and new academic goals to meet. 148
This event again widened the schism between integration and education by
combining the goals ofequity and education into one goal. In contrast to Vassar, who
measured the goals as separate and equally necessary goals, the Task Force was careful to
define their belief "that equity compliments educational excellence and... educational
excellence cannot be achieved without equity." They expressed concern with "persistent
notion that the two issues are completely different, or that the latter (equity) can only be
secondary to the former (excellence).,,149 At first glance, this division appears similar to
the diversity narrative. However, the Task Force did not include any recommendations
for integration to alleviate disproportionality, which showed that this division was meant
to assure that educational excellence be equal for all students.
In a personal interview, one board member who desired to remain anonymous
explained the significance of these results as two-fold. Board member Connie Sidles
147 Ibid.
148 Disproportionality Task Force, "Recommendations for the Elimination ofDisproportionality,"
September 1986, in 138.004.c.l (SSD).
149 Ibid.
244
noted, "There's been a real recognition from black parents in the community that busing
has not improved education. They say 'Why go through the pain of busing my children
out of the neighborhood to a hostile environment when they will not be better educated
because ofit'?,,15o Michael Preston stressed, "that we could have quality education
without student movement.,,151
Following the study, more people in the black community questioned the value of
desegregation, given the burden and the lack of academic results; "there were so many in
the black community stressing the importance of achievement over integration that it
made it politically possible for people to say, 'ok, let's go back to achievement and if that
doesn't mean forcing integration we're not going to force integration.",152 Black
educators in the district also began to push for "closer-to-home" strategies rather than
busing, to improve the education of black youth.153 The tradeoff was a very real concern
with such drastic cuts in school funding, but as Vassar and others continued to argue, the
policy possibilities did not have to instigate a zero-sum policy debate that had to
prioritize education or desegregation. In personal interviews, multiple school board
members discarded funding cuts as causally related to desegregation decisions,
suggesting that schools are always under-funded. 154
150 "Proposals to curb busing in Seattle seeks to attract whites to schools," New York Times, 28 March
1988, A17.
151 "Desegregation-change talks begin," Seattle Times, 24 November 1987.
152 Anonymous, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 25 July 2007.
153 "Blacks attack busing," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 20 November 1985.
154 Dorothy Hollingsworth, Cheryl Bleakney, Suzanne Hittman, Don Nielson, and Anonymous were asked
about the effects of Reagan funding cuts. Dorothy Hollingsworth explained the effect ofperception on the
245
A second point of significance, the same Board member said, was "it made it
possible for white leaders to say 'this isn't working, see, the whole purpose was to
improve education for black students and we're not doing that.' ... It enabled the decision
that something else must be done. ",ISS Therefore, ''when it became arguable that the goal
was not being met, then it became politically feasible to say let's change it because it's
not working ... you could be a good liberal and still say it's not working.,,156 Following
this logic, the white liberals began to confme solutions to equity problems in terms of
academics. This narrative connected the measurement of equity in terms of achievement
and recast the "root" of racial inequality as academic achievement, with busing or
integration as a treatment for its symptoms. These assumptions countered over thirty
years of civil rights narratives that aligned the root cause of academic inequality with the
structural problems associated with home and school segregation.
For example, white Board member Linda Harris, recognized the historical
inequalities in Seattle and simultaneously critiqued public projects to fix segregated
situations. In a personal interview, she said, "Federal housing in the 50s was a horrible
experiment, turned into ghettos, crime, didn't improve anybody's quality of life. But the
quality of those schools went downhill because [they were] so impacted.,,157 She voted
construction of a tradeoff: "I think when the people thought the monies that were coming in were scarce,"
that may have impacted the way the community began to look at it, as if "we're spending to so much
money [on desegregation] and not enough in the education programs." (Dorothy Hollingsworth, interview
with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 December 2007).
155 Anonymous, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 25 July 2007.
156 Ibid.
157 Linda Harris, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007.
246
for the Seattle Plan, "I voted for all the deseg plans," but she looked back and argued, "If
you assume that a good school has parental involvement, good teachers, and leadership,
and you put all of that in place and say, well all the schools are good schools, and it
shouldn't matter where your child goes to school.,,158 White board member Don Nielson
argued, "integration was the right decision, busing was the wrong decision." His mission
on the board was to enhance schools, "ifyou create a good school you will integrate
neighborhoods." Busing wasted resources because "there is no educational value to a bus
ride." Nielson argued that the focus needed to be the minority children, who have been
"deprived of life experiences and learning... Spending a lot of time on integrating
schools takes the eye off the focus of what we really need to be doing. You need to be
upgrading the quality of schools in the neighborhood where that kid lives.,,159
Upgrading quality for Nielson and those who called for increased quality
education for minorities meant higher quality teachers, librarians, classroom materials,
classroom space, and other support services within the schools. An ''upgrade'' did not
mean more social interaction between racial and ethnic groups. Nielson directly
addressed the structural inequality fIrst pointed out by DRAC, but then placed blame on
integration because it does not focus on the key issues- minority education. For Harris,
the ultimate was lack of support and funding for essential educational programs that
would improve every school.
158 Ibid.
159 Don Nielson, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 25 July 2007.
247
Following Preston, these narrative associations served to solidify the
measurement of racial equality in terms ofacademic achievement. Note that these
arguments no longer incorporated any links to multiculturalism or the benefits of
diversity. These responses became legitimate because they did not emphasize the
benefits ofneighborhood schooling and did not emphasize parents' individual rights to
choose their schools. Actors connected disproportionality in achievement to the effects,
or results, ofdesegregation and therefore left desegregation as suspiciously ineffective in
achieving equal opportunity.
The Policy Change of "Controlled Choice"
The Board began to revisit the desegregation plan under new Superintendent
William Kendrick in the fall of 1986. The District had decided to make major changes to
the Seattle Plan to address the public concerns with disproportionality and the continued
decline in enrollment. The Board enacted an overhaul of the Seattle Plan, "Controlled
Choice," where the district re-zoned Seattle schools to decrease the amount and distance
ofmandatory student bus-rides, and offer a greater level of"choice."
Throughout discussion ofchanges to the Seattle Plan's student assignment plan,
the Board remained under the constraint that major changes to desegregation could lead
them to a lawsuit, even though they were most likely doing more than necessary under
federal law. Legal counsel Michael Roge, told the board, "As a matter of federal law, the
district is doing as much and probably more than it needs to do, at least in student
248
assignments," but noted that, ''the eventual answer to [the question ofconstitutional
violation] may not be ascertained for years to come if brought to litigation.,,16o
The District modeled Controlled Choice after a similar policy implemented in
Cambridge, Mass. The Board voted unanimously to re-zone the Seattle schools in order
to provide more choice for parents within a specific set of schools in hopes of providing
more equity for white and minority parents to access choice options, fewer bus rides, and
to "lure white students back into the city's public schools.,,161 Families could choose
between potential schools within eight racially balanced clusters of six to ten schools,
including some close to the family's home and some in another part of the city dependent
on the race of the child. 162 The plan aimed to maintain the goal of integration, but
allowed more students to attend neighborhood schools as well. The plan envisioned 80-
90 percent ofparents getting their first or second choice of schools and was projected to
reduce the number of students bused from more than 10,000 to 4,700.163
The policy gained the support of the NAACP and a coalition of Seattle minority
and business leaders. 1M Head ofthe local chapter, Lacy Steele, said the plan "should
160 Record 85, 15 December 1987, 1 (SSR).
16! "Integrating equality and excellence," Seattle Times, 21 June 1987; "Integration plan aims to cut
busing," New York Times, 11 June 1988, Section 1 (32).
162 Laura Kohn, "Priority Shift: The Fate of Mandatory School Busing for Desegregation in Seattle and the
Nation," (RandlUW, Institute for Public Policy and Management, University of Washington, 1996).;
"Integration plan aims to cut busing," New York Times 11 June 1988, Section 1 (32).
163 "Busing plan heads for fmal vote: Decision set today on overhaul," Seattle Times, 8 June 1988; Timothy
Egan, "Proposal to curb busing in Seattle seeks to attract white to schools," New York Times, 28 March
1988,AI7.
164 "Proposal to curb busing in Seattle seeks to attract white to schools," New York Times, 28 March 1988,
A17.
249
result in less black students being bused because they have borne the brunt of the
busing... We say, on the surface, it seems to be a fair plan.,,165 The plan tentatively
appealed to many parents and civic actors, who either remained skeptical of the
"controlled" part of Controlled Choice or its assurances ofcontinued equity.
The board debates displayed the unresolved juxtaposition of the narratives of
attraction, diversity, and the academic equity narrative. Within the concerned Seattle
community and the school board, there appeared to be equal amounts ofconcern for
white attraction, quality education, as well as ensuring the desegregation element
sustained. Board members also sustained interest in the desegregation element. Board
member Elizabeth Wales expressed concern that the Seattle Plan was often "blamed for
all of the ills of the District," and recommended that the planning committee include the
"many positive educational benefits which have taken place" with the Seattle Plan. 166
The Planning Advisory Committee also initiated their report to the board with their "first
major philosophy statement" that there can be "no quality education without
integration.,,167 The committee clearly stated they would not support a return to the
neighborhood school concept, which could lead to 70 percent ofelementary and 80
percent ofhigh schools re-segregated.
The District also spent an extensive amount oftime gathering public opinion to
specifically target changes to the Seattle Plan. The results ofcommunity outreach efforts
165 "Integration plan aims to cut busing," New York Times 11 June 1988, Section 1 (32).
166 Record 85, 29 October 1986,29 (SSR).
167 "Seattle schools: No quality education without integration, committee says," Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
15 May 1987.
250
showed Superintendent Kendrick, "that there is great concern about the quality of
educational experiences in the schools...much ofthe concern... centered on the Seattle
Plan.,,168 Parents also expressed concern with wanting to "fmd a way to have their
children attend school closer to their homes," to avoid "excessively long bus rides" and
lessen the inconvenience of after-school activities. 169 Surprising for Kendrick, there were
also many who showed up to the neighborhood forums in support of busing, "despite its
. • ,,170
mconvemences.
By the mid-1980s, the press began to publicize the decline in enrollment as
greater than ever, and therefore even those within the District who expressed desire for
integrated education also expressed concerns with fewer enrolled students. A 1986
Seattle P-I article, boldly and largely titled "Whites avoid Seattle public schools,,,171
quoted the assistant superintendent Mona Bailey, "this year will be critical because the
district will have to convince white parents that academic achievement will improve for
all students, not just minorities.,,172 In board discussion prior to changes, Dr. Colin
Williams cited the need to "attract additional young people to schools where majority
168 Superintendent Kendrick met with over 157 organizations and visited 47 schools in the summer of 1986
(Record 85, 29 October 1966,27 (SSR)).
169 Ibid. See also, "School district, citizen panel analyze desegregation plan," Seattle Times, 30 October
1986.
170 "Integrating equality and excellence," Seattle Times, 21 June 1987.
171 The "attraction rate" for white families was around 44 percent since 1980, compared with 62 percent in
1969 ("Whites avoid Seattle Public Schools," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7 October 1986).
172 Ibid.
251
students are needed,,173 because ofdeclining enrollment. Another TimeslP-I survey
found respondents also desired more voluntary elements or a return to the neighborhood
school concept, which to them meant an end to mandatory student assignment. 174
However, the narrative that gained prominence centered on the zero-sum tradeoff
that set busing against education and the subsequent prioritization of quality education
over "the bus ride." This narrative successfully and narrowly cast busing as having
always been in service ofthe goal ofachieving equal academic outcomes. For example,
the New York Times, writing about Seattle, noted the winning sentiment in the
desegregation debates: "busing has not raised quality.,,175 The major Seattle newspapers,
traditionally supportive ofdesegregation efforts, ran an op-ed titled "Focus on teaching,
not the bus ride," in the spring of 1987.176 A month later, the P-Iran an op-ed by
Michael Preston where he wrote "busing even after 10 years has not provided an equal
educational opportunity for all children."l77 Both articles suggested the benefits of
"multi-racial experiences" and the Seattle Plan's "contribution to race relations in
Seattle," but called on the district to focus on improving public education and arrange its
priorities to distribute its resources equitably for minority students.
173 Record 85, 29 October 1986,29 (SSR).
174 "Eliminate busing, say a third of opponents," Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer, 17 May, 1987.
175 Timothy Egan, "Proposal to curb busing in Seattle seeks to attract whites to schools," New York Times,
28 March 1988, A17.
176 "Focus on teaching, not the bus ride," Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer, 14 June 1987.
177 "Board must look to future, consider all-voluntary plan," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 10 July 1987.
252
The Muddled Picture ofSchool Desegregation
Events that followed the Board's decision to implement Controlled Choice
revealed significant weaknesses of the diversity, or multicultural, narratives layered
within the academic equity narrative. Immediately following the implementation of
Controlled Choice in the fall of 1988, the city became embroiled in further debate over
the mandatory element of student assignment embedded in Controlled Choice. The
narrative terrain of conflict witnessed a shift in emphasis from debates between equity
and education to debates about the level of "control" in Controlled Choice. In these
debates, student choice became the narrative center of a new discursive coalition that
began to define, and dismantle, desegregation policy.
Though many did not like the "controlled" part of controlled choice, 90 percent of
parents received their first choice for elementary school students and the number of
children bussed was halved. Despite this number, the press reported that "a flood of
parents unhappy that their children didn't get into their fIrst-choice public school this fall
are trying to enroll their children in private schools."I78 The back-up mandatory
assignment, inclusion of kindergarten, and school closures to necessitate equity in student
movement, enraged many parents.
In the spring of 1989, city election politics began to heat up with the initiation of
an anti-busing initiative and a hotly contested mayoral race that centered on busing. The
anti-busing group Save Our Schools launched the anti-busing Initiative 34. Republican
candidate for the mayoral election, Doug Jewitt, initiated the group, organized and led by
178 "Parents swamp private schools with applications," The Oregonian, 18 July 1989, B02.
253
community member Kathy Baxter. The SOS initiative allotted six percent of city sales-
tax revenue to the District if they adopted an open-enrollment plan. The initiative set
aside $4.3 million in taxes for high school improvements and magnet programs to
encourage integration.
The initiative became the central issue for the mayoral election between Doug
Jewitt and Norm Rice. Norm Rice unexpectedly entered the race on the last day to file,
saying he was prompted by the SOS initiative, which the other candidates had been silent
on. Rice entered the race with a tone ofunity; he did not fiercely support busing but the
framed his opposition to SOS as one ofdisgust for such divisive tactics, citing his
decision a result of "a terrible new ingredient has been added: the so-called SOS initiative
to segregate our schools." 179 The election resulted in an uncertain civic opinion: Rice
won the election by a wide majority while the initiative passed by one-percent margin.
Rice was the first African-American to be elected mayor of Seattle. Following the
election, Rice announced he favored the movement towards all-voluntary integration in
the near future.
If ever there was an uncertain trumpet for change, this election showed the
contingency of this point in Seattle's history. The New York Times reported, "Ifthe
picture of school desegregation in Seattle seems muddled, it is in the rest of the country
as we11.,,180 Though the public narrowly approved the initiative, the Boar~ declined the
179 "Norm Rice unexpectedly enters race for Seattle Mayor on the last day for filing," July 28, 1989.
HistoryLink.org Essay 4284, available from
http://www.historylink.orgiindex.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&filejd=4284; (accessed May 31, 2009).
180 Lee A. Daniels, "The winning ways to desegregate the schools," The New York Times, 17 December
1989, Section 4(4).
254
funds offered by the initiative with a 4 to 3 vote, thus making it favorable vote moot.
Board members Michael Preston, Amy Hagopian, and Connie Sidles voted to approve the
initiative. The Seattle Times noted the philosophical division still present in the board as
"Michael Preston's search for a fourth vote" ran up against Marilyn Smith, Kenneth
Eastlack, Ellen Roe, and Allan Sugiyama who voted for the rejection. 181
The policy of Controlled Choice layered the narrative constellations of attraction,
diversity, and academic equity without re-wiring their connections in ways that made
sense to almost anyone. In the District's attempts to please every constituency, they did
not provide a way to decrease the cleavage that had vastly widened between these
constellations. The election merely signaled to District actors again, that the city was
also caught in the pendulum swinging between desegregation and academics. The
tradeoff between the two had for the most part been settled, given the measurement of
racial equality was almost solidified as academic achievement. On Seattle, the New York
Times noted the sentiment winning over the desegregation debates was "busing has not
raised quality.,,182 However, the city and invested actors retained an investment in racial
equality that included diversity.
18\ Joe Haberstroh, "Divided board ponders open enrollment," Seattle Times, 2 January 1990, Bl. TJ.
Vassar did not vote for the proposal because he declined to run for school board in the fall of 1988.
182 Timothy Egan, "Proposal to curb busing in Seattle seeks to attract whites to schools," New York Times,
28 March 1988, AI?
255
The Meta-Concept of Choice
With the threats of the civil rights groups meaning less to the Board, a discursive
coalition representing the same set ofactors as the Seattle Plan led the Board towards the
dismantling ofdesegregation. The concept ofchoice was able to reconcile diversity,
academic achievement, parental control, and frustrations with busing and brought this
discursive coalition together. Choice gained independent value in relationship to
academic achievement and racial equality and its polyvalence allowed choice to become
the umbrella that sheltered these widely different interests because it could include those
truly invested in minority kids' education as well as those truly invested in ending busing.
School choice could gather another unlikely coalition ofactors, who were able to use the
narrative of choice to interpret issues ofequity, achievement, and attraction in multiple
ways. Like the discursive coalition that crafted the Seattle Plan, this arrangement of ideas
that ended desegregation in favor of school choice also represented a mix of
contradictory but temporarily comfortable ideas.
The combination of the diversity, attraction and equity constellations could not be
reconciled in Controlled Choice. Preston's academic equity constellation embedded
within Controlled Choice allowed the policy to dissolve from the inside because it could
critique Controlled Choice in the same way it critiqued the Seattle Plan: it drove away
white families, it did not improve quality education for black children, it bussed kids far
away from their neighborhood schools, and it wasted resources better spent to improve
education.
256
After only two years of Controlled Choice, the Board committed to shift student
assignment to a voluntary racial assignment policy based on school choice. In January
1990, Michael Preston unveiled a plan to phase out mandatory busing within four
years. 183 Preston described the open-enrollment plan as a "middle ground" between
Initiative 34 and "controlled choice," because it did not rely on neighborhood assignment
patterns and also ended busing. 184 Though the plan would ultimately phase out busing
for integrative purposes, it anticipated another voluntary racial transfer component in the
form of magnet programs to encourage student movement to promote racial balance.
Following, the Board unanimously committed itself to a voluntary enrollment plan for the
fall of 1991 while examining its definition ofracial imbalance. By July 1990, all seven
members agreed that the Seattle Plan's desegregation defmitions should be relaxed and
essentially concluded, "that it's time to give Up.,,185 At the frrst hearing to publicly
discuss the changes, the "sincere long-term watchdogs against resegregation" came to
warn against changing the defmitions and guidelines ofracial imbalance. 186 However,
the press labeled this group, which included the Urban League, Church Council, and
183 Joe Haberstroh, "Voluntary enrollment pledged- school board to implement plan for 1991-92 classes,"
Seattle Times, 26 January 1990, B3.
184 Joe Haberstroh, "Divided board ponders open enrollment," Seattle Times, 2 January 1990, B1.
185 Michele Matassa Flores, "It just won't work-School Board giving up on mandatory integration," Seattle
Times, 10 July 1990, AS.
J86 "Redefining racial balance- hair-trigger threat of suit dilutes school dialogue," Seattle Times, 24 June
1990, A18.
257
League of Women Voters, a ''tired threat. ,,187 The battle over integration was becoming
more a memory than a threat.
Neither school nor city actors anticipated the quick progression. Head ofSOS,
Kathy Baxter noted this paradox in 1990 when the Board voted to go all-voluntary,
saying only two years ago she "couldn't talk about busing without having her motives
questioned.,,188 In 1990, the Time's reported the result ofa public hearing to ascertain the
public's view on relaxing desegregation rules, which "was as unclear as the complicated
rules themselves.,,189 By 1991, the Board could push through drastic changes to basically
end mandatory desegregation quite smoothly without being labeled discriminatory or
catering to the North end white parents.
What is the character ofthis discursive arrangement of ideas that could bring the
entire board together to vote to essentially end mandatory desegregation just two years
after they re-vamped the Seattle Plan? On the surface, this coalition appeared to join both
progressive liberals and strict anti-busing critics. This was not a simple coalition of
actors utilizing "colorblind conservative" rhetoric to hide racist intentions within a
discourse of individualist equality. The discursive coalition that convened under around
the meta-concept ofchoice provided the legitimacy necessary to begin the process of
dismantling desegregation policies because it articulated a relationship between the role
of the schools and the individual in ways that made choice more commonsense than
187 Ibid.
188 Joe Haberstroh, "Voluntary enrollment pledged- school board to implement plan for 1991-92 classes,"
Seattle Times, 26 January 1990, B3.
189 Michele Matassa Flores, "Reactions mixed on desegregation," The Seattle Times, 21 June 1990, B6.
258
integration in terms of racial equity. This articulation provided potential connections to
create audiences by crafting new ways for people to think about their identities in relation
to the schools, others, and race. Within specific development processes, we can see how
these identity attachments enlarged the scope and identifications possibly connected
under "school choice."
Equity as Achievement, Busing as Harmful for Achievement
This narrative of school choice that opposed busing could do something the call
for neighborhood schooling could never do: retain the assumption ofracial equality.
Despite cultural or historical differences, the narrative ofschool choice could not be
sustained without the interest in the increase in minority student achievement. This
points to the central piece that could align this discursive coalition. Institutional actors.
could legitimately address calls to end desegregation when linked with either the futility
of desegregation efforts or the argument that desegregation was not "working" in terms
of increasing minority achievement. Narratives, such as T.J. Vassar's, became all but
anachronistic because they could not account for achieving academic racial equity. Actor
such as Michael Preston successfully questioned the value ofpursuing diversity and
social relations when the academic achievement of minority youth remained unchanged.
This was the creativity ofMichael Preston, who articulated the necessity to account for
diversity and equality that was integral in Seattle's image, and also acceptably prescribe
an end to busing because it was not helping diversity and equality. The effectiveness of
the narrative was that it could also include a range ofpeople who remained highly
259
skeptical, or overtly against, desegregation for reasons ranging from racism to deep
concern for minority students' achievement. The idea that academic achievement for
minority youth had not improved with desegregation also became an argument that
desegregation even harmed the academic choices for black students. The Seattle Times
noticed, "Diversity, though still given lip service, has been replaced by a battle cry for
"academic achievement," in an articled titled, "Busing's end means choice will begin.,,190
In early 1990, parents framed desegregation as actually "killing Central and South
area schools.,,191 Amy Hagopian spoke for these parents: "The minority community has
decided the battle they want to fight is around quality education for their kids and the
disproportionality of achievement- not around busing.,,192 Mandatory assignment meant
fewer academic choices for their children because the District's priority on busing still
left black students with fewer attractive options. One black parent articulated her new
view of the current state of desegregation by providing her own historical context. For
her, "unequal education was the result of segregation," for her children, "it sterns from
desegregation.,,193 The narrative redirected the gaze of the "root" cause away from
structural segregation to the tradeoff inherent in desegregation.
The expansion of options programs, which had been proven to exacerbate racial
inequality, could be framed as necessary, to achieve equal opportunity. Choice could
190 Terry Tang, "Busing's end means choice will begin," The Seattle Times, 16 April 1992, AS.
191 Michele Matassa Flores, "Busing emptying south end schools, parents say," The Seattle Times, 5 June
1990,B3.
192 Michele Matassa Flores, "It just won't work-School Board giving up on mandatory integration," The
Seattle Times, 10 July 1990, AI.
193 Michele Matassa Flores, "Choice doesn't work for all in Seattle- one woman's view: 'crumb' vs. 'full
loaf,'" The Seattle Times, 10 July 1990, A5.
260
function as identification for minority families who wanted more academic opportunity,
as well as identification for white parents who desired academics, and not busing, as the
fundamental role of the public schools. For example, Amy Hagopian admitted that the
schools always needed to attract the white families or the "middle class... because if we
lose that, it's the worst thing that could happen for poor peoples. So we have to hold on
to them even if we have to do some despicable things. Like these gifted programs, stuff
that I've never been interested in, but they hold on to the middle class.,,194 The subtle
dismissal ofevidence that options programs exacerbated inequality holds the narrative
together because the actor's understanding ofracial inequality allowed her to promote
privilege, because it was strategic rather than self-interested. Hagopian associated
options programs and magnets as "shameless pandering... that appeal to upper class
values." But, "one way to keep the middle class in school is to give them a choice... then
you have to pair that choice with incentives that cause integration.,,195 Hagopian
separated choice and integration as both private choices, but also made school choice
instrumental in attracting, or maybe manipulating, white students back into the public
schools.
Diversity as Choice, Integration as Choice
Intimately associated with the connections forged by the association between
equity and achievement was the association between diversity and choice that allowed
194 Amy Hagopian, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007.
195 Ibid.
261
diversity and integration to become available within this language. Most actors who
retained legitimate voices in these debates maintained an apparent, albeit abstract, desire
for an integrated, or diverse, society. The narrative of school choice could account for
those who believed in diversity, by placing diversity as a private choice. Rather than
dismissing historical and structural inequalities like opponents did in the 1960s, actors in
this context overtly recognized historical inequalities and differences in culture. These
actors addressed these differences in a context that had secured the cleavage between the
diversity and the role ofthe schools. In this way, actors could separate diversity concerns
and the role of the schools through the acceptance ofdiversity and individual choices
made in private life. Therefore, one could be a racist or a liberal and promote similar
policies that focus on the schools as academic and relegate cultural or private concerns to
the home. The narrative of choice allowed actors to craft an ambiguous perspective of
diversity because parents can choose the level ofdiversity they desire without appearing
segregationist.
For example, choice can account for a paradoxical view of inequality that reifies
culture. Former school board member Don Nielson then posed the inevitability of
segregation and futility of forcing diversity or integration because of the choices
individuals naturally make; "Why do we have a Chinatown? There's no law that says
that Chinese to live in one certain area. We have a Chinatown because Chinese like to
live near Chinese." He also used the example ofAfrican-American colleges, to pose as
natural the desire ofan African-American student he knew who wanted attend Howard
University, when he could attend "any school in the nation." With these counteracting
262
examples, segregation is assumed to be a historically determined as well as a natural
choice. A public institution should "allow" for more choice in home location by ending
overt discrimination, and should also respect an individual's natural choice to choose a
home next to others that look like them.
Board member Linda Harris noticed ''we're a very divided country, and I think if
you were to ask me about Seattle, yes, they believe in diversity. But I don't know if
that's the way across the country. Seattle loves diversity...they love diversity."
However, she qualified the idea: "Until it comes down to 'my child,' everybody supports
it [diversity], eighty percent are going to say 'we really believe in diversity' ...People
aren't going to sacrifice. If it came about naturally, because everyone believes in it.,,196
Likewise, former board member Amy Hagopian framed Seattleites love for diversity,
when accomplished by choice. She said, "You know, it's lovely for white families to live
in Laurelhurst to have black kids bused into your school. You get diversity, and you get
to say your kids go to a desegregated school, it's so nice, those kids are cute. But sending
your kids there, that's a whole other [matter].,,197 She argued those parents are not overt
racists, "these people weren't bigoted in the sense that they didn't want black kids in their
schools, they just didn't want to send their kids to a school to achieve that."
Choice also allowed actors to recognize historical inequalities and also question
the reason the schools had to deal with them. For example, Amy Hagopian recognized the
historical plight of minorities in Seattle, noting historical racism within the housing
196 Linda Harris, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007.
197 Amy Hagopian, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007.
263
industry, when ''there were whole neighborhoods in Seattle where realtors were not
allowed to, or just by practice, never showed homes to black families." As these actors
expressed respect for both inequality and cultures, they re-cast the argument used for
three decades to oppose desegregation with questions like "Why is deseg solely the
responsibility of the school district?,,198 Hagopian expressed a sense of futility on the
part of the schools to change this historical fact. She asked, "Why did the city, for
example, why was the city never asked to play ball on housing desegregation? [... ] Why
did America throw that problem at the schools and leave it there?,,199 Former School
Board member Don Nielson re-visited a complaint utilized throughout Seattle's
desegregation history, "I believe that [school] integration is predominantly a real-estate
question and not a social engineering question for the schools.,,200 Former school board
member Linda Harris noted, "Seattle has very established patterns [... ] there's no control
over that in the education system yet, but the ed system is supposed to make up for the
fact that we didn't put low-income housing everywhere." She emphasized the fact that
racial inequality was much broader, "I don't think it's a school district or a school
problem. It's a community issue.,,201
For decades, actors had tried to limit the schools' reach into "community issues,"
such as neighborhood schools or parental rights. The school choice narrative could allow
multiple interpretations of the division between the schools' reach and the
198 Ibid.
199 Ibid.
200 Don Nielson, interview with author, Seattle Wash., 25 July 2007.
201 Linda Harris, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007.
264
"community's" responsibility. For example, within the school choice narrative, actors
were able to re-defme segregation as a "community issue." Like the 1960s, segregation
became a "social" or "cultural" problem, and accepted as resulting from individual
choices apart from public institutions. Hagopian believed "one of the hugest predictors
of your school experience is who you go to school with," thus possibly alluding to the
importance of noticing the social make-up of schools and classrooms.202 She then
lamented that, "if you go to school with kids who are from a culture ofnot achieving and
don't expect to achieve, that's what you're going to be like toO.,,203 In order to explain
cultural differences, she then justified cultural differences by respecting them as
individual choices,
You know the other fact ofthe matter is that some cultures have this huge
tradition of getting involved in school, some cultures do not. And, it is an
interesting sort ofanomaly about immigrant kids that most foreign cultures don't
have this thing about volunteering at the schooL .. It's that anomalous for some
cultures. You know, and the PTA women who, all these PTA white women go to
these meetings and say, where are the black families? Well, that's not how they
get involved in schools. They get involved in different ways. They have to
appreciate those ways and connect with those ways, or just suffer in silence or
whatever .... I mean it is too bad there are not black voices in those arenas,
because resources get expended at those meetings.204
Hagopian recognized PTA meetings grant power over school decisions, thus are
representative of structural inequalities, and that cultural differences naturally preclude
this power equalization. Therefore, how can the schools step in and force one family to
202 Amy Hagopian, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 6 September 2007.
203 Ibid.
204 Ibid.
265
do something it's not natural for them to do? Within this narrative, choice is both a
public policy and a private privilege.
The concept of school choice could also include those who cast liberals' desires
for diversity as facades. Former board member Don Nielson argued Seattle's belief in
diversity was disingenuous, and shows the inevitability ofdesegregation's failure and
need to re-focus the equity debate. He re-cast the alternative to disingenuous desires for
diversity as instituting choice for all students, so as not to privilege "liberals." Among
other reasons, his dissatisfaction for the busing plan rested in the false desire for diversity
of"liberal" white families when they were unwilling to change their own patterns. The
key association Nielson made is how he then highlighted the unfair result for minority
families who bore the burden ofbusing, because busing took away their choice under the
guise of "diversity." To white families that believe in diversity, he told them to make the
choice, "Ifyou want your kid to go to an integrated school, then move into an integrated
neighborhood.,,205 Families cannot force minority kids to bus into their neighborhoods
because they want the appearance ofcaring about diversity; they need to make the choice
to move into an integrated neighborhood. Central in this narrative is the assumption that
white families always have choice and impose their choice onto minorities, by choosing
to diversify ''their schools" at the expense of minority kids who had been the ones most
often bused despite their choice.
The result of the separation between diversity and the schools, which could both
respect and dismiss cultural differences, was the completed disconnect between
205 Don Nielson, interview with author, Seattle Wash., 25 July 2007.
------------------- -- -----
266
integration and equity. The combination of busing as a source of blame for inequality
and diversity as the way to talk about racial matters in Seattle, the idea of integration had
no potential connector to either the schools or racial equality. Therefore, it became
disconnected from the narrative constellation held together by choice, as it became the
antithesis of choice. With racial equity re-cast in terms of academic achievement, the
debate over integration had also come to an end in Seattle. Integration as a source of
diversity became a compelling interest, much like the "mutual respect" narrative of the
1960s. Racial equity had become a matter ofacademic issue and not one of structural
segregation or necessary cultural training for all students.
Conclusion
Policy deliberation in 1980s became a re-negotiation of the space left between the
attraction and diversity narrative constellations that re-filled this space with a new way to
envision equity: academic achievement. The combination of fewer actors framing
diversity as an inherent role for the schools, the development ofacademic achievement as
the measure ofdesegregation's success, and the association ofoptions as academic
achievement allowed a framework of school choice to work as a signifier of equity,
educational excellence, and attraction that could create discursive identifications for a
wide range ofpeople. A New York Times reporter writing about Seattle in 1989 noticed,
"The idea ofpromoting choices... represents a coming together of the political left and
267
right.,,206 By the 1990s, the District's policy stance reflected the early Reagan
administrations attempts to recast the problem ofeducation as a "crisis of academic
achievement" and concomitantly declare busing as irrelevant and therefore harmful for
the pursuit ofacademic excellence. However, policy changes avoided the association
with Reagan's overt retreat from civil rights interest.
These developments in Seattle incrementally disassociated key connections within
. the narrative constellations used to sustain the Seattle Plan and interpret its
implementation. The advent ofReagan, shifts in the Courts, and policy developments
combined resulted in cleaving a wedge between education and integration, as associated
with busing. The development was not determined, but resulted from the interpretations
of actors dealing with policy on the ground. There was no pre-determined reason that
busing should be interpreted as "successful" if it improved test scores. But, actors began
to solidify the interpretation of busing's measure in terms of academic achievement.
Alongside this interpretive development, actors began specifically talking about racial
equity in terms of academic achievement and begin to talk about busing as harmful for
minority groups as well as something that is driving white families from the schools.
These interrelated developments did not join until the advent of the concept of
school choice. The District implemented more "choice" for parents in the Controlled
Choice policy change in 1988. By this time, the layering ofchoice aspects and
mandatory busing did not allow for widespread support. The diversity narrative ofT.J.
Vassar had all but become anachronistic by this time, as the Disproportionality report
206 Lee A. Daniels, "The winning ways to desegregate the schools" The New York Times, 17 December
1989, A4.
268
galvanized remaining support for busing as a means for racial equality. However,
interest in minority equality and diversity required a place in policy ideas in Seattle,
given their long-standing support for multiculturalism and "mutual respect."
The concept ofchoice, rising from both the Seattle Plan and Controlled Choice,
can be seen as a meta-concept because of its ability to re-wire connections between
commonly used ideas and between actors and their narrative constellations. In this way,
choice became a mechanism ofcoalition building because of its polyvalent and
multivocal character. Choice acquired independent standing though, as something
disconnected from both diversity and achievement, and something that also connected
people interested in diversity and achievement.
Academic achievement became the prime measure ofracial equity, which broke
the connection between racial equality and integration. One mechanism that reinforced
the connections and disconnections were possible between equity, choice, achievement,
and diversity was the association crafted between school choice and equity that
concurrently separated the measure of success of school choice from equity or academic
achievement. School choice had become a signifier ofequity and academic achievement,
without being a measure for either. The idea of school choice became an independently
valuable idea, measured only in terms ofchoice. Whether or not choice led to equal
choices, actors had solidified its narrative link to equity. The power of school choice lay
within its polyvalent character that provided many meanings for different actors or
functions without providing concrete measures of its success.
269
Actors interpreted school policy in ways that solidified the public realm as
ensuring academic equity and solidified school choice as independently accountable for
academic quality, middle class retention, racial equity, and respecting cultural diversity.
For example, if school choice led to gaps in academic achievement, the answer was more
resources, better teachers, more educational programs to counter this trend. District
actors consistently avoided any recommendation that challenged school choice as culprit.
Likewise, if cultural or social conditions surfaced as obstacles to public school functions,
the blame did not fall on school choice. For example, Hagopian's example ofunequal
representation of minority groups at PTA meetings was explained through a narrative of
choice that framed this situation as a respect for the differences in cultures. Culture and
the neighborhood or community can be culprits, but not choice. In this context, the
neighborhood was not reified as an independently valuable concept, whether as a "right"
or "community good," but its resulting configuration was again separated from concerns
ofthe public school.
Extrapolating from this, segregated communities became irrelevant when the
focus ofracial equality had nothing to do with private choices. Given the history of
interest in mutual racial respect in Seattle, actors had to give the idea ofdiversity
credence and did so by re-casting its position into the private, or cultural, realm again.
Racial equity had become a matter ofacademic issue and not one ofstructural
segregation or necessary cultural training for all students. Through the combination of
these trajectories, segregation became an irrelevant event not only out ofthe school
270
district's jurisdiction but an issue that got in the way of pursuing policies to rectify racial
inequities and academic achievement.
271
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
Five years after the School Board voted to introduce voluntary open-enrollment
student assignment policy, the Board eliminated busing. At the same time, the Board
began to discuss ways to equalize student achievement rates. In 1996, the Board
approved the Weighted Student Formula, which was a new way to allot resources to
schools based on student enrollment. The formula allotted funding to schools based on
the different needs of each student. I Student were allotted more money based on the
"weight" assigned to special designations, including "regular," "bilingual," "special
education," "poverty," or "student mobility.,,2 Race was not included in this weighting
formula, but was addressed through characteristics of "bilingual" and "poverty."
The combination ofpolicy acts to end busing and also allot more resources for
disadvantaged students made sense at this time. The school district had not been overrun
with "colorblind conservative" board members or "avid liberals" who attempted covert
ways to bring race back into school issues. Both extremes still continued to voice their
ideas. For example, another citizen drive (Parents Involved in Community Schools)
1 "Weighted Student Fonnula: A System for Allocating Resources to Schools for the 1997-98 School
Year," Seattle Public Schools Budget Department Chief Financial Officer, 049.050C.2 (SSD).
2 Ibid.
272
forced any level ofrace-conscious policy back to the courts and the ACLU and Church
Council continued to show up to school board meetings and send memos regarding racial
inequality. School board members continue along their ways muddling through issues of
equality, race, academic achievement, and school choice. Currently, the Seattle School
District is in the process of initiating a new student assignment process based on
boundary changes to further the goals ofacademic achievement for all and equitable
distribution of resources.3
This analysis has shown that the process ofdevelopment is an on-going
negotiation and interaction between actors and their creations of ideas about racial equity
and academics. This interpretation does not discount the endurance ofcertain ways to
talk about race, equity, and the schools but broadens the lens out to how these certain
arrangements became commonsense understanding, anachronistic, or which idea
connections were disrupted for these developments to occur. Pluralist politics, regime
theory, or studies of ideology have a hard time explaining this development without
discussing the meaning and formation of "interests" and the way interests, or identities,
are activated at certain moments in reaction to certain developments.
This project developed a deeply empirical explanation ofthe politics of the Seattle
public schools. In doing so, I could view policy formation with tools that came out ofthe
story I discovered during research. Previous analytic tools did not allow this project to
develop explanations for the improbability ofthe creation and the collapse of the Seattle
3 Seattle Public Schools, "Student Assignment Plan," approved June 17, 2009, available from
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/newassign/fmal_assign--plan_June17_Cleveland.pdf; accessed October
22,2009.
273
Plan. Looking at language as fundamentally empirical allows the analytic lens to focus
on the actors and meaning-formation and therefore on the improbable ways actors can
create contingent discourses about such highly contested concepts like race, equality, and
schools. Analyzing these contingent and highly interactive discourses then allowed this
project to develop a specific explanation about racial politics in the Seattle schools, but
also theoretical leverage to broader explanations ofpolitical change. Though not
specified within APD scholarship, certain ways ofdiscussing ideas also take on a path
dependent character when "ideas" are defined as "liberal," "conservative," "anti-
transformative," or "egalitarian."
Political Change
This project re-convenes the questions of idea formation, coalition building and
policymaking to join agency, local politics, and processes of meaning making. At this
intersection, the study ofdiscursive processes as an eventful piece ofpolitical change
enlivens the debate over ideas, institutions, and coalition building. While being careful
not to posit the notions of ideas, institutions, and coalition building in causal or
directional relationships, this deeply empirical study can speak to American political
development concepts that often latch on to explanations that require path dependence,
whether within institutions or ideas. When attributed to institutions, path dependence
assumes that choices made within politics that create governing arrangements reinforce
274
these relationships over time. Certain institutional orders "lock in" a character of
4development.
I situate the central questions ofthis project in policy process and political
development to explore where change occurs and what constitutes change. Prevailing
accounts ofchange within the American political development literature focus on three
categories of examination: institutions, ideas, and actors. These accounts ofchange have
developed theories of American political development with an eye to macro-level
institutional and cultural changes. Thus, political science has benefited from a dynamic
view into the interaction between political actors and institutions and the constitutive
their ideas and policy constructs institutionalize into the American political system and
affect future policy and cultural predispositions.
This project can re-orient APD's focus on change in order to gain perspective on
the formation of ideas, how and why actors express ideas in particular ways in particular
times, and the discourses that inform political experiences. Scholars have attempted to
adjust the assumption of institutional order as the nature ofpolitical development in order
to place ideas as produced within the political process and also constitutive of change.
Robert C. Lieberman (2002) suggests, "relaxing the common focus on order" in order to
consider institutions and ideas as "integral, endogenous explanatory elements."s Studies
ofpolitical entrepreneurs and elite actors have broadened the vision ofpolitical
4 See Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2004), Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion ofNational
Administrative Capacities 1877-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
5 Robert C. Lieberman, "Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political Change," American
Political Science Review 96, no. 4 (2002).
275
development to emphasize the agents as the instigators ofchange.6 Stephen Skowronek
(2008) critiques theories that limit ideas and agents to durable sets ofalternatives
deployed instrumentally by actors and sees general ideological trends, such as "deep-
seated currents ofracism and liberalism," as "points ofdeparture" for thinking about
ideas as moving through time and politics.?
Ideas can defme, re-define, shift, and re-associate purposes in unpredictable ways.
Accordingly, Skowronek re-envisions the study ofpolitical traditions and development as
the identification of processes of idea movement and analysis of "how, and with what
effect, these shifts occur."g Therefore, ideas are analyzed less for their inherent nature,
but in how they are used by specific actors for specific purposes; in how they are "re-
worked or re-deployed.,,9 Examining ideas in this way allows for a shift in question away
from which idea "wins" or "loses" but in how purposes can also "absorb different
influences, how racism and liberalism become mutually constitutive within the culture."IO
This assumes a dynamic view of ideas as constantly changing and developing meaning
within politics.
6 Ibid, Eric Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development ofthe u.s.
Congress (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), Adam D. Sheingate, "Political Entrepreneurship,
Institutional Change, and American Political Development," Studies in American Political Development 17
(2003), Margaret Weir, "Ideas and the Politics of Bounded Innovation," in Structuring Politics: Historical
Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, ed. Steven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, Longstreth (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992).
7 Stephen Skowronek, "The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes: Racism, Liberalism, and the American
Political Tradition," The American Political Science Review 100, no. 3 (2008).
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
276
However, these scholars often focus on elite and macro-level political processes
that limit potential purchase in explanations ofchange. This research provides space for
actors, but often reverts to a view of ideas as interests and a view ofagency as intentional
maneuvering, as Hattam and Lowndes (2006) argue, ''to the extent that order recedes."ll
For example, Sheingate and Schickler both centralize actors and their direct effects on
policy and institutions. Sheingate focuses on "political entrepreneurs," who remain
within "regulative, normative, and cognitive constraints" provided by institutions. J2
Actors are able to be creators because of institutional complexity, and thus take on
entrepreneurial roles when opportunities arise. Furthermore, in Sheingate's account,
actors tend to be almost singular intentional entities until they are able to "consolidate
their innovations by building robust coalitions in support of institutional change."J3
Schickler develops an account of agency also possible because ofthe complex, layered,
and ambiguous nature ofpolitical institutions. Schickler places actors as central to the
institutional dynamic ofchange in congressional institutions, but frames actors in terms
of competing interests and the policy result as a layering of these competing interest. 14
Skowronek (2008) uses an elite actor (Wilson) to develop a robust vision of how ideas
travel across time, but remains tied to the dynamic between the grand ideologies
11 Victoria Hattam, Joseph Lowndes, "Changes beneath Our Feet: Language, Culture and Political
Change," in Formative Acts, ed. Stephen Skowronek and Mathew Glassmen (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
12 Sheingate, "Political Entrepreneurship, Institutional Change, and American Political Development."
13 Ibid.
14 Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development o/the US. Congress.
277
characteristic ofAmerican political development, allowing for their paradoxical and
complex compatibility.
I shift the focus away from macro-level institutional processes and grand
ideological trends in order to take a step closer to the ground to examine the emergence,
use, and shift in ideas that happens when local actors work together to solve policy
problems. For example, an analysis ofculture and language as it intersects with macro-
level institutional change may conclude that desegregation policy succumbed to the
inherent push-pull between entrenched cultural battles between egalitarian liberal
ideologies and anti-transformative racist ideologies. Is However, in Seattle, it is
misleading to understand the final conflicts as debates between integrationists and anti-
busers that set up a stable, defmed, institutional order. The conflicts implied movement,
action, and creation rather than winning and losing.
Chris Ansell's theory of institutional change as "constitutional process" is useful
here in that he envisions institutional change and institutions themselves as dynamic
processes of negotiation between people. He argues, "An institution develops when a
group ofpeople [... ] have come to understand their joint activities as something that has
meaning and that will continue into the future.,,16 A constitutional process is "one in
which there is an on-going negotiation about the meaning ofparticular concepts." What
is essential in this view is the observation that institutional change revolves around
15 Desmond S. and Rogers M. Smith King, "Racial Orders in American Political Development," American
Political Science Review 99, no. 1 (2005).
16 Chris Ansell, "Institutional Change as Constitutional Process, Conference Paper, Unstructuring Politics
Workshop," (Eugene, OR: 2009).
278
people who are mutually concerned with the meaning ofconcepts "without necessarily
agreeing on the foundational meaning of those concepts.,,17 In Seattle, institutional
change was led by coalitions brought together by concerns with similar concepts, yet
diverging interpretations ofthe meaning ofthe concepts. The coalitions arranged the
concepts into a policy,most often without resolving many ofthe conflicting meanings
embedded in the concepts.
The idea of institutional change as an interactive and constitutional process can
bridge the theoretical divide that interprets "institutions or ideas" and "macro or micro"
as central debates. Rather than ask about whether or not institutions caused ideas or ideas
set the groundwork for change, this study reveals space to re-invent the question of
political development as a question of meaning-making processes. Seattle's
desegregation policy changes were built through re-envisioned connections between
ideas and then also embedded certain connections between ideas, which became new
sources of identification, conflict, and cooperation. Without the interpretation of
meaning, the event ofpolicy change leaves little room for explanation ofhow policies
mean for the situation ofracial politics, for example. With meaning in mind, analysis
searches how policies affect racial politics and how they reflect racial politics continually
and in different ways.
In this study, I found that looking at the way people arrange similar concepts in
different ways, in narrative constellations, showed how concepts could link contending
ideas, and their actors. Certain arrangements of ideas signal potential political change.
17 Ibid.
279
Therefore, understanding the way concepts are connected can help studies examine the
meaning of the concepts and change. These associational potentials lay the groundwork
for, but do not determine, change. Analytical perspectives based in policy processes can
help give actors a space in these processes of change. Policy actors have to deal with
these complex issues on an every day basis. The requirements ofdemocracy make it so
actors interact with one another, which can lead to an assumption that ideas also interact
with one another. Coalitions form in policy processes and can promote one set of ideas
over others when they find enough common ground. Yes, coalitions can form based on
strategic interest for instrumental reasons. However, analysis of ideas and language can
open up the possibility ofcoalitions to form in other ways as well. Hattam and Lowndes
(2006) argue that coalition building that produces enduring change "need to generate new
identifications through which adherents understand their social location and interests
therein.,,18 Hajer envisions coalition building in terms ofdiscursive processes, as a
"discourse coalition" suggests that, "politics is a process in which different actors from
various backgrounds form specific coalitions around specific story lines.,,19 The new
story lines or ways of identifYing activated within these coalitions serve to re-organize
social organization and policy. In Seattle, actors began to agree on significant policy
change that disrupted the status quo connectors when they could re-identify with the
palette of available ideas.
18 Hattam, "Changes beneath Our Feet: Language, Culture and Political Change."
19 Maarten A. Hajer, "Discourse Coalitions and the Institutionalization of Practice: The Case of Acid Rain
in Britain," in The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, ed. Frank Fischer and John
Forester (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993).
280
The analytic addition of meta-concepts is used in this step between narrative
constellations and coalition building and policymaking because the use ofcertain
concepts in Seattle proved to build bridges between actors who were both adversarial and
compatible. Deborah Stone writes, "In politics, as in life, many relationships are
simultaneously adversarial and symbiotic.,,2o A meta-concept can be thought ofas a
conceptual magnet that creates its own magnetic "field" that re-align actor's orientations.
The level ofauthority a concept requires to connect actors comes from its ability to
remain ambiguous enough to account for multiple meanings and grounded enough to be
"rooted in concrete practices.,,21 In policy making struggles involving such highly
charged issues involved in schools, neighborhoods and race, a concept that can bind
disparate actors together is a crucial conceptual cite for understanding. These meta-
concepts can re-orient actor's identifications, which can arrange policy priorities and
emphases in ways that change the meaning ofrace, for example, as it relates to policy
solutions.
As an addition to APD theories ofchange, identifying "narrative constellations,
"discursive coalitions and "meta-concepts" in local processes allows one to explore the
ways actors create stories out of ideas and coalitions out ofdynamic actors. The analytic
lens these concepts widen challenge the conception that politics is necessarily described
as macro-processes of order and change. Ideas about race, schools, neighborhoods, and
school choice gained power locally because ofthe meaning given to them by local actors
20 Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art o/Political Decision Making (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2002).
21 Ansell, "Institutional Change as Constitutional Process, Conference Paper, Unstructuring Politics
Workshop."
---- -------
281
in certain contexts. While certain ways of talking about neighborhoods, for example,
took on characteristics of stability, "neighborhood" acquired meaning when people filled
it with meaning. Theories ofpath dependent order and change would have allowed a
minimal focus on what happened to be the most dynamic sites of change: committee
meetings, memos, School Board meetings. For example, trying to explain one actor's
role by looking at how multiple layers ofpolicy could have allowed enough ambiguity
for creative actions consistently missed the question ofthe story that actor may have been
creating at that moment and how that meant in relationship to other actors in Seattle.
Through a local focus on actors interacting with one another, the narratives they use to
describe social reality, and the policies they create from these multiple meanings and
visions can add a rich local light into the dynamics of American political development.
When the subjects of inquiry are also so inherently local (race, schools, neighborhoods),
this addition to American political development hopes to add a rich layer that complicates
visions of what race means in the United States.
The Meaning of Race in Seattle
Within the debates over liberalism and the possibilities for racial equality, the
question of the post-Brown era often comes to the fore: how does racial conservatism
survive in a liberal polity? Integral to this foundational and constitutional question have
been people who are the actors and foundational interpreters organizing the meaning of
race and the American polity. Regular people on the ground have found ways to fill
concepts such as inequality, race, busing, and schools in ways that challenge the
282
foundational questions of liberalism and racism. The way actors embed these meaning-
filled concepts in policy and debate usually circumvent the easy associationallabel games
that target one policy as 'racist' and another 'progressive.' Within this study ofracial
politics and public schools, the processes of idea formation and language association
revealed a political development that failed to map on to many ways of explaining the
"rise" and "fall" of desegregation and challenges the very interpretation of
desegregation's development as either a rise or fall, which become falsely associated with
a U.S. political development as progressive, linear, or cyclical.
It is difficult to simplify the development ofracial politics in Seattle forged by
actors who identified with many different interests at different times. However, the
political changes over time showed a consistent thread that connected race and equality
by way of concepts related to diversity. This is significant because of disconnect implied
with concepts of economic equality, for example, that attack a different layer of the
problems involved in historical racial inequalities. "Mutual respect," "integration,"
"multiculturalism," "diversity," and even "choice" became the center of broad coalitions
ofactor who came together to define "race" in Seattle.
In the 1960s, school policy decisions sustained the focus of racial inequality as
discriminatory intent and the neighborhood as the basis for student assignment.
However, actors had challenged these links with ideas that challenged the neighborhood,
the meaning of segregation, and the vision of school equality. The narrative
constellations organized new ways to talk about and identify with race and the schools.
The Middle School Policy, though ending with a voluntary racial transfer policy that
283
looked like the status quo, incorporated these new connections even if the connections
did not retain strength. The development ofemphasis associated with "integration" over
"separatism" allowed new connections to be possible and activated ways for actors to
identify with a shift in policy. Though the discursive coalition that pushed integration
over separatism did not create a significant policy change, they shifted the groundwork
for future discourse that prioritized a role for the schools in addressing issues of "inter-
group" relations, and potentially multi-racial integration.
In the 1970s, new narrative constellations organized interpretations ofracial
equality, segregation, and the schools that that expressed differences over mandatory or
voluntary integration policy and the exact role ofthe schools in the situation of "racial
imbalance." As actors began to intensify deliberation in the face of court intervention,
they crafted visions of Seattle desegregation. The policymaking deliberations saw actors
re-working, layering, and re-arranging their constellations' connections. The concept of
multiculturalism became a constructed center for actors with disparate ideas about
integration to come together, creating a discursive coalition. When multiculturalism
became a concept that could frame multiple meanings ofvarious concepts, the discursive
coalition organized the Seattle Plan. Multiculturalism activated multiple ways for actors
to identify with integration and create a policy that incorporated visions of desegregation
as ameliorating segregation to avoid court order and creating a multicultural society that
would provide equal opportunity for all students. The incorporation ofmultiple
meanings also left the policy connections stable, yet ambiguous and tenuous. The
discourse coalition gave meaning to racial equality as a vision of the amelioration of
284
segregation as well as a vision for pluralist and democratic cultural relationships. The
discourse coalition also gave meaning to racial policy as oriented for minorities as well as
whites, though contradicted the inclusion ofwhites into a multicultural future vision as
whites were more easily able to avoid integration than any other group.
After the Seattle Plan was implemented, actors interpreted its development in
multiple ways. Actors began to craft new narrative constellations in response to
developments and to other actors' interpretations in order to push their visions for
desegregation. Through these interactions and developments, actors who framed the
success ofdesegregation in terms ofacademic achievement began to gain traction. In
comparison, other actors accepted this cleavage and associated different measures for
"diversity" and academic achievement, so as not to create a tradeoff debate between the
two. Those who interpreted busing as not enhancing black children's education began to
gain audiences ofboth black and white families who distanced the idea of equity from
busing. This new connection served as sieve for various actors' ideas and identities; the
sieve separated the unwanted associations ofracism and white privilege to anti-busing
from the appropriate associations between anti-busing and a lack of minority students'
achievement gains by holding concerns with diversity and equity.
School choice became the concept that solidified varying identifications that
supported the end of busing. This discursive coalition grafted together actors and ideas
that could legitimately challenge the logic of segregation and the logic of integration at
once under the logic of school choice. That is, both segregation and integration became
irrelevant issues when the issues ofracial equity and academic achievement were defmed
285
in terms of school choice, as both diversity and private choice were respected and
accepted. Through these articulations, actors were able to use school choice in ways that
appeared to join staunch anti-busing activists, active liberals, and racists in the task of
dismantling desegregation.
In sum, actors most often sustained racial equality policy through associations
with diversity-oriented concepts like multiculturalism and "mutual respect." With the
increasing amount of suburbanization, and the growing separation ofraces and ethnicities
in daily life, and fewer avenues to be "race conscious," the implications of segregation
have become more physically obvious but less accepted as topics ofconversation.
"Perhaps," as Hochschild ponders, "we live not in a liberal polity, but in a race- and
class-constrained polity for which equal opportunity and respectful pluralism are
convenient myths?,,22 Policy and discourse emphasis on "respectful pluralism," myths of
equal academic opportunity, and multicultural hopes for the future could possibly lessen
the potential for "race" and its enduring inequalities to be connected to conversations
about academic inequalities, citizenship, and democracy.
Though not exactly aligned with this study, discussions of the discourse orienting
"race" and "ethnicity" point to a problem in allowing discussions of multiculturalism
dominate racial equity policy. Hattam (2007) problematizes the current shift to ethnicity
as the "preferred" term to improve group inequalities. She posits that when "race" is
dropped from discussions of group inequality in favor of"ethnicity" and group
inequalities persist, "the language of ethnicity will severely limit our ability to address
22 Jennifer L. Hochschild, The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).
286
persistent group inequalities and hierarchies in the decades ahead.',23 In Seattle, this
implicit distinction between the discourse of"multicultural" or "diversity" that drops
"race" as an unspeakable and irrelevant concept appears to have left racial inequalities
intact. In Seattle and throughout the nation, the racial achievement gap persists. Like
Hattam argues, the distinct but implicit comparison between "race" and "diversity" in
Seattle was grafted over time by continually deferring certain associations to racial
equality, such as socioeconomic equality or white isolation, and the ability to talk about
group inequalities as racial inequalities.
In a time when the most common topics in schooling discussions are excellence,
test scores, charter schools, and educational choice, with this project I take a step beyond
the illusion ofthe primacy ofthese issues that remain viable only within the assumptions
of the myth ofequal opportunity in today's schools. I argue the taken-for-granted
acceptance ofthe growing racial separation not only as a feature ofthe public schools,
but as one ofthe United States school system as a whole. As Seattle became the arena
through which the Supreme Court in 2004 denied the use ofrace-conscious measures for
assigning students in the public schools, the hope for re-associating group inequalities in
the schools in terms of racial inequalities has become bleak. The guiding assumption of
this project denies ultimate pessimism. Analyzing politics in terms of ideas, discursive
coalitions, and re-orienting concepts can help re-associate ways to envision policymaking
or political analysis that accounts for the full spectrum ofan idea like race, its history of
associations, and the processes through which its meaning has been engaged, interpreted,
23 Victoria Hattam, In the Shadow ofRace: Jews, Latinos, and Immigrant Politics in the United States
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007).
287
re-engaged, and re-interpreted over time. This project hopes to add an example of these
processes and potentials for actors to understand their central roles in giving meaning to
the politics ofrace and education.
288
APPENDIX A
TIMELINE OF DESEGREGATION EVENTS
1964----------Seattle School District implements Voluntary Racial Transfer Policy;
Seattle Urban League develops Triad Plan
1966----------Two day boycott of schools organized by CACRC
1970----------Seattle School District implements Middle School Plan; C.A.M.B files suit,
seeking injunction against the mandatory plan
1971----------U.S. District Court says SSD has right to bus children for desegregation;
Superior Court judge delays Middle School Plan for one year
1972----------District implements Middle School pilot with about 624 students; District
sustains Voluntary Racial Transfer Policy
1977----------District adopts Magnet School Plan; School Board approves mandatory
desegregation plan.
1978----------District implements Seattle Plan; CiVIC initiates Initiative 350 campaign;
Citizens approve Initiative 350 in November election
1979----------U.S. District court rules 1-350 unconstitutional
1980----------Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals upholds District court ruling
1982----------U.S. Supreme Court affirms lower court rulings against CiVIC and State of
Washington thereby declaring the Seattle Plan constitutional.
1983----------DRAC Review Completed
1988----------District implements Controlled Choice
1989----------S0S initiates Initiative 34 campaign for citywide election; voters approve 1-
34; voters elect first African-American mayor Norm Rice
1991----------School Board votes to end mandatory busing within four years
289
290
APPENDIXB
COMMITTEES AND ORGANIZATIONS IN SEATTLE
AAEA (Asian-American Education Association): Education advocacy group that
joined desegregation planning and debates in the 1970s. It was composed of educators,
and leadership from most Asian communities in Seattle. AAEA decided to participate in
the lawsuit in 1977 in order to ensure the Seattle Plan was mandatory
BUCFA (Black United Clergy for Action): Worked with the Church Council of
Greater Seattle and provided significant black leadership in the 1970s. Became involved
in desegregation planning in mid-1970s and called for mandatory desegregation planning.
CAC (Citizens Advisory Committee for Equal Educational Opportunity): Convened
in 1963 by the School District to provide recommendations on equal educational
opportunities, particularly in the Central Area. The group, made of up citizens and
administrators, reported to the School Board. The committee represented a variety of
backgrounds and advocated no fixed position.
CACRC (Central Area Civil Rights Committee): Reverend Mance Jackson ofMt.
Zion Baptist Church initially convened the CACRC in 1962 to address job
discrimination. John Adams became the leader of CACRC after Reverend Jackson was
transferred to Atlanta shortly after it convened. Under Adams, the CACRC became a
uniquely unified body representing Seattle civil rights groups.
CAMB (Citizens Against Mandatory Busing): Formed in 1970 by citizens invested in
ending busing. They were a well funded and organized opposition to the "Middle School
Plan" and successfully delayed full implementation of the plan through legal action.
CASC (Central Area School Council): Created by the District in 1968 as a separate
administrative planning unit for the Central Area schools. Continued in the 1970s as an
advisory council composed of Central Area parents and school administrators. They
were formed in order to meet the demands of the black power groups in the Central Area
and took an integrationist position in 1976 to support the Seattle Plan.
CCQE (Citizens Committee for Quality Education): The CCQE was formed by
representatives ofmany Seattle civil organizations in 1971 and granted school board
sanction to examine all aspects of desegregation and present alternative plans to the
Board. The Board gave sanction to CCQE to develop as set of recommendations to
291
promote cultural and structural integration of the Seattle Public Schools by September
1973.
Church Council (Church Council of Greater Seattle): Beginning as a Protestant
group in 1919, the Church Council took on a distinctly activist character in its history. In
Seattle, they formed the Task Force on Racial Justice in 1976 with a statement supporting
racial pluralism and diversity, which included support ofmandatory desegregation ofthe
schools.
Civic Unity (Seattle Civic Unity Committee): Formed in December 1944 from a cross-
section ofcity actors interested in addressing racial issues in Seattle. They endorsed a
voluntary exchange program between high schools in 1963.
CiVIC (Citizens for Voluntary Integration Committee): Formed to oppose the Seattle
Plan in 1978 by citizens. Initiated Initiative 350 to stop mandatory busing. Disbanded
after Supreme Court ruled against CiVIC and the State ofWashington in 1982.
CORE (Congress on Racial Equality): National organization formed in 1961. CORE
documented racial segregation in Seattle and offered proposals for desegregation. When
these were rejected, black power advocates assumed leadership of CORE.
CQE (Citizens for Quality Education): Established in June 1968 by city-wide actors
interested in Seattle's desegregation '''to generate public enthusiasm about advancing
contemporary concepts ofeducation' in Seattle."\ Chairman of the organization was Dr.
August Swanson, Associate Dean ofthe University of Washington Medical School.
Herman Siqueland, a Seattle attorney, served as vice-chairman.
DRAC (District Review Advisory Committee): fIrst convened by Superintendent
Donald Steele on November 18, 1982 in order to evaluate whether or not the Seattle Plan
met its goals. Membership comprised a variety ofconstituent groups within the City of
Seattle plus members appointed by each member of the school board and the
Superintendent. The District supported DWAC with two staff members, Dr. Colin
Williams and Dr. Wayne Foley. DRAC reported to the Superintendent.
DWAC (District-Wide Advisory Committee): DWAC was created with the
application for ESAA in 1974 to provide the opportunity for the community to advise the
Superintendent on desegregation planning and for the Superintendent the opportunity to
inform the community about desegregation programs. Members were recruited city-
wide, from over sixty organizations representing education, ethnic, and community
groups. Active membership included people from the NAACP, CQIE, ACLU, CASC,
League ofWomen Voters, and the Parent-Teacher-Student Association (PTSA). In the
1 Doris Pieroth, "Desegregating the Public Schools: Seattle, Washington 1954-1968" (University of
Washington, 1968).quoted 354
--- -- --- ---- --------
292
final throes ofdesegregation planning, the Municipal League and Chamber of Commerce
also sent representatives to DWAC. DWAC was a uniquely committed group that
pushed the District to implement mandatory desegregation.
SOS (Save Our Schools): Citizen group organized in 1989 by Republican mayoral
candidate Doug Jewett. They launched a city initiative campaign to end mandatory
busing. Katherine Baxter became director of SOS and helped the initiative to succeed in
the 1989 election. Voters approved Initiative 34, the sole goal ofSOS, by a one percent
margin in November 1989.
APPENDIXC
ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS CONSULTED
Archives and Record Management Center for Seattle School District No.1
AWF Administrative Working Files
BHF Bruce Hunter Office Files
CRF Chronological Reference File
GAF Gus Angelos Files
LCF Litigation Case Files
SMM School Board Meeting Material, 1981-85
SSD Seattle School District Published Material
SSR Seattle School District Records
VOF T.J. Vassar/Owen Lee Office Files
University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, Washington
BKP Bullitt (Katherine) Papers
CCS Church Council of Greater Seattle Records, 1935-2003
LCP Lowry (Mike) Congressional Papers
SUL Seattle Urban League Records
293
294
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