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Letters to reveal school choice
By THOMAS C. TOBIN, Times Staff Writer
The uncertainty ends this week for thousands of Pinellas families who participated in the school choice plan. A company hired by the school district will mail letters Thursday or Friday that will tell 35,463 students where they will go to school in August. The vast majority have nothing to worry about. About 15,000 of the letters comprise the last batch of notifications to families that decided to keep children in their current school, an option called grandfathering. About 14,500 are students who got their first choice. Just under 2,000 got their second choice, 655 got their third choice, 344 got their fourth choice and 228 got their fifth choice. Another 6,814 students will get a different letter, which says the district still is working on where to send them. That number includes about 500 who didn't receive any of their five choices and could not be reached on the phone by district administrators trying to place them in an alternate school. Most of the 6,814, however, are students whose families did not turn in the choice paperwork. That "non choice" left the district with the task of assigning them where space allows or where they are needed to achieve the racial ratios that will keep Pinellas schools integrated for the next four years. School officials expect the letters to arrive Saturday or early next week. For thousands of Pinellas residents, the news will help determine a range of major family decisions, from who picks up the kids to whether it's time to raid the savings account for private school. Seldom does one mailing mean so much to so many. District officials have been getting hundreds of calls from parents, some begging administrators to slip them the news about their child's future. The choice plan marks the first time so many Pinellas families have been exposed to a system that invites them to gamble for a school. Under the current system, which expires at the end of the school year, most placements were dictated by where a family lived. The choice plan is the product of a federal court settlement between Pinellas schools and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The idea is to ease the district from 30 years of court-ordered busing into a system that invites students to integrate by choice. A buffer period of "controlled choice" will force schools to remain racially balanced until 2007, but many fear the end of that period will return Pinellas to a time when schools were predominantly black or white. The district had planned to have every student placed by the time the letters went out. But administrators got bogged down in the task of placing the 1,288 students who got none of their choices. About 800 have agreed to accept alternate choices and will be sent a letter this week confirming that decision. About 2,200 others who made no choice also will get letters assigning them schools. "It didn't go as easily as we thought," said Jim Madden, the district administrator who oversees the choice plan. Despite the unfinished work, the letters are going out so the district can keep its promise of notifying parents by mid March. Among those who got none of their choices is Kim Linder of Seminole, whose daughter will be entering kindergarten in August. The district called Linder last week with a range of other choices. But all were unappealing, she said, and there was no time to study or visit them. She and her husband were forced to make an alternative choice within 24 hours. "It's just so unfair," Linder said. "It's so frustrating because I really worked hard to research and pick these schools. . . . I did all this for nothing." Kent Smith, a Safety Harbor parent, feels the same way. His daughter, who is going into second grade, got none of her neighborhood choices, and the only real alternative is a faraway school in downtown Clearwater. "I just can't imagine that the public is going to put up with this," Smith said. "What they really need to do is build a heck of a lot more schools." District officials acknowledge the bad luck of the 1,288 who were "unplaced." But they add that there is brighter news in the big picture: Nearly nine out of 10 Pinellas students got what they wanted, either by choosing to be grandfathered into their current school or getting their first or second choice. What remains to be seen is the mood of those who received their third choice or below. District officials are bracing for an onslaught of unhappy callers, but hope it doesn't come to that. The letters going out this week will include information about the waiting list for those who didn't receive their top two choices and the appeals process for those disputing their school assignment.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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