Dear Colleagues:

On Tuesday, February 19, 2008, the Des Moines School District will adopt a new "diversity plan" to replace our now defunct desegregation plan. For the record we are not being required to develop a plan. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling does not require us to develop a plan. The Iowa Code does not require us to develop a plan. Our district has been one of a half dozen Iowa districts to enjoy an exception to Iowa's Open Enrollment Law and we want to be able to maintain that exemption.

The only way we can maintain it, which allows us to deny students open enrollment from our district to neighboring districts (or rather deny the open enrollment of dollars from our district to neighboring districts) is to file a diversity plan by March 1, 2008.

This is a practice The Register, arguably the district's strongest bastion of support, called in their February 17, 2008, editorial titled "A Broader View Of Diversity" "holding families hostage."

Before I continue there are a few facts that need to be cleared up. Our decision tomorrow has nothing to do with racial diversity. While this issue has been wrapped in that concern it has absolutely nothing to do with the decision before us tomorrow.

Next, we are not at this point on February 18, 2008, because the state dropped the ball. Iowa's other four districts impacted by the Supreme Court's ruling have all completed the process. One district actually turned their plan in to the state in January while we, as a district, waited until January 22, 2008, to even begin the conversation at the board level and with the community, despite knowing March 1, 2008 was the deadline to submit a diversity plan.

Our board president Dick Murphy and our Superintendent made the decision not to allow this discussion to take place sooner. Two days after being sworn in, September 20, 2007, I asked Dr. Sebring to get this issue on the agenda. That same week I asked Mr. Murphy to put it on the agenda. He refused and she argued it was not time for the board and community to discuss it.

Make no mistake about it, a Diversity Plan will be approved tomorrow. At least four votes exist to ensure it. Most likely the plan will name students on free and reduced lunch "minorities" and our plan will be based on the importance of "economic diversity."

Under Des Moines' now defunct desegregation plan we never achieved true racial diversity. We did, however, achieve, maintain, and facilite economic segregation. For example six of our schools have 90% or more of their students living in poverty while Jefferson has only 7.84% of its students living in poverty and our three choice elementary schools are our district's lowest poverty schools.

As a district we cannot simply develop a plan that denies open enrollment from our district to neighboring districts in the name of "economic diversity" only to maintain our current state of profound economic isolation. Our proposed diversity plan, using free and reduced lunch status, therefore, despite being void of details at the present, will, by necessity, impact our students within the Des Moines School District by eventually mandating significant levels of forced busing and other expensive remedies.

Furthermore this plan will be implemented by those that have demonstrated either little interest or ability to eradicate economic isolation within our district. Vast economic disparities existed within our district prior to the Supreme Court's June 28, 2007, ruling.

If economic diversity is vital now why wasn't it a concern before June 28, 2007. Even the way we currently operate shows little commitment to addressing economic imbalances within our district. For example twice as many students live in poverty that attend Weeks Middle School as attend Merrill Middle School yet we spend more money at Merrill than Weeks as a district. Another example of our lack of concern about economic disparities within our district is the busing of 69 students from the Moulton area to Findley Elementary where 92.18% of the kids live in poverty.

While our new plan asserts economic diversity is vital, our district has force bused students from impoverished areas to high poverty schools, and in so doing sustained and enhanced economic segregation within our district.

Des Moines ranks 331 out of 341 districts in 4th and 8th grade proficiency and we have three of Iowa's eight dropout factory high schools. We have blamed parents, teachers, the students, even the legislature for not giving us enough money.

We have rarely focused on the role poor decision making at the board and administration level plays. For example we built North High School a football stadium instead of expanding classrooms at the school. As a result we have teachers at North that still teach from carts.

Des Moines Schools are failing primarily because of the misguided priorities of our district's board and administration over the years. We have dedicated and hard working teachers. We have parents that care. Our students are smart. And we have plenty of money as a district.

In 2007-08 our district will spend nearly $400 million. That's a lot of money for a district with an enrollment of just under 31,000 students. Public and private schools with significantly less resources per pupil throughout this state are out performing us, consistently. They also have found ways to fund key academic staff instead of expanding their bureaucracies.

Not a single one of our nearly three dozen elementary schools in Des Moines has a full-time librarian and only one of our nearly dozen middle schools has a full-time librarian. In contrast, a majority of our current board, following the current administration's guidance, sanctioned a major expansion of our district's top heavy bureaucracy creating multiple associate superintendent positions and multiple executive director positions with assigned full-time staff working underneath them. We even found the funds to move our central administration from Cassidy, a very functional facility we recently invested in, to plush downtown offices.

Perhaps no example of our poor prioritization is more damaging, however, than our failure to fund full-time librarians at the elementary and middle school levels. Top achieving districts like Iowa City and West Des Moines have invested in fully functioning libraries with adequate staffing. And it's not because they have more money than us. This is a foundational part of their academic philosophy.

Why does this board and administration place such low value on this function?

The American Library Association School Library Media Research website states: "Research demonstrates that there is a correlation between student achievement and the presence of a well-funded school library media center with a professional library media specialist. Where school library media centers are better funded, academic achievement is higher, whether schools are rich or poor and whether adults in the community are well or poorly educated."

Despite the current condition of our district, there are affordable, common sense alternatives to our proposed diversity plan beginning with spending 90% of the money at the building level where the students generate the money; returning to k-6, 7-9, 10-12 alignment, ending social promotion and moving to skill based progression, getting away from test taking curriculum while returning to relevant instruction, and spending our money on key building staff like librarians instead of centralized bureaucrats.

It has been argued by key Des Moines School district administrators that if we do not keep the gates locked to neighboring school districts the flood gates will open and our very ability to educate students in our district will be diminished. If our administrators really believe that the only way we can keep students in our district is through force, how much do these administrators, each costing tax payers six figures, really believe in the quality of the education being designed and implemented by them?

I've met our teachers, I've gone door-to-door and talked to parents, I've observed how bright and talented our students are. Why should poor students and children of color be forced to get on buses to access good schools, quality instruction, adequate resourcing, especially since they generate the most money in public education, when the real solution is returning to building based, fundamental, meaningful instruction.

The concept of having good schools elsewhere where we bus kids doesn't address the quality of education for the children left behind. It simply makes a segment of our community feel good because they can point to poor kids of children of colorand say "see, we did good."

Bottom line, we don't need a diversity plan, especially one void of sincerity. We need to make each school in our district a quality community school and that begins with spending the money on our students, not our bureaucracy.

At my sixth grade graduation ceremony from Edmunds the speaker said to us "if you don't remember anything else I say today 'Don't make excuses make results.'"

I did not run for the school board to have a seat at the table, to be the voice of the malcontent, to barter favor, to step to higher office, to invoke social guilt or encourage experimentation. I ran because in two decades of activism on the youth and education front I have grasped this fundamental truth: we can do better!

Beginning with the eight steps to improve our district, we will do better!

Jonathan R. Narcisse

DSM School Board Member