In 1987, the federal courts ruled that Boston had achieved a unitary status regarding student assignments. Although the courts continued to supervise other aspects of the school system, the examination schools were freed from the 35 percent set-aside. Nevertheless, the school committee continued the set-aside policy until 1995, when a federal judge struck down the policy after a rejected applicant challenged it under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The school committee reviewed the possibilities and came up with a new admissions policy for the 1997-98 school year. Under the new policy, school officials give each applicant a composite score combining the student's grade point average and his or her score on the entrance exam.
Officials then rank the applicants at each of the three examination schools.
Each of the three schools has its own qualified applicant pool. According to the new policy, half of the available places are given to the applicants with the top composite scores. The remaining half of the seats are filled in rank order, under the condition that the number of students admitted from a given racial or ethnic category must match the proportion of that category in the remaining pool of qualified applicants. And that's exactly what happened to Sarah P. Wessmann in 1997. The price of rejection BLS had 90 seats available for the ninth-grade entering class for 1997.