Opinion ID: 201118
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Old Plan

Text: 5 BPS assigns students to schools at the transition grades during students' public school careers, each of which corresponds to a student's advancement to a new type of school: kindergarten 1 (programs for 4-year-olds), kindergarten 2 (programs for five-year-olds), first grade (elementary school), sixth grade (middle school), and ninth grade (high school). While high school assignments are made on a citywide basis, Boston is divided into three Attendance Zones — the North, East, and West Zones — for purposes of the elementary and middle school assignments at issue in this case. These zones were drawn by the district court as part of its desegregation orders, and the lines largely hew to major transportation routes to keep traditional neighborhoods intact as much as possible. 1 Students are eligible to attend any of the schools located in the Attendance Zone in which the students reside. 6 As part of the assignment process, students rank their preferences for the schools within their Attendance Zone, as well as for the few schools that accept students from any part of the city without regard to Attendance Zone lines. 2 Students whose siblings attend a school receive a preference for that school during the assignment process. Similarly, students who live within the walk zone 3 of a given school receive a preference for seats at that school. Finally, every student receives a randomly assigned lottery number, with the lower numbers being considered more advantageous. 7 Under the Old Plan, BPS assigned students to schools using the following criteria: the student's rank preference for the school; whether a sibling already attended the school; whether the student lived within the school's walk zone; whether the student had already matriculated at the school on a temporary basis; 4 and, as a tie-breaker, the student's random number, with a lower random number winning out over higher numbers. Assignments under the Old Plan operated with one additional constraint — the ideal racial percentage for each grade's population, as calculated by the racial and ethnic composition of the student population in that grade within each of the three Attendance Zones. If admitting a student would cause a deviation of more than 15% from the ideal racial percentage, that student would not be admitted. The Old Plan operated largely without change for ten years, from 1989 through 1999. 8