C.W. Nevius: Racism alive and well in S.F. schools - here's proof

nevius09_038_df.jpg First-grader Lia Pickholtz plays with Rosenberg's tie. Chris Rosenberg is the principal of Starr King Elementary School and spoke about race in schools. Photographed in San Francisco on 9/7/07. Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle Ran on: 09-09-2007 Principal Chris Rosenberg of Starr King Elementary, with student Lia Pickholtz, says &quo;no one wants to touch&quo; race issues in schools. less nevius09_038_df.jpg First-grader Lia Pickholtz plays with Rosenberg's tie. Chris Rosenberg is the principal of Starr King Elementary School and spoke about race in schools. Photographed in San Francisco on ... more Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close C.W. Nevius: Racism alive and well in S.F. schools - here's proof 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Last spring, Cal graduate student Mandy Johnson wrote a paper looking at why parents picked certain schools in the choice-based San Francisco district.

"I just thought it would be interesting," says Johnson, who is now a policy analyst for the district. "I realized that it could be explosive if I could prove this."

Working at Cal's Goldman School of Public Policy, Johnson analyzed the data from the 2006-07 school year. The two top factors correlated with high demand for a seat in a particular school were its academic performance and the availability of special classes like language immersion.

The top factors correlated with low demand were the prevalence of low-income students and - here's the really troubling one - race. Specifically, Johnson found, "as the percentage of African American students in the school increases, kindergarten demand decreases."

By the way, for those assuming this is something that can be explained away by the interplay of race and poverty, it isn't. Johnson said she used a statistical tool called regression analysis, which allowed her to isolate factors such as income and skin color. For example, the researcher found no correlation between school choice and the number of Latino students, who are disproportionately lower-income.

Chris Rosenberg, principal of ethnically diverse Starr King Elementary, laid it out for me in clear terms.

"The bottom line is that many people do not feel comfortable sending their kids to a school with a lot of African American students," says Rosenberg, who has been at Starr King for 12 years, four as principal. "It's a crying shame. It's terrible. But it is a sad and obvious truth in our schools. And no one wants to touch it."

Actually, that's not true. San Francisco school board President Mark Sanchez, who is a teacher, has decided to speak up. He read Johnson's report and is attempting to use it as a way of starting a dialogue about something "our society doesn't want to talk about."

"We need to bring this out on the table and have a discussion," says Sanchez. "Nobody is going to come out and say they didn't choose a school because it had too many black kids. But they don't have to."

Sanchez isn't just interested in this as a moral issue. There's a practical matter, too. With African American families leaving San Francisco, schools are losing black students. But as Sanchez says, when students leave those predominantly black schools, "nobody is willing to fill those seats." The result is that schools in minority neighborhoods are continually threatened with closure because they are losing enrollment.

"It's a bad outcome," Sanchez says. "We know that there are so many things these kids are up against, to have their school, their community center, close is difficult."

In 1982, a federal consent decree required San Francisco Unified School District to fulfill racial ratios at each school. But in 1994, Chinese American families successfully sued to eliminate racial considerations. In 2005, the consent decree ended, and the district is now operating under a "choice-based" model, which allows families to rank their preferred schools and usually get one of their top two picks.

Although schools have responded with more programs and desirable amenities, racial balance has proved increasingly difficult to achieve. As Johnson says, "The district has two problems: Enrollment is going down, and segregation is going up."

Skeptics will say we are exaggerating the problem. After all, it may not be racial. Who wants to send their kid to a school in a bad neighborhood? Rosenberg admits that Starr King is not far from the Potrero housing projects.

"I get a lot of questions from parents about safety," says Rosenberg, a white man who majored in African American studies in college. "But John Yehall Chin Elementary (on Broadway) is a really good school with a lot of strip clubs around it. Do you think they get asked about safety? The fact is, people don't care so much about the environment when it does not include black people."

If anything, this is an accepted fact among those who work in education. School board member Kim-Shree Maufas, who is the first African American member of the board in 10 years, says, "It doesn't surprise me."

"I recognize it and am very disturbed that people are selecting on that basis," Maufas says. "But I'm on to thinking about the next step."

That's the tough part - doing something to change perceptions. As Sanchez says, not only is race a difficult and sensitive topic, most parents don't even want to discuss it.

"And they especially don't want to talk about it if they are going to be blamed," Sanchez says. "We are not saying you are a bad person if you didn't choose these schools."

Keeping the volume down during the discussion is a must. As Johnson says about her research, "It's real easy to see something like this and fly off the handle - whichever way you want to fly off the handle."

Sanchez would like to see some greater incentives to encourage students to give schools with African American pupils a try.

"One of the ways I would propose is that, if you go to an ethnically added school," meaning one disproportionately black, "you would get points for going to college," Sanchez says. "People would be beating down the doors to get in."

That would certainly be a change. As it stands now, parents make tours of schools to see which ones they might be interested in. (Asian and white parents, Johnson found, are much more likely to exercise their choice options.) The parents look at the neighborhood, talk to the teachers, and check out the classrooms. But, Rosenberg says, that's not how they make their decision.

"When people come into some schools and they see a bunch of black kids, I can see it in their faces - 'Thanks, but no thanks,' " he says. "Basically, racism is a big factor in the choices people are making in San Francisco.

"I can say that as a sad fact."