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LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- In a move decried by some as state-sponsored segregation, the Legislature voted Thursday to divide the Omaha school system into three districts -- one mostly black, one predominantly white and one largely Hispanic.

Supporters said the plan would give minorities control over their own school board and ensure that their children are not shortchanged in favor of white youngsters.

Republican Gov. Dave Heineman signed the measure into law.

Omaha Sen. Pat Bourne decried the bill, saying, "We will go down in history as one of the first states in 20 years to set race relations back."

"History will not, and should not, judge us kindly," said Sen. Gwen Howard of Omaha.

Attorney General Jon Bruning sent a letter to one of the measure's opponents saying that the bill could be in violation of the Constitution's equal-protection clause and that lawsuits almost certainly will be filed.

But its backers said that at the very least, its passage will force policymakers to negotiate seriously about the future of schools in the Omaha area.

The breakup would not occur until July 2008, leaving time for lawmakers to come up with another idea.

"There is no intent to create segregation," said Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, the Legislature's only black senator and a longtime critic of the school system.

He argued that the district is already segregated, because it no longer buses students for integration and instead requires them to attend their neighborhood school.

Chambers said the schools attended largely by minorities lack the resources and quality teachers provided others in the district. He said the black students he represents in north Omaha would receive a better education if they had more control over their district.

Coming from Chambers, the argument was especially persuasive to the rest of the Legislature, which voted three times this week in favor of the bill before it won final passage on the last day of the session.

Omaha Public Schools Superintendent John Mackiel said the law is unconstitutional and will not stand.

"There simply has never been an anti-city school victory anywhere in this nation," Mackiel said. "This law will be no exception."

The 45,000-student Omaha school system is 46 percent white, 31 percent black, 20 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian or American Indian.

Boundaries for the newly created districts would be drawn using current high school attendance areas. That would result in four possible scenarios; in every scenario, two districts would end up with a majority of students who are racial minorities.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

It surprises me that one of the people speaking out in support of this law is Black. On the one hand I look at it and say of course it is segregation, but then you look at the lack of progress with the way the school system is set up now and I wonder why not give it a try and see what happens. Can it be any worse?

It's always touchy to mention crime or lack of education and minorities. All I can say is what I have seen on tv and in person. I remember going to high school where it was predominatly white and latino. There were rarely any fights or problems. There was no graffiti on the walls. There were the occasional problem. There was infact a murder a year or two before I began attending, but it was unrelated to race or gangs.

I remember always hearing everyone talk about my school as being that gang infested one with all those mexicans there. What bullshit. Yes there were gangs. I happend to be friends with the majority of them because I had grown up with them. It actually worked to my advantage because I never had any problems with people because they knew if they had a problem with me, the gang members would support me.

In reality there were very few problems with gangs or violence at the school.

There was also one other missing ingredient. We had maybe 5 black people total in the entire school for the 4 years I went there.

Now they have many more problems at the school. At the beginning of the year they had to bring in Swat and lock the school down due to large fights between the black groups and the latino groups. There are a lot more black students then when I attended.

Now before anyone starts yelling at me for being racist I am not saying the black people are causing the problems. Clearly though it is apparent that the black and latino groups don't like each other.

Los Angeles has been in the news a lot recently for major fights near to the point of riots at several schools because of problems between the black students and the latino students..

Los Angeles street gangs have always hated each other pretty much along racial lines.

So what do you think? Is it worth a try to seperate the races and see if things improve.

This law relates more to highering practices, money issues and so forth as well. I just don't have any first hand knowledge about those things. Maybe if someone else does they can relate their opinions on that.

Sounds a bit like me that theyre yelling "help we cant fix our school system so we're going to propose an insane law to get everyone interested and up our funding"

Its ridiculous, but then again people will always argue that segregated school help the individual better. Even in Cali here they have split a charter school right down the middle, boys on one side girls on the other. With different teachers. B^ crazy people
Borry

It's segregation if it's compulsary to attend the said schools, I think the parents should always have the last word where their kid should go. I think about time for this experiment. It's not as if this is going to be a precedent of other things like public washrooms, public transpo etc. Get real!

IMHO, there are studies conducted that kids going to an "all boys" school and an "all girls" have a higher self-esteem, higher marks, ambitious because they don't compete or worry about the gender biases. Girls learn science and math better without being compared to boys in their class. Boys learn say Home Economics without being called a sissy. These one gender schools only address issues that affects girls only or boys only.

Let's say, we have an all black school, the teachers there can address problems that affect black students only. I think that's one of the problems right now esp. in a multicultural society, we think one solution is going to solve everything. That problems affecting Asian kids for example, is not the same for white, hispanic and black kids. When in fact, it's not. The school will also be taught by people with the same background and experience. I find that a few teachers have some bias with regards to your race as well. If you're say black, they let you become an athlete, if you're Asian, they expect you to enroll in advance math, if you are white, they expect you to know History and Politics. I guess going to school wherein you compete with your own race will get rid of these biases.

We allow religious schools (Catholics only, Jew only, Muslim only) why not allow a "race" school.

Doesn't this create or boost the idea that your racial group is the most important thing about you? I may be white but I don't think that being white is anywhere near the most important thing about me. Yet a law like this would define where I went to school and who my social group would be purely on the colour of my skin.
Moreover it makes it difficult to meet and socialise with people from the other groups.
Those sorts of divisions in Northern Ireland, in that case over religion, bolstered a fractured dysfunctional society.

Whoa! there are lots of mutually exclusive assumptions here!

As I understand it, the current school district has four high schools. Two of them are heavily minority. And in most cases, minority populations are poorer than the average American population. Kids can only go to the school nearest them (no bussing), so many of the minority kids, who live in predominantly minority neighborhoods are going to the predominantly minority school. They are there because their parents chose to live in predominantly minority neighborhoods. The choice was probably heavily influenced by affordability, nearness to friends and family and culture, nearness to work, nearness to neighborhood of origin, cheaper commute, not wanting to deal with racism, being clearly discouraged from moving to white neighborhoods, not wanting to be the only "different" person in the neighborhood, lack of funds to move and pay first/last rent or down payment on a house, or a myriad of other reasons.

This cannot be compared with religious schools in the US, which are voluntary - people go to Jewish schools to get a Jewish slant on their education. They don't go to Jewish schools because they have been legally or socially segregated to live and learn with their "own kind".

The proposal is to split up the district essentially along high school borders, into four smaller school districts, each having more autonomy. Of course, with freedom comes responsibility - each of the school districts will now have the freedom to determine their own curriculum and policies, but will also be responsible for their own funding. In the past, the poorest school may have had little say in policy (because it had few powerful/rich parents) but it may also have had a subsidy of funding. What will happen will be similar to what has happened in the Los Angeles area. Downtown Los Angeles is predominantly minority, and poor, and has a troubled school system with a poorer quality education. Nearby Beverly Hills is predominately white and rich, and has a much higher per-capita spending on its students. Teachers are paid more. Higher quality teachers are attracted to work there. What would happen if the Beverly Hills school district and the Los Angeles school system were combined?

I would assume the Beverly Hills parents would throw a fit. The fact remains though that the parents would donate money and so forth for the school. It isn't that the Beverly Hills district receives far more money from the state and federal govts. They simply have bigger backing from the parents. Technicaly they are not allowed to donate to a specific school and the money has to be divided between the other schools in the district. That doesn't mean much though when the districts have a lot to do with the social settings of the areas. Like you said. The LA Unified District is different than the Beverly Hills district.

If I had my choice of which district to attend I think you can guess which one I would take. Does that futher stretch the difference between the districts when the people that can choose to go to the better schools, yes. but unfortunatly you are dealing with someones education. It sucks for the people at the poorer schools, but that isn't the problem of the students and parents. It's the governments that need to step up and do the right thing. Unfortunatly they don't and we get stuck with brilliant things like the no child left behind act instead. Besides. Money isn't always the issue. its about getting good teachers and programs into the schools. it is about getting the parents involved. Why should the kids care to attend and do good when the parents don't give a shit whether they show up or not.

My cousin is a school teacher. He is always talking about have difficult it is to try and deal with kids that he can see are very bright and could do well, but instead continually have behavioral problems and bad grades and when the parents are brought in, they don't even care. He says more often than not they wont even bother to show up to the meetings. How can anyone expect the education system to improve if the parents dont even care to take an active roll in it?

This law may give the schools more control over their funding and it may keep the groups apart that have problems with each other, but to me its only a quick fix at best. The problems are much bigger than that.

My school district has always had a huge problem with the disparity between the poorer neighborhood schools and the richer neighborhood schools. The town where I live is predominantly white. The town next to me is about half Hispanic. The high school located in the town next to me used to serve both cities, but as of eight years ago, a new one was built in my area because the other school was overflowing with students. Not surprisingly, my high school is mostly white, and the old high school is about 50% Hispanic. It's far too easy to see the class differences of the neighborhoods spill over into the quality of the schools. For example, the sports teams at my school have better equipment, uniforms, and facilities, because the parents are more affluent and can afford to buy their kids more expensive things. My school also has more Advanced Placement classes, even though we haven't been around for nearly as long, and a frighteningly larger ratio of computers to students. And certainly it isn't nearly as bad in my area than it is in a lot of other places where the income disparity is even greater.

But I think that if our schools were separated into autonomous districts, things would get even worse. Then, like Laureanna said, when parents donated money to the district, only one school would get it, as opposed to dividing it between multiple schools. So the affluent parents would be able to give an even greater amount of money to their own child's school. I can't see how this will help anything. It doesn't matter quite so much whether the schools are divided by race or not, it seems to me, but the fact that they're also divided by neighborhood, ergo class, does seem to be a huge issue.

There must be some way that the state and federal govt can look at what one school accomplishes with money and then say ok, this school is lacking so we are going to give x amount of funds to bring them back up. Again. Just throwing a computer into the room isn't some miracle cure but it helps level the playing field anyways once proper instruction is given and such.

But then naturally politics gets involved which means in the end the computer will be 8 years old and out of date by the time they decide which school.