For Immediate Release

June 01, 2011

Contact:  Laurie Russman (310) 267-5562, crp@ucla.edu.

Los Angeles–The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP) at UCLA announces the release of Integrating Suburban Schools: How to Benefit from Growing Diversity and Avoid Segregation.  This manual provides invaluable guidance for education stakeholders in suburban school districts — including school board members, parents, students, community activists, administrators, policymakers and attorneys — promoting racially diverse, high quality schools.

There has been a very large movement of African American and Latino families to suburbia and the changes are evident in the 2010 Census.

“Many hundreds of suburban communities that were all-white when they were constructed, and had experienced little diversity until the recent past, are now facing important questions about how they can achieve lasting and successful integration and avoid the destructive resegregation by race and poverty that affected so many areas in the central cities a half century ago,” CRP Co-director Gary Orfield noted.  “Suburbs that achieve positive and lasting multiracial diversity will have better futures and this document has good ideas about how to do that.”

The manual offers the following information:

• A comprehensive discussion of the critical importance of diverse learning environments in racially changing suburban school districts.
• The history of court-ordered desegregation efforts and an overview of the current legal landscape governing school integration policy.
• General legal principles for creating racially diverse schools.
• The vital role that teachers and administrators play in building successfully integrated schools and classrooms.
• Specific examples of suburban school districts promoting high quality, inclusive and integrated schools.
• Strategies for teaching in racially diverse classrooms.
• Methods for building the political will and support in your community for voluntary integration policies.
• An extensive and reader-friendly list of education and legal resources including easily disseminated fact sheets on important topics related to school diversity.

Download the manual, and copy or reprint for use in classes without permission or payment.