NAACP sues Nebraska

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By CHUCK BROWN / The Associated Press

The NAACP filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Gov. Dave Heineman, state Commissioner of Education Doug Christensen and a state committee over a new law that divides Omaha Public Schools into three racially identifiable districts.

“Segregation is morally wrong, regardless of who advocates it,” said Tommie Wilson, president of the Omaha chapter of the NAACP at a news conference on Tuesday.

The suit said the new law violates the constitutional principals embodied in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Brown vs. Board of Education, which said that separate but equal facilities has no place in public education.

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Heineman

Heineman

“The state’s action unlawfully creates racially identifiable school districts and prohibits those districts from providing plaintiffs and other OPS students opportunities to attend racially and socioeconomically diverse schools that are enjoyed by other students in Nebraska,” the lawsuit said.

The law (LB1024) passed by the Legislature at the end of its recent session forces all 11 districts in Douglas and Sarpy Counties to share resources as a “learning community” and formulate an integration plan. It also split the Omaha district into three districts — one mostly black, one largely Hispanic and one predominantly white.

The law, which doesn’t go into effect until 2008, would allow students to attend schools anywhere within the learning community if there is room. Transfer priority would be given to children from low-income families.

Lawmakers and Heineman have said provisions of the law were subject to changes.

“Over the last several weeks, superintendents in metropolitan Omaha have been discussing LB1024 and have renewed their focus on educational opportunities for all children,” said Aaron Sanderford, a spokesman for Heineman. “It is the governor’s hope and belief that the superintendents will continue to meet, despite this distraction, and that they will continue to share their concerns and ideas for improvement.”

The legislation was aimed at solving a dispute over school boundaries in the state’s largest city after Omaha Public Schools tried to take over some suburban schools.

The division of the district was an amendment offered by state Sen. Ernie Chambers, the Legislature’s lone black senator.

He has long argued that the Omaha district was already segregated because it no longer bused students for integration purposes.

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

The black students he represents would receive a better education if their community had more control over the district, Chambers has said.

The NAACP and Omaha Public Schools officials say the new law is short on funding and does too little to promote integration — even hampering other efforts.

John Jackson, the national NAACP’s chief policy director, had said the NAACP wants the Legislature and Heineman to come up with a workable alternative to the new law by the beginning of the next legislative session, in January.

Also named as a defendant was the state Committee for the Reorganization of School Districts, which is a state Education Department panel. Four members of the committee were also named in the lawsuit.