

In court papers, lawyers for the coalition also cited text exchanges between board members in which one member says “there has been an anti asian feel underlying some of this, hate to say.” He cited comments made by school board members throughout the debate over changing the policy, which he said were always focused on racial composition. “Racial balancing was always at the forefront of what was going here,” he said. Hispanic representation increased from 3 percent to 11 percent and white representation increased from 18 percent to 22 percent.

The percentage of Black students increased from 1 percent last year to 7 percent. He said the school board was successful in doing so: In the first year that the new admissions policy took effect, Asian representation decreased from 73 percent to 54 percent.
#News of the week magazine lawsuit for free
It also takes into account factors like whether the child is eligible for free or reduced-price lunches because of his or her family's income.Ĭhris Kiesar - an attorney for the The Coalition for TJ, which filed the lawsuit - said the geographic quotas are merely a proxy for racial quotas, and that the school board's intent all along was to increase Black and Hispanic representation at the expense of Asian American families. Instead, the school board switched to a policy that guarantees admission to the top students at each of the county's middle schools. Standardized tests that had been the key factor in admissions were scrapped, and a $100 application fee was eliminated. In 2020, as the debate over racial equity intensified nationwide, the Fairfax County School Board significantly revised the admissions policy. But Black and Hispanic students have been woefully underrepresented in the student body for decades.
