Redistricting foes eye their next move

A day after the Lower Merion School District adopted a redistricting proposal unpopular with many residents, phone lines buzzed and e-mails flicked back and forth as adherents and detractors of the plan studied their next moves.

Parents in South Ardmore who opposed the district's plan to bus their children to Harriton High School, despite their proximity to Lower Merion High School, said they were considering legal action.

"Nothing has been decided at this time," parent Regina Brown said in an e-mail. "Now that the vote has occurred, we need to contemplate our next actions thoughtfully, which is what we're doing now."

Ivan Haskell, another South Ardmore resident who opposes the plan, said attempts to craft a strategy were being made via e-mail.

"We haven't chosen a direction yet as a group, although there is some discussion of next steps today on e-mail. We will probably know [something] later in the week," Haskell said.

An official of the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Office in Washington said the agency had received at least one complaint from members of the largely African American community of South Ardmore.

The complaint, filed Dec. 22 and bearing several residents' signatures, alleged that if implemented, Lower Merion's redistricting plan would be discriminatory on the basis of race, spokesman David Thomas said.

A department letter dated Monday - before the vote, which was taken that night - told filers that the agency could not move on the case because the plan had not been implemented, Thomas said.

"The complainants were notified that, if the district in fact went ahead with implementation of the plan, the complainants could refile their complaint," Thomas said. It was not known yesterday if they would do that.

For the district to implement the plan, it will need to find common ground with parents who live in the narrow strips of South Ardmore, North Narberth and Penn Valley that are affected.

Those parents turned out to chastise the school board for "ignoring" their concerns during a raucous meeting Monday night at Lower Merion High School. Despite their pleas, the board voted, 6-2, to approve the plan.

"The members of the school board should be ashamed of themselves for voting for a plan that disproportionately and negatively affects minorities and low-income families," North Narberth parent Melissa R. Gilbert said after the meeting.

School District spokesman Doug Young said the district would take the initiative to heal the rift between the system and parents.

"We have reached out to local elected officials in the communities most affected, and plan to meet and talk about strategies to engage the community and restore confidence in the school system," Young said. He stressed that the district would make sure "that all kids going through this transition process are receiving adequate and necessary support."

There will be tours of the high schools, events that include both student bodies, and parent forums. The first events will be a series of transition meetings for parents of all eighth graders the evenings of next Wednesday and Jan. 22 and 23.

About 200 children will be bused to achieve equal enrollments of about 1,100 at the two new schools by 2012, according to the redistricting plan. The schools are out of balance because more families live near Lower Merion than Harriton.