LB 1024 passed today on the last day of the legislative session. I've beat this topic to death over the past week. What was a "compromise" spearheaded by Ron Raikes, LB 1024 turned into a disaster in the course of three days, thanks to the amendment offered by Raikes and Sen. Ernie Chambers. The compromise wasn't great, but it had some very small concessions to the OPS position. Namely, any student in the "learning community" could go to any school. In theory, that sounds great. In practice, it's nearly impossible. You combine it with the racially motivated OPS breakup plan, and you have a terrible piece of legislation, which will not pass the federal court test. Sixteen senators voted against this proposal on the final round of voting. In other words, it was a pretty healthy victory for the proposal. Heineman is expected to sign it, and the court battle will begin sometime in the next year. Based on past Supreme Court precedents, it's going to be difficult for the courts not to overturn this one. The boundaries of the districts are racially motivated, and that will be OPS' argument when this goes to court.
If I am to understand Sen. Chambers' argument correctly, he is saying that there is already segregation in our schools, and the only thing left to do is institutionalize and codify the existing segregation so that students in these schools have more control over their education. The intent behind this law may not be segregation - that's certainly not Chambers' intent, according to his statements. But that's what the end result will be. And I find it unfortunate that so many senators fail to recognize this. No plan would have been better than this plan, which is a rushed attempt to punish OPS for even bringing the issue up in the first place.
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One thought on Sen. Chambers. Further segregating the black population from society is the goal of many black leaders. It seems as if Sen. Chambers is of the same belief. Somehow segregating themselves gives them more POWER or something like that. What a shame. I was actually starting to like Sen. Chambers until now.
The state legislature has proven once again that politicians could careless about children and local citizens. Those that approved this are a pathetic lot that apparently have little regard for further segregating a segregated city. Pathetic. As if Omaha isn’t segregated enough. I've never been more upset at the legislature.
It is ironic that OPS wanted more POWER and the lawmakers split up the district. That didn’t work out to well for the money hungry OPS leaders, did it?
Seems to be the way Chambers is going with it, doesn't it? If this somehow does go into effect, who is going to be the one making sure that the minority districts aren't getting screwed over? Chambers won't have any power anymore.
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