If so, what was it?
Parents get upset when bureaucrats mess with their kids.
The truism wasn’t exactly a mystery before Champaign school officials disclosed plans for a school reassignment program that contemplated sending massive numbers of students — as much as 90 percent — to new schools.
But school board members and representatives of a consultant firm learned it anew after parents emphatically rejected the proposal. As a consequence, proponents of the old plans revealed a new plan last week they say would affect less than 10 percent of students.
That’s better than before. But it’s fair to ask, what is the point?
Do student reassignments really have anything to do with improving educational opportunities for children in desperate need of them? Or is this just another case of bureaucrats manipulating student population numbers to meet some so-called expert’s idea of what’s appropriate?
Those are fair questions to ask in light of what’s occurred. The first plan — the massive shakeup — did away with the “schools of choice” concept, a misnomer from the start because parents were barred from choosing the primary school their children would attend.
Students were assigned a grade school by school officials determined to match school populations with desired demographics. Parents were allowed to indicate their preference, one school officials would try to meet. But that was as far as it went.
