Tinsley Class Action Lawsuit Settles Desegregation Lawsuit Against 9 Peninsula Districts
The Tinsley Settlement came after ten years of negotiations. This settlement created the Voluntary Transfer Program, which is still in place. This VTP is the only cross-District, cross-county desegregation plan in the country.
The suit, filed in 1976, involved 170 plaintiffs both white and African-American, and alleged that their children in East Palo Alto were not receiving an equal education to the nine neighboring elementary school districts. The parents first organized under the name Midpeninsula Task Force for Integrated Education with 33 parents and 3 lawyers who knew one another through Rotary:
Sid Berlin, Jack Robertson and Jerry Marer. Robertson and Marer had been members of the Ravenswood City School Board in the 70s.
The original goal of the suit was a court ordered merger of the school districts. The final settlement was recorded and had three main goals. To increase the number of minority students in the eight mostly white school districts, to improve the educational standards of the RCSD, and to improve inter-district cooperation between Ravenswood and the other nine districts.
The suit declares that a lottery be held each year to choose:
60 students to attend Palo Alto Unified
31 students to attend Belmont Redwood Shores
26 students to attend San Carlos School District
24 students to attend Menlo Park City School District
12 to attend Las Lomitas Elementary School District
8 students to attend Portola Valley
5 students to attend Woodside Elementary
Ravenswood City School District loses about $3,3
00 in ADA for each child that participates in the VT Program.
Students only enter in K-2nd grade as it is thought that older than that they will not benefit, but students remain in the program once enrolled. These students are bused from East Palo Alto to the District they receive in the lottery
.
The program still stands today.
Jones, Bayinaah R. The Tinsley Case Decision. Dissertation. 2006.
https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/dissertations/q811kk042
Lorenz, Elizabeth. The Tinsley Settlement. Palo Alto Online Article. 1998.
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/cover/1998_Oct_7.COVSIDE1.html
Image of Julian Crocker, PAUSD Superintendent during Tinsley Case hearing from Palo Alto Historical Association. Retrieved 27 June 2020.