IOWA CITY (AP) — Iowa City school board members are addressing concerns from parents who don’t want their children bused away from their neighborhoods in order to meet goals of a new diversity policy.
Language added to the proposed policy says the district cannot create new pockets of high- or low-income areas and transport those students outside their neighborhoods.
The board has agreed that a diversity policy could to help cure disparities in poverty rates across the district. Iowa Assessments test scores tend to be higher at schools with fewer students living in poverty.
The proposal would require schools to be within a certain range of each other in terms of the percentage of their students who receive free or reduced-price lunches.
The proposal requires two more votes before becoming district policy.
