Kinoshita and Del Obispo elementary schools are just an athletic field apart, but for many in San Juan Capistrano, the gap is a potent symbol of an issue that has roiled this south Orange County town in recent years: school segregation.
The schools are on the edge of a middle-class, mostly white neighborhood. But while Del Obispo's students are about 55% white, Kinoshita's enrollment is about 95% Latino. It is a disparity that former district teacher Gia Lugo said highlights the wide gap in race relations in this historic community.
"It's a fact of life in this town," she said. "Even in school you spend the day around your own kind."
The new school year begins today, with the ethnic makeup of the town's other two primary schools similarly skewed. Harold Ambuehl, east of Interstate 5, is 67% white, and San Juan, which is across the street from Mission San Juan Capistrano, is 89% Latino.
Emma Elizalde Barrera, whose daughter attends Del Obispo, said she is troubled "by the segregation of Latinos" at Kinoshita, where the girl was enrolled before Elizalde transferred her to Del Obispo. She said her three children who attended Kinoshita and San Juan had a difficult time associating with white children in middle and high school.
Del Obispo and Kinoshita "are next to each other," she said in Spanish. "Why aren't white children attending Kinoshita?"
Fifty-four years after Brown vs. Board of Education integrated public schools in the United States and 62 years after Mendez vs. Westminster School District outlawed "Mexican schools" in California, segregated schools are still a fact of life in the state.
A 2004 study by the University of California All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity found that 75% of Latino and 70% of African American students attended predominantly minority schools. The study found "a trend of school resegregation" that began emerging during the 1990s.
Race has long been an explosive issue in San Juan Capistrano and its school district. In 1994, white and Latino students at Marco Forster Middle School painted a mural with U.S. and Mexican flags in response to racist fliers targeting Latinos; the mural was intended to promote unity and understanding.
Tensions were exacerbated in 2005, when parents complained that the attendance boundary for the new San Juan Hills High School would draw students from Latino neighborhoods and hurt test scores. School board officials argued that the boundaries were necessary to avoid segregated schools but settled a lawsuit by parents by eliminating references to race in its attendance boundary policy and delaying indefinitely a decision on who would attend the school.
