Civil Rights Leaders Hit Mayor, Klein

More than a dozen civil rights advocates today will condemn Mayor Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, for taking a position they say advances racial segregation in the city schools.

A Supreme Court ruling last month that limited race as a consideration in how schools assign students has led school officials to investigate how to lift two court orders mandating integration in a handful of city schools. Mr. Klein has called the court orders, which draw on the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, no longer necessary in a school system where nearly 75% of students are black and Hispanic.

"In an environment like that, a focus on racial balance seems to me to be not the way to solve the problem," Mr. Klein said on a WNYC radio program the day the decision was announced. "A focus on high-quality education for every kid in every school I think is the way."

The civil rights advocates, led by the executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, Michael Meyers, and a civil rights attorney, Norman Siegel, said their working group will defend the court orders.

"Schools Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg should be expressing outrage, not agreement," Mr. Meyers said of the Supreme Court decision.

At today's press conference, Messrs. Meyers and Siegel will denounce the decision and also recommend specific ways for the city to integrate schools, including redrawing school boundaries.

"We have to confront the increasing retreat from the promise of Brown v. Board of Education," Mr. Siegel said.