Parents unhappy with the way BPS changed exam-school admissions ask Supreme Court to weigh in - two months after court refused to hear similar Virginia case

A group of white and Asian-American parents - and their California-based law firm - this week asked the US Supreme Court to overturn rulings by federal courts in Boston that the School Committee did nothing wrong when it changed the way students are accepted to the three exam schools by including Zip codes in addition to grades as a criterion.

By itself, the request doesn't mean the nation's highest court will actually hear the case. In fact, in February, the court declined to hear a similar case involving an exam school in Fairfax County, VA - brought by the same law firm that represents the Boston group, the Pacific Legal Foundation of Sacramento.

The Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence - made up of parents and one Cohasset resident who went to BLS - argue the new plan was racially biased because it reduced the percentage of White and Asian-American students at Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John O'Bryant School of Math and Science. The School Committee has since amended the plan to include a results of a standardized test, but the current requirements still include a geographic component as a way to boost the number of Black and Hispanic students without specifically using race as a criterion.

In their request for a Supreme Court hearing - which is not guaranteed - the group says the way applicants from certain Zip codes were essentially given bonus points represents unconstitutional "racial balancing." They say the proof is that the percentage of white and Asian-American students accepted to the exam schools dropped from 61% to 49% - which is still far higher than their percentages in BPS as a whole.

In earlier rulings, both a federal trial judge and a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the new admissions policy - even after having to give the matter a second thought after BPS nonsense that included the resignation of three of the School Committee's seven members over what they said or texted at the 2020 meeting at which the new policy was adopted.

In its second ruling on the case, this past December, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said that rather than being racially biased, the news admissions policy actually decreased racial disparities by bringing the number of Black and Hispanic student at the three schools closer to their numbers in the overall BPS system. It also said that even in the Harvard case, in which the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative-action acceptance, the court said schools could craft admissions policies aimed at ending racial disparities that did not involve specific questions related to an individual student's race.

Supreme Court docket for the case.