Hi Degsme, So first I'll reply to your last post--that 33% of the Seattle residents have arrived in the last 5 years. I think that statistic is exactly my point. And I'd agree that it is probably true from anectodal evidence. Most of the families on my parents' block have moved in since 2002, which funny enough is around the time the tie-breaker was suspended. (Possibly a coincidence, possibly not.) I think it is great because it is very different from the mid-1980s-mid-1990s when I was in school. These are the people who would be "returning" to the public schools. Yet, only one has sent their child to them so far. Maybe, and hopefully, this will change. And again, if you can find a statistic about families not being pushed away by the SSD then I'd love to see it. It is my argument that the demographic shift was caused in large part by the SSD's policies and that it didn't occur in a vacuum. I'm not sure how you can measure your claim, and all I'm relaying is my experience with family and friends that goes back to the 1960s. Also, even if your private high school numbers are correct, they still aren't inconsequential. Say there are 500 students in every private high school and there are at least eight. 500x8=4,000 and 4,000 is little less than 1/3 of 14,000. That is still significant when you look at how the tie breaker was applied, especially since the vast majority of those 4,000 kids are white. Add them in to the mix and the SSD looks a lot different. But I will grant you that a handful of these kids come from the suburbs and/or would go to a private school no matter what the SSD did. And I don't understand how you equate going to good local schools with the "unearned privileges" of white well to do kids? I really don't. Do you not want good local schools for all? I think that would be my perfect solution. And you assume that all white privilege is unearned which I think is a very destructive stereotype. I wholeheartedly agree that we have a racist society and that there are inherent presumptions about all races, but we should be fighting those and not perpetuating them. That is one thing I learned from my time at Leschi. Not all poor people are the same and not all rich people are the same. Everyone has a story, and each individual should be judged on their own merits not on the broadstroke characterizations of their racial group. I want the school board and the school district to take pause because I think in the course of implementing policies that were meant to foster diversity, they in fact lost site of the very diversity they were trying to achieve. They over-emphasized the needs of the few while sacrificing the needs of the whole. In my previous posts I listed some great African Americans who have come from our community, lead our community, and enriched our community through the arts. We celebrate their achievments. And I think it is interesting that a few of them--Quincy Jones, Richard Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Ernestine Anderson--came up in a supposedly segregated/pre-integration Seattle and yet went on to incredible success and acclaim. Did they extra points along the way? I haven't a clue. It's their talent that everyone knows. Oddly enough, I sat next to Ernestine Anderson at a dinner for August Wilson a few years ago, and she told me that when she was touring with Lionel Hampton she felt most accepted in Sweden--one of the whitest places on earth. Was she saying this because I'm Swedish and she was being nice? I don't know, maybe. I don't presume a lack of neighborhood control. I've heard about it, read about it, and talked to people about it. Look what has happened at Madrona. What about those white neighborhood families who faced de facto segregation because they weren't poor or needy enough to get the attention of the school principle? Yes, they could move their kids to Lowell, but that lessens diversity since it is a magnet and most those kids come from the white well to do priviledge class you talk about. I can understand your frustration. I really can. I live on the East Coast and the racial/class divides really bother me. If I'd grown up here, I'd probably feel differently about this issue. It does come down to experience. I've talked to friends with similar racial and economic backgrounds as me and for the ones who aren't apathetic (which unfortunately is not too many) they tend to disagree with me, but only because they have a different experience. When I tell them about my time in the SSD, I've been able to change a few minds.