US public schools seeking federal help to bring children from different racial backgrounds together could face a narrower route to funding. A Justice Department opinion issued on November 5 says the money must be used to correct specific illegal discrimination.
The opinion concerns the Magnet Schools Assistance Program, which helps public school districts develop schools with distinctive teaching programs. It is legal advice to the Education Department from the government's own lawyers, rather than a court judgment or a new law passed by Congress.
Daylight Post found that the new legal interpretation reaches beyond how a school chooses individual students. Comparing the opinion with the program law shows that avoiding race-based admission decisions would not, by itself, satisfy the government's new funding test. Schools would also need to show why their integration plan is a remedy for illegal discrimination.
The money pays for teaching and access
Magnet schools are public schools that offer a particular educational focus, such as science, languages or the arts, to attract children from different backgrounds. A school district is the public body running schools in a local area.
Congress designed this grant program to help children learn together and improve the education available to them. Its stated purposes include reducing racial separation, expanding school choices and strengthening teaching.
The money can pay for teachers and other teaching staff, books, equipment and the development of educational programs. It can also help make a school's specialist lessons available to other students in the same school.
Limited spending on transport to and from a magnet school is allowed. That transport must be able to continue beyond the grant period, and its cost cannot take up a significant share of the award.
These are resources that help turn a school option into something families can use: people to teach the lessons, materials to support them and, in some cases, a way for children to get there. The legal dispute concerns access to that federal support, rather than a ban on magnet schools.
A divided school would need to show more
The program law allows grants for approved voluntary integration plans as well as plans required by a court or another public authority. It also gives priority to approaches such as admission lotteries rather than academic entrance tests, and to plans that consider families' economic circumstances when increasing racial integration.
The Justice Department takes a narrower view of when federal money can support plans that consider race. It argues that the government needs to identify particular illegal discrimination and make sure the grant is closely designed to correct it.
A school whose pupils are mostly from one racial group would therefore need more than its enrollment figures under this interpretation. It would need evidence of the illegal discrimination being addressed and a plan tied to putting that wrong right.
That test concerns the reason for awarding public money as well as admissions. A school can avoid admitting or rejecting individual children because of their race while still using an integration plan that the federal government considers race-based. The opinion does not find that every voluntary plan must fail.
Existing awards remain an open question
The Education Department's July request for the legal opinion listed 60 active grants across 18 states, including 52 supporting voluntary plans. Those figures describe the program at that earlier point, rather than a list of awards now being withdrawn.
Magnet Schools of America, which represents these schools, says the opinion contains no specific instruction about existing grants. In its response, it advises recipients to review their grant agreements and watch for further Education Department guidance.
The association also tells schools to avoid assuming that the opinion requires them to change or end funded activities immediately. The next decisions about how to apply the new interpretation belong to the Education Department.