Appellant and her son, Riley, moved into the District in June of 2000 from Cedar Falls. Riley attends kindergarten and Appellant applied for open enrollment for Riley to attend the Price Laboratory School in Cedar Falls. She designated Riley's minority status as Black/Not Hispanic. Riley is of mixed heritage since Appellant is white. The Board Secretary of the District testified that Riley's application was timely and was denied on July 17, 2000, because Riley is a minority student attending a school with a minority enrollment that is at least 5% less than the District's percentage as a whole.

The District adopted its current open enrollment/desegregation policy and regulations in 1999. The Board policies contain objective criteria for determining when open enrollment transfers would adversely impact the District's desegregation program and for prioritizing requests that would not adversely impact the program. The Board policy and regulations were upheld by the Black Hawk County in Waterloo Comm. School District v. Iowa Dept. of Education, Case No. LACV075042, decided on August 8, 1996.

It was determined that the District Board reasonably applied its policies and regulations to the facts of Riley's open enrollment application. Family motives for applying for open enrollment have never been considered by local boards or by the Department of Education as reasons to override the building ratio restrictions in the past.

That the decision of the Waterloo Community School District's Board of Directors, made on July 17, 2000, denying Riley Gardner's open enrollment application was affirmed.