Appellant filed a timely application for her daughter to open enroll out of the Des Moines District for the 2002-2003 school year. Shelby entered kindergarten in the fall of 2002 as a non-minority student. Her assigned attendance center was Hillis Elementary School.

The parents filed for open enrollment because Shelby's primary child care provider and great grandmother lives within walking distance of the Urbandale Community School District's Olmstead Building. Appellant's application was denied on April 2, 2002, because the District determined that the departure of Shelby would adversely affect the composite ratio of minority to non- minority students for the District as a whole. Appellant believes the District discriminated based on race in its desegregation plan and policy.

The first part of the District's open enrollment policy does not allow non-minority students to exit, or minority students to enter, a particular building if the building's minority population exceeds the District's minority percentage by more than 15 percentage points. The percent of minority students in the District in the 2002-2003 school year is 29.5 percent. The District uses this year's minority percent to estimate what next year's minority enrollment will be in any particular building. Thus, any building with a minority population of 44.5 percent or greater this year is closed to open enrollment for next year. The buildings closed to open enrollment for the 2002-2003 school year are Adams, Capitol View, Edmunds, King, Longfellow, Lovejoy, Madison, McKinley, Moulton, Perkins, Wallace, Harding, Hiatt, and North. The second part of the policy uses a ratio of minority to non-minority students for the District as a whole to determine when the departure of students would adversely affect the desegregation plan. This ratio is based on the District's official enrollment count taken in September. The District determined that since 29.5 percent of the District's students were minorities, the composite ratio was 1:2.39. This means that for every minority student who open enrolls out of the District for 2002-2003, 2.39 non-minority students would be approved to leave.The District's policy requires that students with siblings who are already open enrolled out of the District be given first consideration unless the student is assigned to a building closed to open enrollment. If this is the case, the sibling preference policy does not apply and the student is ineligible.

Between July 1, 2001, and January 1, 2002, the District received 141 open enrollment applications. For the 2002-2003 school year, 13 minority students and 128 non-minority students applied for open enrollment. Using the composite ratio of 1:2.39, the District determined that 31 non-minority students would be approved for open enrollment (13 x 2.39=31.07). Of the 128 non-minority applicants, 20 were determined to be ineligible because they were assigned to a building closed to open enrollment. This left 108 non-minority applicants for 31 slots. Ten of these were approved under the sibling preference portion of the policy, resulting in 21 remaining slots and 98 applicants. The remaining applicants were placed in numerical order according to a random number program and the first 21 were approved. The remainder were denied and placed on a waiting list that will be used only for the 2002-2003 school year. If additional minority students leave the District through open enrollment, the students at the top of this list will be allowed to open enroll in numbers determined by the composite ratio.The Des Moines District's open enrollment policy has been upheld by the Polk County District Court in Des Moines Ind. Comm. Sch. Dist. V. Iowa Dept. of Education AA2432(June 1, 1995). That decision upheld the Des Moines District Board's right to deny timely-filed open enrollment applications using the building-closed-to-open enrollment provision and the district-wide composite ratio.

The facts in the record at the appeal hearing do not show that the District's policy was inappropriately or incorrectly applied to the facts of Shelby McClure's case. Therefore, the Board's decision to deny this application was reasonable and in the best interest of education.

That the decision of the Board of Directors of the Des Moines Independent Community School District, made on April 2, 2002, denying the open enrollment application for Appellant's child, Shelby McClure, was recommended for affirmance.