A Successful Plan for Racial Balance Now Finds Its Future Uncertain

WHITE PLAINS

For 18 years, this city of 55,000 has maintained racially balanced schools without the white flight that has followed integration plans in places like Boston and Canarsie, Brooklyn.

But in June, the Supreme Court rejected school assignment plans in Louisville and Seattle that, like the one in White Plains, are also based explicitly on race. And there are fears that should a court turn down White Plains’s plan in the future, white families may abandon some of the neighborhood schools. That is not a fear restricted to White Plains, as dozens of other cities are having to reconsider similar plans.

“The demographics in some of the schools might change dramatically, and I don’t know how parents in those schools would feel about the demographics,â€