Parents Offer New Proposal For Desegregation of Schools

A group of parents last night proposed an alternative racial balance plan for the Cambridge schools, in an attempt to "lessen the disruption" of school desegregation in the city.

The proposal calls for slower implementation of integration, and would prevent reassignment of students already enrolled in city's schools, its backers told a crowd of 100 last night.

The plan, proposed by parents in the Agassiz neighborhood, will compete with three plans submitted by School Superintendent William Lannon last month for city consideration. Lannon said last night the new plan may move too slowly to satisfy state authorities.

The proposal, which divides the city into zones and then allows new families moving into each neighborhood a "limited choice" on which school their children will attend, could integrate schools enough to satisfy state standards within two years, Larry Weinstein, the parent who drew up the proposal, said last night.

"We all believe in racial balance," Weinstein said. "We just feel plans A, B and C [the three proposals submitted by Lannon last month] cause more disruption than they have to, both in moving students from the school they already attend, and by separating siblings."

Muriel Heiberger, the city's racial balance coordinator, promised to do "a very specific statistical analysis" of the new proposal. "We have already done a preliminary analysis on that sort of proposal, and that indicated that it would take a very long time to integrate the schools that way," she said.

"Of course integration is going to be disruptive, and of course it would be ideal to have a longer time to go about it. But we are under a legal mandate to do it quickly," Heiberger added.