More than 170 years after Sacramento established its first public school board, questions about who has access to the city’s schools continue to raise concerns about racial equity.
In October 1854, the Sacramento City Council created the Sacramento City School Board. At the time, the board refused to admit Black students. Two decades later, in 1874, the superintendent of Sacramento City Schools issued a directive to teachers explicitly barring Black and Native American children from attending schools designated for white students.
More than a century later, Sacramento City Unified School District is again confronting questions about whether its enrollment policies have produced unequal access to schools for Black, Latino and other marginalized students…