Note: This article was originally published in the Beacon Hill Paper, July 22, 1997.

Later this summer, or perhaps in the fall, someone may approach you and ask for your signature to put a referendum question on the November ballot. It’s a seemingly innocuous question, designed especially for the citizens of Boston: “Shall the Boston Public Schools begin the implementation of a new school assignment plan for non-examination schools which would assign students based solely on the criteria of parental choice with a neighborhood preference?”

“Who could argue with this?” you wonder as you reach for a pen, prepared to sign.

It sounds simple. But passage of this referendum won’t bring about immediate school choice for Boston.

The “school choice” referendum question has been the subject of heated debate within City Hall for the last three months. It is a racially divisive and politically cynical maneuver that threatens to undermine current efforts to enhance parental control over where kids should go to school.

Over the last several years, a consensus has developed across the city that Boston’s school assignment process needs improvement. Although about 90 percent of parents receive their first or second choice of schools for their kids, the ten percent who do not are sorely disappointed. Moreover, the perception that parents are often denied their choices has contributed significantly to flight away from the Boston Public Schools. Both whites and blacks who have the resources to move or send their children to private or parochial schools have done so. The result has been disinvestment in the education system, and in Boston itself, by those who should be most strongly supportive of the city.

No one disagrees that the situation is intolerable. Fixing it is a harder matter however. A host of competing considerations are at play here, including a desire to keep Boston’s schools as racially and economically diverse as possible and a need to focus the system on the primary goal of improving educational quality.

The referendum question was first presented to the City Council in April and ultimately was defeated by a narrow 7-6 vote in June. Those who defeated the question pushed instead for a more measured approach. They called upon the school committee to revaluate the assignment process and develop means to increase the number of parents receiving their first choices. The referendum, they argued, would be counterproductive, pitting white against black, because it inevitably would be read as a referendum on integration itself.

The school committee rose to the challenge. In mid-July it voted to form a commission, composed of prominent residents from across the city, that would develop a new assignment system.

Not satisfied, the referendum question’s proponents, led by At-large Councilor Peggy Davis-Mullen, will force a second vote before the Council at the end of July. If the referendum is defeated, Davis-Mullen will lead a charge to collect the 24,000 signatures needed to put the question on the ballot.

Why such a push for a referendum question that is, by its own terms, only advisory — one that many feel will accomplish little but to antagonize race relations and sabotage the goodwill that has been built up over the last several years? The answer is simple: politics. Racial integration has a sordid political history in Boston. Politicians should not exploit the issue for their own gain or use it as a wedge on which they hope to ride to victory in the next election.

Boston deserves better leadership than this. Boston deserves an education system built on sober consideration, not racial posturing.