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As a proud Latina parent, I was concerned to read two recent commentaries: "100,000 Twin Cities lives ruined by segregation" by Myron Orfield (June 5) and "Minnesota is an educational leader in racial inequality" by David Schultz (June 17).

Minnesota is an open-enrollment state. That means parents have the right to enroll their children in a chosen school. And parents use this right. About 10% of children attend a school outside their home district, according to the Minnesota Department of Education. About 7.5% of kids attend charter school, according to the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools.

Orfield's and Schutz's pieces assume that parents of color are somehow incorrect, uninformed or unintelligent about the choices they make for their children. If you accept this problem definition, the solution is for more learned people to step in and correct what people of color choose. This is demeaning and perpetuates racial stereotypes of people of color being inferior decisionmakers compared with white people. Parents of color can make good decisions about which schools their children should attend.

There is more to healthy children than test scores, especially for children of color. Parents of color may choose to send their children to schools with kids from the same culture or with similar experiences so their children feel supported and accepted. Children at schools with few minorities can feel like they are "different" or "odd" or somehow less. Schools with high percentages of minority students can also help preserve cultures, values and languages.

Minority parents, too, may feel more comfortable in schools with high percentages of parents like them. They can share cultures, values and languages with other parents. They have similar life experiences with other parents. Their cultural communities may already have parents at a school. Their neighborhood and its institutions may already be involved with a school and they want to have their children attend schools locally. Or maybe, like white parents, they like the school, teachers, principals or curriculum, especially if the curriculum is supportive of their culture.

The problem with the "blame school segregation" argument is that it draws attention away from the real drivers of educational disparities — the drastic differences in income and wealth by race. Kids need safe homes, good food and stable families to thrive — regardless of race. This cannot happen if children are living in grinding poverty. White kids live in poverty at a rate of less than 1 in 10. About a third of Black and Indigenous kids do. About 1 in 5 Hispanic kids do. It is not surprising there are disparities in educational outcomes given the disparities in lives of children of color.

We must close the income gap to close it. (See: "Why Is There A Huge Academic-Achievement Gap Between White Students And Their Peers Of Color?" from the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University.) Making college tuition-free for low-income families is a start to bringing families out of poverty. However, cost is not the only barrier for parents to improve their education and get better jobs. Access to child care, especially for working parents in the evening at schools, would also help parents attend school. Online classes, where parents do not have to travel to campus, also make it easier for working parents to attend school.

Diversity is not just about skin color. It is about respecting a diversity of thought and opinions. If parents of color make a fully informed choice to send their children to schools with high percentages of children of color, that should be respected.

Erika Kennedy, of Plymouth, is a mother of four and an immigrant from Mexico who has worked on behalf of the Latino community for 15 years.