Agree - a less contentious approach to solving the problem would have been better. I would like to see how removing the fee and removing the test altered the composition of incoming classes, without the extra poor-school, ESOL, etc policies.
“Emails and text messages between Board members and high-ranking [Fairfax school] officials leave no material dispute that, at least in part, the purpose of the Board’s admissions overhaul was to change the racial makeup to TJ to the detriment of Asian-Americans.”
Even that language is open to interpretation (lacking the text of the emails). Did somebody explicitly say "we need fewer Asians"? Or was it "the racial balance at TJ nowhere near represents the racial composition of the county"? At the end of the day, for whatever reason, Asians are disproportionately over-represented at TJ and that is a problem (if nothing else, it's a perception problem, but I suspect it's a lot more complicated than that).