Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Wilton Kitt, whose three children attend Fishburn Park Elementary School, said the people of the city need to do more to increase racial diversity in the neighborhoods.

Javontae Patrick, 13, an eighth-grader at Lucy Addison Middle School, pleaded for more racial diversity in Roanoke's public schools.

Many Roanokers still do not think the school board's proposal to redraw the city's school attendance areas next year do enough to create diverse classrooms.

Several of the two dozen speakers who addressed board members during a public hearing Thursday evening asked officials to postpone their decision and go back to the drawing board, while politely thanking board members for their work so far. Their comments underscore the concern of many parents and teachers that redrawing Roanoke's 38-year-old attendance zones would lead to less diverse schools.

School officials have spent weeks drafting maps outlining possible new attendance areas, saying the changes would send children to schools closer to home and would save up to $700,000 in transportation costs when fully phased in. Although school board members acknowledge that the changes would make many schools less diverse, their most recent drafts, completed Wednesday evening, address the fears raised by parents and teachers over the past few weeks.

But those fears have not been put to rest.

"I appreciate all your hard work. I really sincerely do. I'm still not happy," said Barbara Phifer, PTA president at Lucy Addison Middle School.

Earlier drafts of the maps increased Addison's enrollment by almost 200 students, many of them from William Ruffner Middle School, which will close next year. Addison parents were also worried that black students would make up about 90 percent of Addison's enrollment under the plan.

The latest proposal would send more students to other middle schools and relieve pressure on Addison, while also slightly increasing its diversity. But Phifer still wanted the board to put off the vote, now scheduled for April 7.

"You're tired right now. You need to take a break," she told the board members, who have spent hours this week in early-morning and late-night meetings.

Javontae Patrick, an eighth- grade Addison student and president of its student council, said he wanted his school to be less homogeneous.

"Segregation is old news and integration is still fresh. Let's keep it that way," he said to a thunderous standing ovation from the roughly 150 people in the audience.

City Councilman Sherman Lea, who attended the hearing but did not address the school board, also said he wanted school officials to postpone the decision for further review.

"This city has come too far to allow us to go back to segregating the schools," he said.

Roanoke's current attendance zones date to 1971 when they were imposed by a federal court to force the city to desegregate its elementary schools. Over the decades, residential patterns have shifted so much that many elementary schools are once again divided by race, even though nearly 1,000 students -- 80 percent of them black -- are still bused to schools across town every day. Thousands of parents have also pulled their children from public school.

"Our students have shifted. The boundaries no longer do what they were intended to do," said board member Courtney Penn, who has been the driving force in the rezoning effort.

Not everybody was unhappy with the plan. Several parents from Grandin Court and Wasena elementary schools said they liked the latest revisions to the maps because they would be able to keep their children in their current school.

"I think I'm speaking for many Grandin Court parents back there" in supporting the revised options, said Todd Mendelowitz, the father of two children at the school.

But questions of race and diversity dominated Thursday's discussion, just as they have since board members first started contemplating redrawing attendance lines. Complicating the task is Roanoke's stubborn residential segregation, which makes it almost impossible to balance school diversity with community-based schools.

Wilton Kitt, whose three children attend Fishburn Park, said the school board could not by itself bring about true integration.

"Outside of schools, everyone knows where the black side of town is. Everybody knows where the white side of town is. The question is: What do we do outside of schools?" said Kitt, who said he attended schools where 90 percent of students were black when he was growing up.

Mendelowitz echoed his sentiment: "It's not the school board's charge to desegregate the city. It's our responsibility, everyone in this room's responsibility."

But Kathleen Board, another speaker at the hearing, was not willing to let officials off the hook.

"I know it's not the school board's job to do it, but still they can help implement some changes that will affect all our lives, our children's lives," she said.