A black and white issue

During this last week, the Toronto District School Board trustees have narrowly but definitively passed a contentious motion to open the door to what it's proponents are calling "Afro-centric schools".
It has generated no end of acrimonious discussion on local talk radio, and a fair amount of bad feeling, as much in Toronto's black community as anywhere else.
The final vote was a narrow 11-9, which maybe indicates just how contentious it really is, and was essentially just a vote on the broad principle (as opposed to principal) involved, especially as it seems far from clear just what "Afro-centric" means, and no locations or grades or firm budgets or even firm timing have been finalized (although, timing-wise, September 2009 has been put forward, and cost-wise we seem to be looking at almost $1 million).
The province of Ontario has been unequivocal in asserting that no new provincial money will be available for it, so any investment in such a project will have to come out of current capital and operating budgets, and the Board is notoriously underfunded already.
So it seems to me that worsening the underfunding of the rest of the school system on a point of principle is wrong-headed. But maybe that point of principle is sufficiently important and sufficiently "right" for us to overlook this? Unfortunately, no.
Undoubtedly the proposal is well-intentioned, but in my opinion and, that of many other commentators both, black and white, misguided.
The intention and primum mobile of the proposal is to address the school dropout rate for English-speaking students of Caribbean descent, which is up to 40% and clearly unacceptable. This proposed solution - which as far as I can tell involves attempting to integrate the history, culture and experiences of blacks in society into the regular curriculum (sort of a Black History Month all year round) - is supposed to miraculously fix that. As though learning about Marcus Garvey and Granville T. Woods is going to encourage these kids to merrily skip along to their schools in the mornings, and leave behind their gangs and street crime in preference for homework and exam revision!
Possibly more worrying is the movement towards segregation and marginalization it would represent. Angela Wilson, the who put forward the motion, claims "It's not about segregation, it's about self-determination" but, whether it is "about" segregation or not, that would be the end the result, and personally I don't want to go there.
I have heard too many black teachers and black mothers from risky areas argue against the proposal to be persuaded by it, and it seems like a dangerous first step down a slippery slope in the wrong direction.
By all means pump more public money into public education and into the most troubled parts of our community (whether they be predominantly Caribbean or not), but this is not the way to go.