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Parents in the Tucson Unified School District have filed 104 requests to transfer students to other schools since the district adopted an open-enrollment policy in late August, two weeks after the school year began.

Before the start of the school year, district officials announced they would strictly enforce a decades-old enrollment transfer policy that allowed transfers outside students' neighborhood schools only if the moves improved racial balance at the new schools. The strict interpretation of that old policy for the current school year meant some students couldn't attend schools they had attended just last year.

But after the federal judge overseeing the district's desegregation case declared that transfer policy was unconstitutional, the TUSD Governing Board approved the open-enrollment policy, on Aug. 28.

Between then and the district's Friday deadline for transfer requests, TUSD received 58 requests for elementary transfers, 22 for middle school students and 24 for high school students, district spokeswoman Chyrl Hill Lander said.

The requests weren't necessarily granted, she said. Some schools already had waiting lists, accumulated during the last school year.

Lander said 154 requests to get into Miles Exploratory Learning Center, a preschool through eighth-grade school at 1400 E. Broadway, had piled up. Miles is a nontraditional school with some unusual programs.

During that same period, she said, there were 25 requests to transfer out of Naylor Middle School, 1701 S. Columbus Blvd., classified as a "failing" school.

Lander said she didn't know how many of either group were granted but doubted anyone got into Miles, which she said already was at full enrollment.

She said TUSD staffers called 250 to 300 parents on the transfer lists during the weekend to tell them if their requests could be accommodated. She said those who had their requests granted were told they had until Friday "to accept transfer or decide to stay where they are."

"If they turn it down, I'm not sure, but maybe the next person on the list could be offered the slot," she said.

Meanwhile, Rubin Salter, an attorney for some minority plaintiffs in the desegregation case, said they are appealing the change in policy in federal court.

Since 1969, when the district began federally ordered desegregation efforts, student transfers and placements had been defined by the policy, known as "Board Policy 5090." TUSD has been under a desegregation order since 1978.

But U.S. District Judge David C. Bury ruled the policy was unconstitutional, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling that rejected race-based student placements.

Bury's ruling was part of a larger interim order requiring TUSD to show it has fulfilled the desegregation order while also filing a plan for student placements and transfers.