Interesting article, but some details are vague. The MIT students pointed out that most of the protesting parents were white while while a majority of the school district were minorities. The obvious subtext is that white citizens are having an outsized influence in the city's decision making to the detriment of minorities. But there's another option that isn't considered in the article (though it may have been considered in real life), minority parents didn't like the new schedules either but didn't feel motivated enough, either because of political disenfranchisement or apathy, to try and do anything it. If this is the case, then the whole narrative changes completely.