But in this moment of racial reckoning, the state must take a leadership role — encouraging both intradistrict and regional, interdistrict integration. A good place to start is with a series of bills put forth by state Senator Brendan Crighton, a Lynn Democrat, who says he learned the virtues of integration as a child in the city's schools — once among the most diverse districts in the state, but now one of the most racially isolated. The first measure would establish a commission to study school segregation and the residential segregation that undergirds so much of it — and come up with recommendations for ameliorating both. Talk of a Beacon Hill commission sometimes gets the eyes rolling; too often, a commission is where a good idea goes to die. But in a state that hasn't paid serious attention to segregation in decades, a careful examination of how our affordable housing and school assignment policies have fostered a destructive racial isolation is a crucial first step in building support for meaningful reform. A similar bill from state Representative Chynah Tyler, a Boston Democrat, would add another worthy task to the commission's charge: examining successful integration strategies in Massachusetts and nationwide. We have at least one proven model here. The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or Metco program, has been sending students of color from Boston and Springfield to high-achieving suburban schools for decades. And the results — substantially higher graduation and college enrollment rates than peers in urban public schools — have been nothing short of remarkable. But there has been little effort to expand Metco. In fact, just maintaining funding for the program has been a struggle. There's plenty to examine beyond the Massachusetts border, too. A recent survey by the Century Foundation found almost 200 school districts and charter schools nationally taking active steps to integrate their schools, alongside hundreds of others subject to a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement. Some jurisdictions use magnet schools with themes that attract students from all sorts of backgrounds. Others have redrawn attendance boundaries to encourage integration or have established race-conscious weighted lotteries. A second bill authored by Crighton would establish a state grant program for districts, or regional consortiums of districts, to develop and implement these sorts of integration strategies. One forward-looking provision would give priority to applicants who pursue the interdistrict or regional approaches that hold the greatest promise.