In the district’s annual student head count,Latinos accounted for 38.1 percent of all students, surpassing African-Americans, who comprise 37.9 percent of the student body, according to data posted on the state’s education website. The change follows decades of steady growth among Latino students and more than 10 years of declines in the percentage of African-Americans, according to state enrollment data.

The rising ranks of Latinos – a phenomenon mirrored in school districts across the country – could ultimately redefine the public image of a school system still often seen through the prism of the 1970s clash between black and white families over desegregation.

“Boston itself is changing, and the black-and-white Boston of the past is now embedded in a multicultural international city,” said Neil Sullivan, executive director of the Private Industry Council, a public-private partnership between the city’s businesses and the schools. “You are always going to see a demographic shift first among the students in schools.”

While this shift has been years in the making, with the percentage of Latinos steadily rising nearly every year, some argue that Boston school leaders have not done enough to serve this growing population and have been too quick to blame the achievement gap on poor language skills.

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