End to forced busing creates new problems for Seattle's schools
Thursday,
June 3, 1999
By RUTH
TEICHROEB
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Under the pivotal leadership of the late Seattle
Schools Superintendent John Stanford, two decades of desegregation-inspired
busing gave way to neighborhood schools with barely a protest.
As Stanford declared before race-based busing was
dismantled in November 1997, "I don't have to sit next to someone of
another color to learn."
But ending mandatory, race-related busing has
sparked a new set of problems during the Seattle School District's first full
year of sending its 24,000 elementary children to schools closer to home.
Predictably, the number of minority students has
climbed close to 100 percent in some schools south of the Lake Washington Ship
Canal, while North Seattle schools are becoming whiter.
South End schools, which had their minority
enrollments capped during busing, are now expanding rapidly with the dramatic
influx of neighborhood children. In contrast, North Seattle schools that used
to have waiting lists are scrambling to fill empty seats.
This trend will only intensify over the next year,
because nearly 2,000 students are still being bused under a grandfather clause
that provides transportation until the year 2000 for students already enrolled
far from home.
One-third of the city's 61 regular elementary
schools now have 80 percent or more minority students. Seven of those schools
are more than 90 percent minority. Four years ago, no school was above 90
percent minority.
To those who believe busing was an important tool
for addressing social inequities, the trend toward neighborhood schools in
Seattle and many other districts across the country looks like de facto
segregation.
"The white kids get neighborhood schools, the
minority kids get inferior schools," said Gary Orfield, an education and
social policy professor at Harvard University and director of the Harvard
Project on School Desegregation, which monitors the issue.
His research has shown that American schools began
resegregating in the late 1980s as a more conservative Supreme Court began
giving lower courts more discretion in ending busing.
The integration of public schools was originally
sparked by a May 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. the Board of
Education, which ruled that "separate but equal" education is
unconstitutional.
During busing, a Seattle school was considered to
be desegregated if it was within 10 percent of the district's minority-white
ratio, which is now 59 percent minority and 41 percent white.
But Seattle school officials and educators view
busing as a failed attempt at social engineering. They say they are doing what
parents want: providing school choices close to home.
"Nobody -- minorities or whites -- wants
their children bused," said Don Nielsen, vice president of the Seattle
School Board.
"We are not resegregating our schools. We are
reintroducing parental choice and 90 percent of parents want their kids to go
to school close to home."
As proof, Nielsen and others note that just 19
minority parents opted to bus their children to a more integrated school far
from home this year. Under the new neighborhood assignment plan, South End
parents had the choice of several more racially balanced schools, as did North
End parents.
By offering schools closer to home, the district
also hopes to reverse the flight of white families to private schools and the
suburbs. Over the past 20 years, the percentage of white students in the
district has dropped from 66 percent to 41 percent.
In North Seattle, only 65 percent of children
attend public schools, while 90 percent of children in the South End are
enrolled in the public system.
What concerns many educators and parents the most
is not the return to more racially segregated schools, but the burgeoning
numbers of poor and often low-achieving students in South Seattle.
High-poverty schools -- which some say are the
equivalent of economic segregation -- must overcome major hurdles given the
proven link between poverty and academic difficulties. When the district
identified its 16 most troubled elementary schools last year, they were almost
all in high-poverty south and central Seattle neighborhoods.
The number of poor students has jumped by as much
as 20 percent over the last four years at schools south of the Ship Canal, and
more than one-third of the district's 61 regular elementary schools have
poverty levels of 60 percent or more.
At Gatzert Elementary in Seattle's Central
District and High Point Elementary in West Seattle, 90 percent of students
qualify for free and reduced lunch, a federal measure of poverty. Between 70
percent and 90 percent of students are poor at another nine schools, while 13
other schools have between 60 percent and 70 percent poverty levels.
This trend is no surprise to district officials,
who overhauled their school financing formula in 1997 to provide extra money
for students who are poor, low-achieving, bilingual or who require special
education.
"Before, we moved the kids to where the
resources were," said Joseph Olchefske, Seattle schools superintendent.
"Now we're moving the resources to the kids. We want quality education
close to home."
What Olchefske said Seattle officials didn't
foresee was how high-poverty schools would use the money.
With greater control over school budgets,
principals promptly lowered class sizes last year and added full-day
kindergartens, believing that was the best way to help needy students.
But the sheer demand from students has already
begun to undermine that strategy, with class sizes creeping up next September
at many of the neediest South Seattle schools.
Overcrowding is expected to be particularly acute
for the next two years until school renovations add extra seats at African
American Academy, slated to move from Magnolia to the South End, and Dunlap and
Emerson, in southeast Seattle. And until at least two new elementary schools
are built, reducing class sizes will be difficult, if not impossible, at many
South End schools.
When the neighborhood schools plan takes effect
this September for secondary schools, South Seattle middle schools also are
expected to become more crowded and have higher concentrations of poor and
minority students.
Switching to neighborhood schools has caused the
opposite dilemma for North Seattle schools, which have lost students, money and
the less tangible advantages of racial diversity.
Under the district's school financing formula,
fewer poor, bilingual and struggling students means fewer dollars.
Many North Seattle schools have launched full-day
kindergarten-for-pay classes and other specialized programs to lure
middle-class families that might otherwise send their children to private
schools.
Parents have had to step in and raise money to pay
for staff and programs that otherwise would be cut.
Most parents support the shift to neighborhood
schools and the district's efforts to funnel more money toward high-needs
students, said Sally Chong, president of the Seattle Council of the
Parent-Teacher-Student Association.
"To me, the bottom line is that there's not
enough money in the pot," Chong said. "There's something wrong with
the state's funding."
How the Seattle School District's
elementary student assignment plan works:
·
The city is divided into nine geographical regions, or clusters.
·
A student has first priority at the closest school, but will receive
transportation to any school in the cluster.
·
A student can select any school in the city, but will not be bused
outside the cluster in most cases.
·
When demand exceeds space at a school, a student with a sibling
attending that school has first priority; second priority goes to students who
live in the cluster; third priority goes to students who can help integrate a
school; fourth priority goes to students outside the cluster who live closest
to the school; and finally, there's a lottery.
·
At least two alternative schools and one K-8 school have been assigned
to each cluster.
·
Students in six clusters that are predominantly white or minority are
given several choices of more racially diverse schools in other regions;
transportation will be provided.
Seattle started mandatory
desegregation through forced busing in 1973 at the middle school level and in
1977 throughout all schools.
Unlike most other school districts across the
nation, Seattle implemented forced busing without being ordered to do so by the
courts in the wake of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that
"separate but equal" education was unconstitutional.
Busing was not popular among the city's residents,
who made their positions known at the ballot box and in surveys. But the
district stood firm and fought two anti-busing initiatives launched by citizens
in the 1980s.
Eventually, the School Board adopted a
controlled-choice desegregation plan that combined greater parental choice of
schools with some mandatory busing. Then in November 1996, board members voted
to end race-based busing altogether, saying the system had not helped children
academically and had placed an unfair burden on the city's minority children.
Civil rights lawyers said Seattle's move reflected
a trend as frustrated school districts across the nation decided to end
race-based busing and return to neighborhood schools, something the courts have
allowed them to do.
P-I reporter Ruth Teichroeb can be reached at 206-448-8175 or ruthteichroeb@seattle-pi.com