Busing is Hurting Black Children, Some in P.G. Say; Parents Point to Vacant Slots in Gifted, Magnet Programs

Lisa Frazier
Washington Post Staff Writer
October 30, 1995

As Principal Inez Sadler began planning for the new school term at Valley View Elementary in Oxon Hill this year, she learned firsthand what court-supervised desegregation has come to mean in Prince George's County.

Sadler's school faced a shortage of 50 students for its Talented and Gifted Program, but she could not choose from any of the 67 students on a waiting list. The reason: All 67 children on the list are African American, while all 50 available slots are reserved for children of other races.

With a school system that has gone from predominantly white to predominantly African American in the last two decades, Prince George's is struggling to fulfill the mandate of a federal court whose main thrust today is to prevent schools from becoming too heavily black. But many African American parents, who once supported federal court intervention as a way to ensure that their children receive a better education, have come to resent it.

They say it is bad enough that the court's desegregation plan requires thousands of mostly black children to travel by bus to schools outside their neighborhoods. Now, they say, the school system is denying thousands of black children entrance to highly regarded magnet programs in the name of desegregation.

At least 4,100 African American students are on waiting lists for the magnet programs, most of which have plenty of openings -- but only for non-black students.

"The magnet programs were developed to improve the education of all students," said Sadler, whose school lost a teacher and was forced to combine two grade levels in three classrooms. "I think it's really unfortunate that we can't let the very students who need this improved education receive it because of restrictions on their race."

Since eight black parents went to court in 1972 seeking equal access to education for their children, the resulting desegregation plan has evolved into a complex blend of race-based busing and school enrichment programs, all intended to ensure equal opportunity in an increasingly African American public school system.

During its regular meeting Thursday, the Board of Education decided to step up its efforts to find white children to fill the empty magnet program slots. But if that doesn't work, the board agreed to ask the federal judge who monitors the desegregation case to ease the racial restriction that prevents a magnet program from having an enrollment that is more than 80 percent African American.

One board member, Kenneth E. Johnson (District 6), cautioned against going to court on the magnet school matter. He said the board might be forced to admit that the school district has done all it can do to integrate the schools, even if those efforts have been largely unsuccessful. The next logical step, Johnson said, would be "unitary status" -- a federal court declaration that would free the school district from the 23 years of court supervision.

That is a step the Prince George's board has been unwilling to take, despite increasing pressure from County Executive Wayne K. Curry (D), the County Council and Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D). Glendening and the county officials argue that the desegregation order has outlived its usefulness and that the board should go to court immediately to seek relief from it.

Like other areas forced by the federal courts during the 1970s to desegregate, the Prince George's school district today is far different. In 1972, 78 percent of the children enrolled in county schools were white; 22 percent were African American. Today, blacks make up 70 percent of the school population, and whites make up 20 percent. Race-based busing affects less than 10 percent of the district's 118,000 schoolchildren, but nine out of 10 of those affected are black.

Even with the magnets and mandatory busing, many Prince George's schools already are heavily segregated. Eighteen qualify for what is known as the Milliken II program because the county's housing patterns make them too difficult to desegregate. Through a program approved by the federal court, those schools receive extra resources, such as full-time guidance counselors and library specialists and reduced class sizes to compensate for the imbalance.

Although only 18 schools receive Milliken II assistance, 37 schools are more than 90 percent African American, according to a November 1994 report the board submitted to the court. Forty-nine schools are more than 85 percent African American.

As the county's population has changed, so has its leadership. Today, the county executive and the superintendent of schools are black, as well as nearly half the members of the school board and the County Council. The new black leadership is significant because local NAACP leaders -- who helped bring the federal court case -- have long cited mistrust of Prince George's white leaders as a reason to maintain court supervision.

The board's reluctance to seek freedom from the court order, the only one in the Washington area, has little to do with ideology. For the most part, the board agrees with critics of busing that mandatory busing for racial balance must end and that children should be returned to educationally enriched neighborhood schools, even if that plan results in schools that are practically all one race. The current conflict between the board, the county and the governor is about power and money.

In July, Curry and the council, supported by Glendening, decided to withhold from the school board a $3.4 million state grant that was to kick off an elaborate $346 million neighborhood schools plan proposed by the board as a potentially acceptable alternative to racial busing.

Curry and the council said that although there is a widespread desire to end mandatory busing and improve the quality of all schools, the county may have trouble coming up with its share of the money for such a program. But, county and state officials say, financing the neighborhood schools plan is a separate matter that should not stop the board from going to court.

"I think we all agree that busing no longer serves the purpose it originally set out to serve," state Sen. Leo E. Green (D-Prince George's) told board members at the Thursday meeting. "But the perception is we're not terminating busing, we're holding the busing issue hostage to merely drive more state educational aid into the educational system."

Board members have balked at those claims. But they unanimously approved a resolution Thursday that makes clear the board will go to court only if the county and state agree to finance the plan -- $172 million to rebuild and renovate neighborhood schools closed when whites fled the system in the 1970s and an additional $174 million to upgrade instruction overall.

Without the threat posed by the court, board members say, there would be nothing to ensure that the full neighborhood schools plan would be financed or that the school system would continue to receive about $13 million to maintain its magnet programs, created as an alternative to more busing in 1985 as the schools became increasingly black. Those programs, which operate in 29 percent of the school system's 180 schools, offer popular themes, such as Talented and Gifted, Montessori and French Immersion, to draw students voluntarily to schools outside their neighborhoods.

Factors outside the county are at play, too. More conservative winds have breezed across the national political landscape and indeed resulted in U.S. Supreme Court orders that legal analysts say make it easier for school districts to get released from federal court supervision. School districts in Norfolk, Wilmington, Del., and Kansas City, Mo., have been released from desegregation orders in recent months.

In fact, the Prince George's school board may have an easier time getting released from court supervision than trying to maintain it, legal specialists say. The analysts say three recent decisions by the Supreme Court -- the Oklahoma City school desegregation case in 1990, the DeKalb County, Ga., case in 1992 and the Kansas City case in June -- acknowledge that the ability of school districts to promote desegregation is limited.

"The combination of decisions sends a very strong sign that the Supreme Court wants to get this era of desegregation over with," said Christopher Hansen, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who handles desegregation cases. "What's disturbing to me is I think it's driven more by ideology than fact."

Prince George's school officials say they are unsure whether the national trend will have any impact when -- and if -- their case is debated in court. But they say their position in court would be enhanced if the NAACP would support the neighborhood schools plan.

The organization has taken no position on the current debate, said Hardi Jones, president of the local chapter. But the plan is drawing criticism from at least one who could prove to be a formidable opponent: Sylvester Vaughns, the father who initiated the desegregation lawsuit.

Vaughns, who has grandchildren in the school system, fears neighborhood schools could lead to harmful resegregation.

"I consider myself an integrationist," said Vaughns, a county administrator who lives in Palmer Park. "I believe young students need to become familiar with the culture and mores of other people at an age when they can appreciate it."

Gary Orfield, a Harvard University researcher who has studied desegregation, said one of the main goals of desegregation is to prepare children to function harmoniously in a multicultural society.

"I think abandoning {mandatory} busing altogether would result in the resegregation of schools and the resegregation of housing," said Orfield, who included a chapter on Prince George's in an upcoming book he co-wrote on the dismantling of desegregation.

But the integration argument is losing ground among the very people who supported it most two decades ago. Many disillusioned African American parents say busing never brought the boost in academic performance that many of them expected. And even worse, they say, the children who need it most are being kept out of magnet programs that could enhance their education.

Returning children to new and expanded neighborhood schools, they say, would allow schools to focus on what is really important: academic performance. And many of them have come to resent the notion that their children must be with white children to learn.

"Apartness has never been unconstitutional," said school board member Alvin Thornton (District 7), who is African American and the chairman of the committee set up by the board to draft the neighborhood schools plan. "It is the state-enforced separation of people to disadvantage them that is unconstitutional."

© 1996 The Washington Post Co.

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