The Growing School Segregation : Forced Busing Is Partly to Blame--New Options Are in Order

With the last appeal cleared away, a new NAACP lawsuit will probably get under way in 1987 in federal court, plunging Los Angeles into a new controversy over mandatory school busing. Many citizens are amazed that this issue, which they thought had been resolved, is about to be debated in the courts once again. Others, especially parents, are dismayed that once again children face the prospect of being bused long distances away from neighborhood schools.

Is it really possible, after the disastrous forced-busing experiments of 1978-1980, that a federal court could order Los Angeles back to those policies? Unfortunately, the answer is yes, provided that it found the Los Angeles Board of Education guilty of discriminating against minority students after 1969.

But the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People may want more than that. Since the white enrollment in city schools has shrunk to only 18%, due in part to the enormous white flight from past mandatory busing, there is no way that most schools could be integrated using only Los Angeles students.

The NAACP has indicated that it would favor a “metropolitan” plan involving the suburbs surrounding Los Angeles--such as Palos Verdes, Long Beach, Glendale, Beverly Hills, Las Virgenes and so forth. By mandatory busing of suburban students into the city and city students into the suburbs, which some courts in other states have ordered, many more Los Angeles minority schools could be integrated.

Whatever the merits of the NAACP case against the city, the dwindling number of white students renders any city-only remedy meaningless. Therefore, the merits of a metropolitan case should be of great interest to all parties, especially to the suburbs. Are there viable legal grounds for using the suburbs to relieve segregation in the city? If not, is there any reasonable way to relieve the vast and growing school segregation in Los Angeles?

The answer to the first question is probably not. Before the court could include neighboring school districts in a desegregation plan, the NAACP would have to prove that those districts intentionally contributed to segregation in Los Angeles. Since existing district boundaries can be traced back many decades, long before there was a significant minority population in Los Angeles schools, a convincing case is unlikely.

The NAACP will argue that housing segregation should be counted as a constitutional violation by the state as well as school districts, but federal courts generally have not held school districts accountable for housing segregation. Attempts to hold schools accountable for such discrimination have failed in Detroit, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Little Rock, to name a few.

As to the second question, we might look at the unique approach to school desegregation taken in Wisconsin. A state law there allows a city student in Milwaukee to transfer to the suburbs and vice-versa, on a completely voluntary basis. The sending district keeps a per-capita allocation for that student, and the receiving district also receives the per-capita funding. The financial incentive encourages participation by suburban districts with empty classrooms. In Los Angeles such a plan would have the further advantage of alleviating overcrowded classrooms in the city.

It must be emphasized that the key to success for this type of plan is the concept of “choice.” Unlike mandatory busing, the Milwaukee plan has been voluntary, both for suburbs and for students. No suburban district has been forced to participate, and no student has been forced away from a neighborhood school.

Regretfully, however, the city of Milwaukee has now sued the suburbs for discrimination, on the ground that they have not accepted enough minority students! If the federal court finds in favor of the city and imposes some kind of mandatory remedy, voluntary metropolitan plans are doomed. No sensible suburb or state would ever again agree to voluntary interdistrict transfers, either for integration or for overcrowding, for fear that such transfers could be used against them in court to bring about mandatory busing on a metropolitan scale.

The increasing demands for choice in education, coupled with the failure of mandatory policies, underscore the need for innovative programs to alleviate segregation. If such programs are to succeed, however, all parties will have to re-think their strategies and be prepared to accept new ideas.

This is especially true for the federal courts, whose nearly exclusive reliance on forced busing is partly responsible for the growing segregation of our cities. If courts do not allow states and cities to explore new alternatives--free from penalty--no relief from segregation is in sight.