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By Bob Peterson
Criticism of school busing is nothing new. Nor is support for neighborhood
schools. So it wasn't surprising when the Milwaukee Board of School
Directors ordered a return to neighborhood schools last fall and Wisconsin
Gov. Tommy Thompson ordered a 10% reduction in Milwaukee busing in his
January State of the State speech.
What would be surprising is if such policy changes were implemented
equitably without a negative impact on the African-American students
who make up 61% of Milwaukee's public school students. Given the extensive
residential segregation in Milwaukee and the city's historical approach
to busing and neighborhood schools -- which placed an unfair burden
on the Black community -- there is ample reason for concern.
As the School Board debates implementation of its new policies, it faces
three key challenges:
- How to ensure that a return to neighborhood schools does not deprive
African-American students of school facilities or academic programming
on par with what is available at citywide specialty schools and schools
with high percentages of white students.
- How to mesh its goal of neighborhood schools and reduced busing
with board policies, in particular parental choice, that depend on
busing. (Only 20% of all MPS families pick their neighborhood school
as their first choice.)
- How to find the political courage to demand that the governor, mayor,
and other opponents of busing support a school building program to
guarantee that there are enough schools in the neighborhoods where
children live. An estimated 18,000 students, mostly African Americans,
cannot attend a neighborhood school because there are not enough schools
where they live.
Hovering over these discussions is the often-unasked question of how
much our community values children learning in a racially integrated
setting. Many educators believe that integrated classrooms better prepare
students for life in a multiracial society. Is a return to neighborhood
schools based on sound educational principles or is it a capitulation
to long-standing resistance by many in the white community to integrated
schools in which whites might be a minority?
Educational Apartheid
Given the way Milwaukee chose to implement desegregation, over the
years the cost of busing has skyrocketed. The total for 1997 was over
$53 million, 7.6% of MPS's budget. Nearly all of this money comes from
the state.
No MPS students, nor many of their parents and teachers, were even
alive when the first busing controversy rolled into town some 40 years
ago. The controversy -- rooted in Milwaukee's segregated housing patterns
-- began when the school district used busing to alleviate overcrowding
in schools but confined Black students to certain schools.
Overcrowding started in the 1950s and 1960s as the district faced population
pressures both in the central city and the city's periphery. A large
migration of African-American families into the central city, virtually
the only place they were permitted to live in the Milwaukee area, engendered
the flight of white families to the city's periphery and suburbs. Further,
expressway construction and urban renewal demolished thousands of housing
units in the central city. Single-family homes were converted to multiple-family
dwellings and the density of children in the area became five times
that of other areas in the city, according to William F. Thompson in
his book History of Wisconsin, Vol. VI.
To relieve overcrowding during school construction and renovation,
the district bused entire classes "intact" to other schools.
From 1958-1972, over 36,000 students were bused under this policy. In
nine instances, white students were bused to Black schools. But in over
280 instances, Black children were bused to white schools and kept "intact,"
i.e., in racially segregated classrooms in the white schools.
The Black students remained officially enrolled in the school in their
neighborhood. In some instances, they and their teachers were bused
back to their home school for lunch and recess and then shipped back
to the white school for afternoon classes. Time spent on the bus each
week often equalled one day's instruction. Although district guidelines
limited such "intact" busing to a semester or less, students
from some schools were bused intact for up to five years.
The school board used other techniques — which were eventually
found to be an unconstitutional violation of the equal protection guarantees
of the Fourteenth Amendment -- to maintain racial segregation. These
included student transfer policies which allowed whites to transfer
out of integrated schools, the building of new schools in white neighborhoods
but not Black ones, and changes in school boundaries.
For example, when large numbers of Black people moved into a previously
white neighborhood, the school district changed the neighborhood school
boundaries so that the new residential area for Blacks remained with
the adjacent, predominantly Black school.
The racist views of the school board were perhaps best summed up by
member Lorraine Radtke, who complained that inner-city children "can't
understand our plumbing. You have urination in water bubblers."
These apartheid-like policies ensured the "containment" of
African-American students in inner-city schools. They also dove-tailed
with residential segregation and discrimination in employment. Until
the 1950s, racially restrictive covenants by government bodies, real
estate brokers, and financial institutions prohibited the sale of homes
to non-whites in many Milwaukee neighborhoods and suburbs. In 1948,
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer that federal and
state courts could no longer endorse such covenants, but it was not
until three years later that the Wisconsin legislature repealed the
state statute which permitted such covenants.
Between 1962 and 1967, the Milwaukee Common Council consistently defeated
open housing legislation by votes of 18 to 1. The only dissenter was
Vel Phillips, the council's lone Black member. The Common Council passed
a fair housing ordinance in 1968 -- but only after thousands of people
marched for 200 consecutive days, led by the late James Groppi and the
NAACP Youth Council.
Since the 1960s, practices by financial institutions, discrimination
on the part of real estate agents, and zoning ordinances of local governments
have perpetuated residential segregation. The term "hyper-segregation"
is often applied to the Milwaukee metropolitan area.
For instance, a study by USA Today based on the 1990 Census ranked
Milwaukee as the seventh most segregated of more than 200 metropolitan
areas. Further, a 1995 study by US News and World Report ranked Milwaukee
among the 20 worst cities in the country for disparities between banking
facilities in white versus mostly minority areas. In terms of jobs,
in 1990 Milwaukee had the highest gap between Black and white unemployment
rates of any metropolitan area.
School Desegregation
Beginning in the early 1960s, and coinciding with the national civil
rights movement, members of the Black community demanded that the school
board end school segregation. The school board refused. Its defense
was the "preservation of the neighborhood school," according
to Thompson's History of Wisconsin. The NAACP then unsuccessfully petitioned
the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to end state funding
of Milwaukee schools unless they were desegregated. In March of 1964
the NAACP, CORE, and others formed MUSIC -- the Milwaukee United School
Integration Committee. Its purpose was to implement "mass action,"
including boycotts, to force the issue.
Half of the students at central city schools participated in the first
boycott on May 18, 1964, the 10th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education,
and attended Freedom Schools set up by MUSIC. For two years, sit-ins,
picketing, prayer vigils, marches, and more boycotts raised public awareness
about segregation and intact busing but failed to move the school board.
Finally, in December of 1965, attorney Lloyd Barbee filed a formal desegregation
suit in federal court on behalf of 41 Black and white children.
Eleven years later, in 1976, Federal Judge John Reynolds found that
the school board's policy of "containment" and segregation
had "intentionally brought about and maintained a dual school system."
At the time of Reynolds's ruling, 34 % of the Milwaukee's public school
student were Black, 60% white, and 6% Hispanic and "other."
Seventy-three MPS schools were more than 90% white, while 31 schools
were more than 90% Black. The school board spent over a million dollars
appealing the desegregation decision, making it one of the most expensive
school desegregation cases in U.S. history.
One-Way Busing
Milwaukee protests against desegregation never reached the levels of
violence of Boston, where buses carrying Black students were met with
a hail of rocks and racist insults. But the underlying issues were the
same. A few fringe groups in Milwaukee tried unsuccessfully to organize
against "forced busing," which was a code word for keeping
Blacks out of all-white schools and neighborhoods. But whites primarily
resisted by leaving MPS for either private schools or suburban public
schools. Even though there was no mandatory busing of white students,
roughly 14,500 white students "one-fifth the total " left
MPS between 1975, one year before the court order, and 1977. By 1980,
the number of white students dropped another 14,700, according to MPS
enrollment figures. At same time, no overview would be complete without
acknowledging that a significant number of whites were involved in the
protests against segregation and in efforts to make integration work.
As in other cities, the Milwaukee movement was an example of multiracial
commitment to equal opportunity for all children.
In late 1975 and early 1976, the school administration organized parents
and staff at every school to help develop a desegregation plan. This
process culminated in the election of a racially diverse "Committee
of 100," with parent, community and staff representatives. Among
other things, the Committee proposed that specific northside schools
be "paired and clustered" with specific southside schools,
in order to ensure equitable two-way busing of both Black and white
students. Then-Superintendent Lee McMurrin, Deputy Superintendent David
Bennett, and the school board disagreed. Instead, the school board adopted
a "voluntary" integration plan under which families could
choose to send their children to any school as long as it promoted integration.
What was voluntary for the white community, however, became involuntary
for the Black. The older, inner-city schools were overcrowded to begin
with. Further, due to past construction policies that favored schools
in white neighborhoods, several inner-city schools were in such dilapidated
condition that they were closed. Others were refurbished and opened
as citywide specialty schools in an attempt to lure white families to
voluntarily bus their children into the inner city. One study found
that in the first four years of the desegregation order, school closings
displaced over 4,600 Blacks.
The resultant lack of "seats" in Black neighborhood schools
forced many Blacks to "choose" to go elsewhere.
Larry Harwell, who at that time led the community group Organization
of Organizations, felt the policy of closing inner city schools and
opening specialty schools in their place was conscious. "It was
part of a deliberate policy to force Blacks out of a section of the
city immediately north of downtown in preparation of rebuilding the
downtown area for white people," he recently told Rethinking Schools.
"Virtually every Black school in that area was either closed or
made into a citywide specialty school and closed to neighborhood residents."
People also criticized the "shotgun" approach to busing which
resulted in children from some inner-city neighborhood attendance areas
going to as many as a 100 different schools. The practice continues
to this day (see chart, p. 22).
Initially, busing wasn't viewed as a hardship by many African Americans.
A major goal of the civil rights movement had been ensuring access to
all schools, and in Milwaukee this finally seemed a reality. Moreover,
many Black parents saw their neighborhood schools as inferior, compared
to the newer, better-equipped, more spacious schools in the white neighborhoods
on the city's periphery.
By June 1977, the end of the first year of desegregation, things weren't
going so well. Growing numbers in the African-American community were
disturbed that for every seven Black students bused for integration,
only one white student was bused. Further, the district had done virtually
nothing to prepare staff or students in the previously all-white schools
for desegregation. The reception that Black students and staff received
was at times discriminatory and racist. On the legal front, the federal
Court of Appeals had vacated the original desegregation order and remanded
it back to Reynolds's court.
In the fall of 1977, Harwell's Organization of Organizations led a
"Two Way or No Way" campaign and organized a school boycott.
Other organizations, including the Coalition for Peaceful Schools, and
People United for Integration and Quality Education, also demanded a
more equitable desegregation plan.
These demands fell on deaf ears. Superintendent McMurrin and the school
board steadfastly refused to pair Black and white schools. The board's
conservative members were emboldened by the Appeals Court decision and
hoped that the entire desegregation process could be stopped. The board's
liberal members were worried about subsequent appeals and were unwilling
to jeopardize the progress that had been made.
No policy maker had the political will to force white children to attend
schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Many African Americans
continued, however, to volunteer to go to previously all-white schools.
Others, without space at their neighborhood schools, were essentially
forced to "volunteer." And throughout this period Latino educators
and parents were organizing and pursuing legal strategies to ensure
that the rights and educational needs of Hispanic students were guaranteed
in the desegregation process, which defined students only as Black or
non-Black.
Finally, as litigation continued and a concern arose that the increasingly
conservative U.S. Supreme Court might overturn Reynolds's decision,
the lawyers for the plaintiffs called for an out-of-court settlement.
The school board voted 9-6 to participate. The three Black board members
opposed the settlement because it left some schools 100% Black; the
three arch-conservative members opposed it because they refused to admit
to any deliberate segregation.
Despite objections from large sections of the Black community, including
the NAACP, Judge Reynolds approved a five-year out-of-court settlement
plan in May of 1979. According to one of the original attorneys for
the plaintiffs, Irvin Charne, even though the specific court ordered
remedy was for only five years, the settlement includes a permanent
injunction against intentional segregation by the school board.
Since 1984, the district has voluntarily operated under the settlement's
desegregation guidelines. The portion of the settlement dealing with
desegregating the MPS teaching staff was incorporated into the union
contract and remains a matter of collective bargaining. The current
contract specifies that the percentage of Black teachers in each school
should be 5% to 10% above or below the citywide percentage of MPS Black
teachers (about 18%), except in the two African-American immersion schools
where the percentage of Black teachers can be as high as 35%.
Countervailing Tendencies
Support for busing has declined for reasons beyond problems with one-way
busing and white resistance to integration. Within the Black community,
there has always been debate about whether integration will lead to
quality education for African-Americans. Moreover, even in many desegregated
schools there is a continued gap in academic achievement between white
and Black students. The demographics of MPS also have changed substantially,
making desegregation increasingly difficult (the percentage of white
students plummeted from 60% in 1975 to 20% in 1997). Finally, many Black
parents have often felt excluded from full participation in their children's
schools, and this exclusion is exacerbated by the long distances between
home and school.
An early indication of waning African-American support for integration
was the success in 1980 of the Coalition to Save North Division. Led
by then-community activist Howard Fuller, the coalition mobilized to
demand that the newly constructed North Division remain a neighborhood
high school rather than a citywide specialty school, even if it meant
keeping the school all Black.
In addition, proponents of the African-American immersion schools have
received widespread support in the Black community. This is yet another
indication of the widespread conviction among African-Americans that
their children are not necessarily being well served in integrated schools
and that quality education can be offered in an all-Black setting.
At the same time, it would be one-sided not to recognize that as further
possibilities for integration became available, thousands seized the
opportunity. As a result of a court suit initiated in 1984 by MPS and
the NAACP against 24 Milwaukee suburbs, the Chapter 220 desegregation
program was greatly expanded and thousands of students of color transferred
to suburban schools. In 1994, when the program was threatened with extinction,
significant sections of the Black community came to its defense. This
school year, 5,100 MPS students of color attend suburban schools under
Chapter 220; there was no room for an additional 3,800 who also wanted
to participate.
Less Busing or More Choice?
Two other policy priorities -- parental choice and low property taxes
-- have contributed to the extensive busing in Milwaukee. Both are favored
by key policy makers, including Gov. Thompson and Mayor John Norquist.
Giving parents their first choice in schools obviously entails busing
if their choice isn't their neighborhood school. In fact, only one-fifth
of MPS students list a neighborhood school as their first choice during
the annual school selection process, according to MPS officials.
Around 63% of all MPS students take a bus to school, either yellow school
buses or Milwaukee County buses. According to district figures, 69%
(about 44,000 students) travel to accommodate school choice. Of the
rest, 24% are bused to relieve overcrowding and 7% are Exceptional Education
students who require special services.
The administration has tried to reduce busing over the years. For example,
in 1991 it divided the city's elementary schools into five regions.
It limited parents to choosing among the 20 or so schools in the region,
including the neighborhood school, or the 26 citywide specialty schools.
A current proposal would further limit school choice to either the
neighborhood school (if it is not overcrowded) or a citywide specialty
school. Families who live in neighborhoods with overcrowded schools
-- virtually all in the predominantly Black near northside and northwest
side, or the predominantly Latino near south side -- will have a cluster
of four other schools to choose from. The changes would be phased in
so that no student would be forced to leave their current school.
Such changes will obviously reduce busing. What is not so obvious is
that those Black and Latino students living in the overcrowded neighborhoods
will still not have the fundamental choice that virtually all white
students will have: to attend their neighborhood school. There aren't
enough schools.
As Jeanette Mitchell, former school board president and now a program
officer at the Bader Foundation, said: "I support neighborhood
schools, but I don't see how we can do it unless we build more schools
where the children live."
Bottom Line: More Buildings
The desire to hold down property taxes has made it almost impossible
to build enough schools to meet the educational needs of MPS students.
In 1993, for example, the school board and the administration put before
the voters a $366 million referendum that would have built 12 elementary
and two middle schools in the inner city and renovated dozens more,
in part so that busing could be reduced for African-American families.
Citing concerns about property taxes, the referendum was opposed by
Mayor Norquist, 10 of the 12 white members of the Milwaukee Common Council,
and a few school board members (but supported by County Executive Tom
Ament). The referendum came down to the question of whether white property
owners were willing to pay for improved public education for African-American
and Latino children. The answer was a resounding "no." In
an unprecedented voter turnout for an off-year primary election, the
referendum was defeated 3 to 1. Some all-white districts voted up to
93% "no," while predominantly Black districts voted "yes."
In the last five years, Mayor Norquist has allocated about $54 million,
in city-issued bonds, for school reconstruction and maintenance. This
has paid for a backlog of major repairs such as window and boiler replacement
and for the renovation of six elementary, middle, and high schools.
In addition, the school district has an annual budget of approximately
$7 million which goes into long-range maintenance.
The city and the district allocations are completely inadequate. The
current 40-year, long-term maintenance plan calls for an annual expenditure
of $13-$18 million just to keep the over 200 buildings (18 million square
feet) of MPS functioning -- to say nothing of building additional schools.
A 1992 MPS facilities study calculated that $1.2 billion in capital
improvements was needed to ensure that all children had access to early
childhood education, lower class size, art, music and computer rooms,
and fully accessible buildings.
One of the problems is that under state law, school construction bonds
must be approved by voters, while similar bonds for the city and county
don't. Thus the $117 million County Jail, $2 billion deep tunnel sewer
project, and the $150 million Midwest Express convention center were
built with public funds but without voter approval.
Even when voters turn down building referendum, policy makers can find
alternatives if they want to. Wisconsin voters rejected by 2 to 1 a
special sports lottery to fund a new County Stadium. Down but not out,
Gov. Thompson and the legislature then set up a new taxing authority
to raise $250 million in public funds to subsidize the new stadium.
In his State of the State speech this January Gov. Thompson said that
10% (about $5 million) of the MPS busing monies should be set aside
for building neighborhood elementary schools. As Milwaukee Superintendent
Alan Brown has pointed out, implementing this policy is difficult. It
takes at least two years to build a new school. Busing of children --
and the full funds needed to do so -- would have to continue during
that time.
Contrary to other Policies
Busing is also needed to support sound educational policies. In the
recent years, the school board has sought to lower the number of students
transferring in and out of schools because their families move during
the school year. During each school year, the district receives around
70,000 requests for changes in transportation because students have
moved, according to Mike Turza, head of parent and student services.
Because such "mobility" undercuts academic achievement, MPS
attempts to provide busing the entire academic year to the school the
student started at in September. Even with this policy, however, MPS
can not meet the transportation needs of almost 13,000 students (13.7%
of the MPS population) who move during the school year. It could only
do so if it increased busing even more.
Child care and safety concerns also affect busing decisions. Many parents
prefer to have their children picked up and dropped off at an intersection
close to their house rather than have their children walk unattended
to their neighborhood school. (MPS has policy that children must walk
if they are within two miles of their neighborhood school or one mile
of a citywide specialty school.) "The lack of daycare opportunities
has required many parents to view transportation as a pseudo daycare
service," according to a recent MPS analysis of busing. "Transportation
provides an answer to unsafe neighborhoods."
In response to these concerns, the administration plans to expand before-
and after-school programs to make the neighborhood schools more attractive
to nearby families.
State Rep. Polly Williams (D-Milw.) has proposed moving the citywide
specialty schools from overcrowded Black neighborhoods to lesser crowded
areas in white neighborhoods, allowing for more neighborhood schools
in the central city. The School Administration floated this idea in
December but it was strongly opposed by staff and parents from all schools
involved.
The administration is recommending that the there be a 25% neighborhood
requirement for all citywide schools. Another administrative proposal
is to redraw the elementary school boundaries to reflect demographic
shifts since the last major adjustment 20 years ago. School officials
predict that for elementary students, such a redrawing will reduce the
number of students in overcrowded attendance areas from about 10,000
to 6,000. The full impact will only be clear when the details of the
proposed boundaries are released.
Which Way Forward?
The key question remains: how will the new policies to reduce busing
and return to neighborhood schools affect African-American and Latino
students?
Politicians will undoubtedly continue to attack busing. Nonetheless
busing is here to stay. Given the permanent court injunction against
intentional school segregation, legitimate educational reasons for busing,
Milwaukee's persistent housing segregation, and the shortage of schools
in Black neighborhoods, there is no alternative. As Charne recently
told Rethinking Schools, "Milwaukee needs to realize that we can't
do away with busing, given the city's population distribution. The question
is: How are we going to organize busing?"
The school board faces two particular challenges. First, how will it
craft neighborhood school and busing policies that speak to the issues'
complexities and also provide quality education for all students.
Second, how will it avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. As MPS
returns to neighborhood schools, it must avoid also going back to the
inequities that were integral to past neighborhood school policies.
It was these inequities that spawned the desegregation movement that
led to the current busing policies that are now in such disfavor.
No one has an easy answer. But knowing what we must avoid is an essential
beginning.
Bob Peterson (REPmilw@AOL.com)
teaches fifth grade at La Escuela Fratney in Milwaukee and is an editor
of Rethinking Schools
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