Forward to the Past?

Issues of segregation, insufficient funding, and hurried decision-makingenvelop Milwaukee's proposal to return to neighborhood schools.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Milwaukee's African-Americancommunity won the legal right to send their children to publicschools from which they had historically been excluded. This year,a major policy turn-around - known as the Neighborhood SchoolsInitiative (NSI) - threatens to increase racial isolation in thosesame schools, with unclear effects on the educational qualityand choices offered students of color.

The setting for the return to neighborhood schools was establishedduring the desegregation plan of 25 years ago. Any analysis ofthe current Neighborhood Schools Initiative is incomplete withoutan understanding of that history.

"People became obsessed with busing with little understandingof what busing is really about," said Tony Baez, Vice-Presidentof Academic Affairs at the Milwaukee Area Technical College anda long-time community activist. "The fact is they've gotten historyall confused. When Milwaukee was ordered to desegregate in 1976,Milwaukee was a city in apartheid. They had to desegregate. Anybodywho denies that is a fool."

In the late 1970s, when federal courts ordered Milwaukee's publicschools to desegregate, city and school-board officials - virtuallyall of whom were white - refused to endorse community proposalsfor a desegregation plan that treated whites and Blacks equally.In particular, many community people had argued for grouping schoolsin clusters to minimize the distance children would need to travelto attend a desegregated school and to prevent widespread busingof students in all different directions and all parts of town.Under the plan, largely white schools would have been paired withlargely Black schools, and there would have been relatively equalbusing.

Instead, due largely to allay fears of white riots such as thosein Boston during its desegregation, officials adopted a plan underwhich the burden of busing fell most heavily on African-Americanchildren. The school board adopted a so-called "voluntary busing"plan, which meant voluntary busing for white children and mandatorybusing for Blacks living in overcrowded neighborhoods. (Busingwas an element in all desegregation plans because of the city'ssevere segregation; the city remains one of the most segregatedin the country.)

Twenty-five years ago, one of the central arguments of desegregationproponents was that only through desegregation would people ofcolor have access to the same resources as whites. Despite thecalls in NSI for a return to "neighborhood-rich" schools, thereis little indication of how such schools or neighborhoods willactually become "rich" in terms of resources - especially if onecompares MPS neighborhood schools to the neighborhood schoolsin the predominately white and affluent suburbs.

WHITE FLIGHT

While avoiding white riots, Milwaukee's public schools experiencedwhite flight. Tens of thousands of whites left Milwaukee PublicSchools (MPS), either to the overwhelmingly white suburbs or toprivate, mostly Catholic city schools. As a result, from 1978to 1999 the white student population in MPS shrank from 60% ofthe student body to 19%.

The decreasing number of whites in MPS fueled arguments that desegregationwasn't really possible and that the amount of money spent on busing- nearly $60 million a year - was not money well spent in an erawhen school budgets are being squeezed. Many in the Black communityalso grew tired of bearing the burden of busing.

At the same time, Mayor John Norquist argued that desegregationwas a failed policy and, borrowing a phrase from the arch-segregationistsof the 1960s, called it "social engineering." (Norquist has alsoembarked on an ambitious plan of revitalizing downtown by encouragingresidential development in the area. One catch: The middle-andupper-middle income white residents who are key to the plan werenot perceived as willing to attend MPS schools.)

Against this backdrop, city and school board powerbrokers convincedthe Wisconsin Legislature last year to pass the Neighborhood SchoolInitiative (NSI). The plan authorizes MPS to borrow up to $170million in state funds to reduce busing and create more room forstudents in overcrowded neighborhoods. The money saved from reducedbusing is to be used to pay off the debt.

The school board, which was required to present a plan to thelegislature by September 2000, decided in August to request only$98.4 million. The money can be used solely for capital expendituresand must be paid back with interest. It is assumed that the legislaturewill act on the school board's plan so that implementation canbegin with the 2001-02 school year.

DETAILS OF THE PLAN

The neighborhood schools plan calls for creating 11,000 new neighborhood"seats" by changing school attendance boundaries, constructingsix new schools, building 19 additions onto current schools, renovating15 schools, and converting 32 elementary schools to K-8 schools.By creating more "seats" in overcrowded neighborhoods, more childrenwill have the option of attending their neighborhood schools ratherthan being bused to school.

Using the rhetoric of "neighborhood schools," the proponents ofthe NSI have played upon the legitimate, long-standing frustrationsin the African-American community with unequal busing.

In this era of "choice," advocates of the neighborhood schoolsplan also use the rhetoric of increased choice. But choices willnot increase equally. In a move seen as further privileging affluentfamilies, NSI will allow a child to attend a school in any partof the city - as long as there is room and as long as the familycan provide transportation. In essence, those families that canprovide their own transportation to a school will have far greaterchoices. Some estimates are that as many as 40% of the householdsin the central city do not own cars.

Added to this is the problem of student mobility - mainly dueto the lack of affordable housing for poor people. While the neighborhoodschool plan allows students who move to complete the school yearin the school they attend, no provisions are made for subsequentyears. High mobility not only has a negative impact on studentswho must change schools from year to year, but also makes it difficultfor schools with high student turnover.

Another concern is that the NSI plan is establishing a numberof specialty schools - popular schools around certain themes ormissions, such as a Montesorri schools - in predominantly whiteneighborhoods. As a result, certain white neighborhoods will likelyhave more "choices."

The neighborhood school plan seems to fit (almost too conveniently)with the long-standing desires of some city leaders to again makethe city "safe" for white people by gentrifying certain neighborhoodsand by reestablishing neighborhood schools in virtually all-whiteneighborhoods. Furthermore, the NSI plan coincides with a growingmove to establish entrance requirements at select middle and highschools. While few openly talk about the combined result of neighborhoodelementary schools and these entrance requirements, the effectis clear: Middle-class and white families will rest easy, knowingthat their children will be able to attend increasingly segregatedneighborhood elementary schools and middle and high schools whereentrance requirements will keep out what one school board memberhas referred to as "the floaters."

CONTROVERSY OVER THE PLAN

Both the plan and the process used to develop it spurred considerablecontroversy - although city media seemed to do their best to ignoreit.

A major church-based community organization, Milwaukee Inner-CityCongregations Allied for Hope (MICAH), charges that the plan "seemsto create and intensify racial and economic segregation." A coalitionincluding MICAH, the Milwaukee Council of PTAs, Wisconsin CitizenAction, Parents United for Public Schools, the Milwaukee CitywideBilingual Bicultural Advisory Committee, and the Institute forWisconsin's Future called the plan "unfair, underfunded, unsafe,and too fast."

Criticisms of the plan fall into four main areas: the processby which it was adopted, the impact on racial isolation, the effectson special needs students, and the financial burden it will placeon the district.

MPS spent considerable time and money in developing the plan,including over $562,000 spent on consultants. District officialsfrom the superintendent on down spent thousands of hours on theplan, holding several hundred public hearings and community meetings,and conducting telephone and face-to-face surveys. The initialoutreach was by far the most extensive the district has ever conducted.

At the same time, for many months details of the plan were murky- and everyone knew the devil would be in the details. The fullproposal was finally released during the middle of summer amidcalls that it had to be adopted too quickly.

At several public hearings late in August and at a state legislativehearing on Sept. 8, speakers repeatedly criticized the MilwaukeeSchool Board for acting on the final NSI plan only 10 days afterit was released to the public.

Critics don't disagree that the initial outreach had a democraticcharacter. But the essence of democracy is debating actual policyproposals. And that debate was sorely lacking.

The lack of debate on the final plan led members of the Blackand Hispanic Legislative Caucus to call for a delay in state approvalof the plan. The caucus members noted in a letter to the StateLegislature's Joint Finance Committee that an "atmosphere of hasteundermines the credibility of the process, which subsequentlyrisks the full understanding and confidence of the public."

The insufficient time and debate were particularly annoying tothe staff and parents of some schools that were slated to be moved.(While the NSI calls for no actual school closings, some programsare being moved so whole school populations will have to be relocated.)

Perhaps the most fundamental criticism of the plan is its callfor what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel dubbed "the city's U-turn toward neighborhood schools."

A U-turn is exactly what many fear.

Before the federal courts ordered the desegregation of the MilwaukeePublic Schools in 1976, MPS did everything in its power to raciallyisolate children of color, including gerrymandering boundariesand providing "intact" busing of Black children so that they remainedsegregated together in apartheid-type environments.

MICAH charged that "though we are not in a position to judge motives,it seems clear that the [current NSI] plan is designed to created'white' schools, 'Black' schools and 'Hispanic" schools.'" Theyalso note that "five citywide specialty schools that are foundin neighborhoods that are predominantly made up of people of colorwill be converted to neighborhoods schools, not 'neighborhoodspecialty schools.' At the same time, three of the four new neighborhoodschools that are to be created are located in predominantly Caucasianneighborhoods" and that the "two new Montessori schools are alsolocated in white neighborhoods."

A computer search by Rethinking Schools of the entire 325-page document showed that the words "racism,""desegregation," and "discrimination" do not appear even once.The words "segregation" and "multiracial" each appear once and"integration" appears four times. Interestingly, these and similarwords like "diversity" can be found in the section of the planthat outlines "general concerns" that were "consistently" repeated"at community informational meetings."

One of the consistent arguments of NSI proponents is that thereare no longer enough white students in MPS to make desegregationmeaningful. This argument is faulty for two reasons. First, whilethe white population has declined, there are still 20,000 whitestudents in the district - a sizable number. Furthermore, theargument assumes that racial integration can only occur if whitesare present and ignores the fact that Latinos and Asian-Americansare a fast-growing population within MPS. The NSI plan, ratherthan valuing multiracial diversity, instead creates not only predominantlywhite schools but predominantly African-American and predominantlyLatino schools.

Such community concerns and lack of racial analysis did not deterBoard President Thompson from publicly calling the neighborhoodschools plan "the last best chance to achieve true integration"in the city.

SPECIAL EDUCATION

How will the NSI affect the quality of education for childrenwith special needs? At a time when MPS is coming under increasingpressure to improve the quality of special education services,the NSI proposal is vague. The proposal says NSI "intends to provideappropriate special education and related services for studentswith disabilities at more neighborhood schools in the areas ofthe city where the student reside."

While such an idea has a common sense appeal, some of the NSI'sown statistical analyses portend a gloomy picture. According tothe NSI proposal, "60 percent of the 16,000 students with disabilitieslive in the seven neighborhood clusters that formed the basisof the neighborhood schools project group's analysis, but only16 percent of these students attend school at the attendance areaschools in those clusters." Given that those seven clusters areconcentrated in economically depressed neighborhoods, a key concernis that encouraging disabled students to attend their neighborhoodschools will lead to a high concentration of disabled childrenin schools in neighborhoods that are already in crisis.

Current MPS practice is to try to have all schools with a specialeducation student population of 10 percent to 15 percent of theoverall student body - roughly in line with the overall percentageof special education students in the district.

Questions have also been raised about the fiscal impact of theneighborhood schools plan.

One of the ways the MPS administration sold the NSI plan to thepublic is that it promised the plan would do something for everyone- including school safety, before and after school programs, lowerclass sizes, and full-day programs for K4 and K5. The administrationhas also said NSI will replicate successful specialty programs,which generally cost more. The catch is, the NSI plan is designedonly to pay for capital expenditures. Where will the money comefrom for additional programs?

The administration's linking of smaller classes and NSI is particularlydisingenuous. The money to hire staff and reduce class sizes inthe K-3 grades in Milwaukee has specifically come from a separatelyfunded state program and has nothing to do with NSI.

One fear is that the financial shortfalls in the NSI plan willcome out of further budget cuts within MPS. Barbara Sprewer-Ford,an MPS parent who spoke at one of the August hearings, describedas "double talk" the administration's claim that there was enoughmoney to fulfill all the claims linked to NSI. She reminded theschool board that just a few months earlier, hundreds of parentshad mobilized against the $32 million deficit and that parentswould do it again if necessary. The crowd of 150 people gave hera standing ovation.

Baez was even more to the point. He told Rethinking Schools that while he generally supports the concepts behind the plan,he sees no reason to think that the quality of education in thenew and increasingly segregated schools will be any better thanit has been in previously racially isolated schools. "We are lettingsuburban Milwaukee totally off the hook," he said. "If we wereto put as much effort into changing the state funding formulaas the district staff and certain members of the community putinto the NSI, we would succeed in securing the necessary resourcesfor the children of Milwaukee."

Bob Peterson teaches fifth grade at La Escuela Fratney, and LarryMiller teaches social studies at Metro High School. They are botheditors of Rethinking Schools.

For an analysis of the segregation in MPS that engendered the court suit, see Bob Peterson's article, "Neighborhood Schools, Busing, and the Struggle for Equality" in Rethinking Schools, Vol. 12, #3.

Fall 2000