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.