A New Idea on Busing

University of Chicago Sociologist James S. Coleman has become celebrated over the past decade for studies that first supported and then opposed the use of busing to integrate schools. Last week he emerged with a proposal somewhere in between.

In 1966 Coleman issued a pioneering report demonstrating that children from the slums do better work when they attend middle-class schools. But his follow-up report earlier this year argued that compulsory busing has driven so many white urban families to the suburbs or to private schools that it is making city public schools more segregated than ever. In a Manhattan speech last week marking the 75th anniversary of the College Entrance Examination Board, Coleman offered his solution: let any student transfer to any school he chooses within an urban-suburban metropolitan area--provided only that the new school has fewer students of his own race than his old school.

Marvelous Case. Under Coleman's plan, a transferring student's old school system would contribute to the new one for his education. The state would pay for needed transportation. Coleman admits that his proposal would leave inner-city schools largely all-black, but it would help to integrate the suburbs. Says he: "Boston is a marvelous case for this. People in the suburbs are telling people in the central city to integrate while they sit out there protected by school-district lines."

An open-enrollment scheme would need state or federal legislation requiring school districts to accept pupils from the outside. But Coleman thinks the idea would be politically attractive. "Something that would work would be highly supported," he says. "Almost nobody likes busing, but nobody wants to go back to a situation in which there are no means for providing racial integration either."

The next day Coleman was the first witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the foes of busing are pressing for a constitutional amendment to forbid it. Coleman opposes an amendment as unrealistic, and indeed its chances are slim. Said he: "If a democratic Government can't resolve issues of this nature without resorting to the Constitution, then we are in a bad way."

Kentucky Governor Julian Carroll then came before the committee to endorse the amendment. Carroll, who is running for reelection, said that the court-ordered busing between Louisville and its suburbs has "failed miserably, [is] damaging educational quality, contributing to white flight, disrupting community and family life."

In Louisville itself there is still diehard opposition to busing, including demonstrations by white parents and a rally by the Ku Klux Klan. A caravan of demonstrators also was bused to Washington last week to stage a march on Capitol Hill. The greatest problem, however, is simply the logistics of moving about 20,000 black and white pupils over considerable distances each day. Some pupils are picked up as early as 6 a.m. Many old buses are breaking down; drivers are forced to make double runs. Last week some of Louisville's hastily recruited 295 bus drivers were providing problems of their own. One went berserk, driving a bus into Indiana before returning and hitting a parked car in downtown Louisville. Another was arrested on charges of public intoxication after he got into a shouting match with students on his bus.

In Massachusetts, meanwhile, 10,000 demonstrators marched down the streets of South Boston last week to celebrate "National Boycott Day." Most of the 162 Boston schools involved in the desegregation program are calm, but the two racial trouble spots--South Boston High and Charlestown High--are still in turmoil. Students in both schools have fights almost daily, and many are suspended, readmitted, then resuspended. In early October, 92 black students boycotted classes at Southie to protest "widespread discrimination." They issued a list of demands calling for more black police, a black administrator, a black nurse's aide and "sensitivity training" for Southie's white teachers. The school subsequently got a black assistant football coach, several black hallway monitors and a black nurse's aide.

White Demands. Not to be outdone, Southie's white students then presented Headmaster William Reid with their list of demands--asking him to fly the American flag in each classroom, to start a policy of pledging allegiance to the flag in classrooms every morning, and to end review work, which they attribute to the presence of blacks.

As the day-to-day tensions continue, both black and white students have been meeting with parents and community leaders to fight for control of Southie. Says James Kelly, president of the South Boston Home and School Association, who has been working with white students: "If the black community can't take over South Boston High School, they'd rather see it close down." Replies Percy Wilson, head of the Roxbury Multi-Service Center, who has been working with black students: "If that school can't work in the best interests of black children as well as the others, then it should be closed down." Many students, however, take a pragmatic view. Says Belinda Shivers, a black senior at Southie: "We're there to get an education and get out as soon as possible."

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