6:15 A.M. The Early Bus

By Ron Stodghill

Most of his classmates are still asleep as 15-year-old Jonathan Robinson stands on a dark street corner on the north side of St. Louis, Mo., waiting for Miss Judy's yellow school bus. Even before the bus arrives, he sees his mother in her Ford station wagon, pulling over on her way to work. She rolls down the window and waves a $5 bill--lunch money. Jonathan leans in and kisses her goodbye. Minutes later he boards the bus for the half-hour trek to Webster Groves.

Jonathan is what is known as a VTS kid, or voluntary transfer student. In the early 1970s, under a court-ordered desegregation plan, Webster opened its doors to youngsters from the inner city. Today black students account for about a quarter of the 1,300-plus student body, with 161 of them, or 12%, bused in from the city.

Jonathan's mom Robin Norice, 38, an IRS tax examiner, has had her son in the program since the fourth grade because, she says, "I want him to have the same educational experience as whites"--one of higher quality than he would get in the inner city. Jonathan's neighborhood friends often taunt him for being too good to simply walk the six blocks to Roosevelt High. But "all they do there is fight every day," he says. "You've got to worry about the gangs and what color you're wearing." He appreciates Webster's relative safety and its pride in racial diversity. Indeed, long before the 1970s desegregation, Webster Groves boasted an integrated community. Most blacks reside in Rock Hill, a part of town settled by freed slaves, whose businesses, churches and schools spawned a thriving black middle class.

Look in on the high school, and you'll see a real-life Benetton ad in which whites and blacks joke and gossip easily between classes, study together in the library and date one another. Jonathan counts among his best friends three white guys in his choir class. "Blacks and whites mix in real well together here," he says. Sally Roth, a white senior, agrees. "Race doesn't really matter here," she says. "I've dated black guys, and so have just about all my friends."

Listen closely, though, and you can hear undercurrents of tension: black kids complaining about being misunderstood by white teachers and singled out as troublemakers; black parents worrying that their children are held to lower academic standards; white teachers whispering about undisciplined, unmotivated black students.

On this morning, as Jonathan boards the bus, his hands dangle, free of books or homework. He says he completed his assignments at school the day before, a story that frustrates his mother, given his 2.0 grade-point average. "I always tell him, 'You've already got two strikes against you: you're black, and you're male. The only thing that's going to get you where you want to go in life is an education.'"

It's not as if Jonathan is a slacker; at home he cleans, cooks and takes care of his three younger siblings when his mom and stepdad are working. During Jonathan's freshman and sophomore years, Norice says, "he was playing football and basketball, was in show choir and concert choir, rehearsing for a play and working part time stripping furniture. He was overwhelmed. The commute was wearing him down. But he's cut his schedule down, and is really doing better."

Jonathan is known as a good cook and wants one day to be a chef. But he doesn't see much connection between that dream and his schoolwork. And he often seems distracted by fights with his dad, venting to his friend Kristina Betts during the bus ride that "I'm too old for him to try to chastise me now."

Counselor Thomasina Hassler says many black students' grades suffer because of family problems or responsibilities at home that distract from studies. To make her point, she brandishes a ranking of last year's 267 seniors; of the 34 who graduated with a 4.0 or better GPA, none was black. Searching the list for the highest-ranking black student, she runs her finger down the second page to No. 59, Tanya Hoard, who graduated with a 3.67 average. Hassler, who is black, wishes there were more like Hoard and thinks both black and white teachers at Webster must work harder to address the academic needs of African-American students. "The stuff about racial differences is built into American culture and is not particular to one place. It starts well before the kids get to high school. If there is not a high expectation and a channeling of a kid's interests, the kid will fall behind. If you go to our advanced classes you'll find only one or two black kids. Why? Because early on, these kids were not given the confidence or expectations to break through barriers."

Middle-class blacks who live in Webster Groves and have strong role models tend to score higher--but can still feel isolated. By third period, senior Paya Rhodes, 18, is in her advanced-calculus class, sitting beside the only other black student. Rhodes has a 3.6 GPA, and in most of her advanced classes, she's the only black. Paya used to take pride in that status and in her family's record of excellence at Webster Groves. Her oldest brother maintained a 4.0 for four straight years; another went on to Washington University. Her mother and a third brother are also Webster grads, and her younger sister is following her on the honors track.

But last year a seemingly innocent bit of history homework left Paya feeling bitter and alone. The assignment was for students to write anonymous essays about their views on racism and whether they themselves might be racist. Days later, when the teacher read some of the essays aloud, Rhodes couldn't believe what she heard. One paper, she recalls, described black kids as "loud, obnoxious show-offs." Another depicted blacks as inferior. As usual, Paya was the only black student in the class. "I felt real uncomfortable and out of place," she recalls. "These were people I talked to and worked in groups with. I had no idea some of them didn't like black people."

Even Sally Roth, whose best friend is black, admits that amid Webster's relative racial harmony, there are unsettling contradictions, which she experienced first-hand while dating a black guy at school. When she would visit her boyfriend at his home, some of the "popular white kids" at school would "make these rude comments about me going to Little Africa, Hershey Hill or Browntown. They were his friends too. It really pissed me off that they would say that behind his back." When Sally's black friends came to visit, new neighbors blamed them, without evidence, for a recent burglary in the neighborhood, according to Sally's mother Rebecca Roth, who graduated from Webster in 1976.

The VTS kids, at least, would have had an ironclad alibi: the bus that sweeps them nonstop back to St. Louis immediately after school each day. As the final bell rings and Jonathan strolls with his friends into the afternoon sun, he says once again that he completed his homework in class. His hands swing freely at his side.

--By Ron Stodghill