Making New Plans

Ending desegregation orders could mean new busing system,
Part III

David Wegbreit | Assistant Editor

Change may be coming to Tucson Unified School District’s transportation system. Initial plans for what the district will do if a federal judge lifts the district’s nearly 30-year-old desegregation order suggest ending the order may mean an airline-like system of school bus hubs.

According to the Department of Justice, the district is one of 266 school districts in the country seeking to end desegregation orders.

Before he would grant the district “unitary status,” an indication that the school has removed all signs of past racial discrimination, U.S. district Judge David C. Bury requested information on the district’s implementation of desegregation orders. The district has since filed a 500-page report and sought comments from the public on its “post-unitary” plans, including a new busing system.

The formative plan presented to the public in advance of an official submission to the courts focuses on neighborhood schools with open enrollment and a focus on specialty programs to ensure diversity. The district would automatically assign students to a schools in their neighborhood if they are not attending magnet schools or “pipeline” schools, programs designed to allow students to continue studying a theme throughout their k-12 career. While students would be allowed to transfer to any school in the district, the administration would use a lottery for oversubscribed schools and drop race as a consideration.

During a parent forum, district officials presented a new transportation system that might serve these schools in advance of the official presentation to the court. The plan suggested an airport-like system of six bus hubs designed to take students on non-stop runs to magnet and specialty schools across the 200-square-mile district. Smaller hubs could potentially help students in more rural areas access these main hubs.

Transportation director Bill Ball has been involved with transportation at TUSD for over 36 years, including when the original busing system was designed following the court order.

But then, the school system was developing a plan that would unite a system that was once legally divided by race. Now, Ball will develop a transportation system for a what may be a new era for the school.

“It’s a really exciting time to take another look at how transportation can best serve school choice and diversity,” Ball said.

Currently, TUSD buses 13,000 of the district’s 59,000 students to and from 109 schools. In total, TUSD buses travel for nearly 4.6 million miles of annual transportation on 300 buses.

According to Richard Gastellum, the district desegregation administrator, approximately 1,600 students are bused specifically for desegregation. According to a desegregation budget, the district spent $3.7 million of its $63 million state desegregation fund to transport these students last year.

District officials said they believe they can continue to receive these funds, even if the district gained unitary status and stopped providing this specific service.

While the planned system would provide bus service to all magnet, pipeline and neighborhood students, it would not provide busing to those open enrollment students attending schools outside their attendance zone.

Gary Orfield, a professor and co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said a choice plan that does not provide transportation to all students gives preference to the children of parents who can afford a car, time to drive their children to school or money for public transportation.

“Transportation isn’t just a budgetary cost. It’s an opportunity system when it’s attached to choice,” Orfield said.

Almost 30 years ago, Orfield authored “Must We Bus? Segregated Schools and National Policy,” which argued busing was the only feasible means for ensuring integration.

“It may not be illegal, but it’s really immoral. It violates basic values that education professionals should stand for, which is students right to an education shouldn’t depend on their family income.”

In Tucson, the southwest side of the district tends to be poorer and have more crowded schools. During the forum, one parent said this presents her with the choice of either sending her son to a neighborhood school that might not have the programs she wants, or sending her son across town on a long bus ride.

Officials said the new plan could both decrease ride times and improve the distribution of resources. Bond money could pay for two new schools on the southwest side.

Additionally, gaining unitary status could mean redrawing attendance zones to better distribute students and resources.

Under court orders, the district was required to gain court approval for everything from boundary changes and teacher transfers to school openings and closings. In addition, the district had to submit an annual report with data on student demographics, teacher demographics and programs offered.

Proponents of unitary status say the district has met all of the courts’ requirements. Additionally, they say the district has fundamentally changed since the court orders were originally issued. Then, the district was 36 percent minority. Today, it is approaching 70 percent minority.

Tucson may consider the example of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in Raleigh, N.C.
In 1971 the district was involved in the Supreme Court case that established busing as a remedy for racial imbalance in schools. Almost 30 years later, the 137,000-student district divided the 550-square-mile area into four zones for its magnet and regular schools. Students can get transportation only within their zone.

According to Scott McCully, the director of student placement even though the district has changed its transportation system, transportation costs have not decreased. This is largely due to district growth and the district’s decision to “grandfather in” those students who received transportation prior to the switch.

However, McCully said the district has become more racially polarized since gaining unitary status. Though, to what degree, is “a difficult call.”

Representatives from Tucson stressed that all of its plans are preliminary and it is still seeking input from the community. At the time of publication, the district was scheduled to submit a full report on its plans to the court at the end of October.

For his part, Ball was confident in TUSD’s ability to design a student assignment and transportation that will serve students best in a post-unitary environment.

“We’re trying to not rush into anything, but just study and study,” Ball said. “(We want to) do what makes the education in TUSD the absolute best it can be. To prepare students for working in a diverse world and global economy. And sometimes transportation can help with that.”