Wichita, Kan., to End Desegregation Busing

By David Wegbreit

No one yet knows what Wichita Public School’s decision to end its 37-year-old desegregation busing program will do to the racial make-up of classrooms. No one can say how the decision will impact the transportation system; though some have said it could add $1 million to the district’s $18 million transportation budget.

What is certain is Wichita important place in a wave of historic change in schools’ attitudes towards racial integration.

Starting this fall, students formerly bused out of the predominately African-American area in the northeast part of the city will be assigned to new schools in their neighborhood. The district will also dismantle a lottery system that bused some white students to the predominantly African-American area for one year of elementary school. Both groups will be allowed to continue attending their original schools — with transportation — for the remainder of their time in the district.

Darren Mucci, division director of operations, said the district decided to end the program it had voluntarily established in 1971 after hearing the Supreme Court ruling in the Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky., school assignment cases. In those cases, the court ruled the districts could not use race as the exclusive factor in school assignment without a court order.

The decision seems to align with community values. In a 2005 survey, the district found 82 percent of parents thought neighborhood schools would improve education. By contrast, less than 17 percent thought busing was still necessary to prevent racial discrimination. This compares to 51 percent who thought busing was necessary in the past.

But Kevin Myles, president of the Wichita chapter of the NAACP, worries about the possibility of re-segregation,

While housing patterns have changed, Myles says some neighborhoods are little different than they were in the 1950s. The population of the predominantly African-American area has hardly changed and is, on the whole, poorer than the rest of the city, Myles noted.

Under the tentative plan, 16 of the 27 magnets are “neighborhood magnets,” meaning they allow all students to attend but reserve as many as half of seats for neighborhood students. Of these, four are in the predominantly African-American area.
According to the district spokesman Susan Arensman, the district has no plan to redraw these boundaries as part of their post-desegregation plan.

But if the district does not look at either redrawing boundaries or giving all students equal access to all the magnet schools, Myles said future generations of Wichita students could have segregated educational experiences like the “hyper-segregated” Cleveland schools he attended.

According to Wendy Johnson, a district spokeswoman, desegregation busing was a small part of the district’s transportation operation. Of the 19,500 daily riders, fewer than 2,100 students — 1,570 African American and 500 Caucasian— were bused this year due to the desegregation plan. Far more — 6,200 — were bused to magnets.
Proponents of the plan say these magnets will be the main tool in the diversity that existed under the old program.

Board member Barbra Fuller said she senses most students will want to stay at the schools they attended and maintain friendships and sports team allegiances. There are a lot of details to be worked out, but Fuller said the decision to end the program was “easy.”

“When forced busing started, truly we were not a diverse community,” Fuller said. “Things have changed since then. I think it’s been very unfair to those students to be forced to go (to school) clear out of their neighborhoods and clear across town.”

Like Myles, Board member Betty Arnold attended a segregated school, but she loved it. Classes were small and the teachers were great, she said.

She sees ending the era of busing as an opportunity to focus less on race and more on making sure schools are equal.

However, it may take more money to make some schools reach the same goal, Arnold said. She compared it to giving the first pick in the NFL draft to the lowest scoring team from the previous season.

“Even in sports they understand that it takes something a little extra to level the playing field. That’s what we do with our schools,” she said.