Saturday, May 08, 1999
Segregation remains social shame
BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It began, a decade ago, as a bold and controversial step to desegregate Cincinnati Public Schools.
Some people called it “pairing” schools. Others euphemistically referred to it as “double-neighborhood” schools. Still others bluntly called it busing.
In 1989, white children from Oyler and Whittier elementary schools in Price Hill were sent to downtown schools. In exchange, black children from Washington Park Elementary in Over-the-Rhine and Washburn in West End were bused to Price Hill.
The moves dramatically changed the racial composition of all four schools. They also helped earn Cincinnati schools' release from a federal judge's oversight in a desegregation settlement.
Beginning next fall, the district will abandon the project, and the pairings will end. The children will filter back to the neighborhood schools, unless their parents specifically request that their busing continue.
It's hard to say what was gained or lost. What began in red-hot controversy — the forcible integration of some of the city's most segregated schools — will end in cool silence.
But this is not healthy silence. This is the sound of indifference.
Busing's wheels came off
As in cities across the nation, school desegregation appears to have been a temporary fix in Cincinnati. After a lawsuit charging racial inequity was filed in 1974, the district reached its best racial balance in 1991, was released from judicial oversight in 1994 and the effort fell apart.
Ten years ago, 17 percent of Cincinnati Public Schools were extremely racially isolated, with more than 90 percent of their students of one race. Today, 29 percent are. Douglass, Hoffman, Millvale, Parham and South Avondale elementaries have 10 or fewer white students in their entire student bodies, according to annual enrollment numbers.
For more than two decades, white students have been draining out of the system. In 1971, 65 percent of the district's 82,000 students were white. Today, 72 percent of its 47,000 students are black.
Communities have debated the inherent value of desegregation for years. Some citizens said children learning in racially diverse classrooms was the best possible education for everybody, and helped ensure minority students would receive equal opportunities.
Others said integration was optional; parity of resources was all that mattered.
With its emphasis on returning resources — and children — to neighborhood schools, Cincinnati Public Schools has clearly moved toward the second plan.
Count the costs
Some Cincinnatians accept that position with equanimity. Some neighborhoods simply want their children close to home. Others say, with a $23 million debt, the district has better places to spend its money. Still others say the shrinking white student population is simply too small to be spread around.
But some of us see it differently.
We say children who grow up in racially isolated neighborhoods desperately need to go to integrated schools. It is part of their life education.
We say, historically, that the segregation of poor, black students has left them with less attention and political clout, fewer resources and fewer advocates.
We say the increasing racial and economic isolation of Cincinnati schoolchildren is a regional shame. While many schools include “diversity” as part of their mission statements, private, parochial and suburban public schools continue to pull away from Cincinnati schools.
And now we quietly watch more Cincinnati schools almost surely revert to greater segregation.
Before they go, let us consider this: Of the 10 most integrated schools left in Cincinnati — with near perfect mixes of black and white students — eight are paired or magnet schools. The programs put in place to integrate them have done their job, for more than a decade.
Of course they cost something. So does racial segregation. Let us be brave enough, and wise enough, to tally the cost now. It is greater than we think.
Krista Ramsey writes each Saturday.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at the Enquirer, 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202.
RAMSEY ARCHIVE
