Back to the future
Unitary ruling brings concerns about equity in
school district
by John Minter,, THE CHARLOTTE POST A
s the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board and attorneys for black children ponder whether to appeal a federal judge's order overturning the landmark
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PHOTO/WADE NASH |
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With District Judge Robert Potter's ruling last week, Charlotte-Mecklenburg students will stay closer to home for
their education. Some African Americans, however, are concerned Potter's decision to strike down race-based remedies for past segregation will be a step back for the school district.
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Swann vs. Board of Education busing case, an angry and disappointed black community ponders as well.
Most want to know just what a "neighborhood school system" will look like.
Many remember that the last time such a system existed, black children were bused pass white schools and suffered with older textbooks and fewer educational resources. Today, it appears a neighborhood school system will confine inner city children, most black and hispanic, to
inferior aged school buildings and a lack of the educational resources to overcome economic and demographic stresses such as single-parent households and poverty level family incomes. "If this decision doesn't polarize the black community, I don't know what will," said Eric Douglas, president of
the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Black Political Caucus. "The older generation of people, they look at this as a
step backwards. We are potentially going back to a segregated school system. The older generation went to segregated schools. They know it was no fun.
"People in my generation need to get a knowledge of history and look at what this means. We need to start demanding resources. If the resources don't come, we are a separate but unequal nation." Bob Davis, a Charlotte native and former Charlotte-Mecklenburg middle school principal, said Potter's ruling was a step backward. "I kind of anticipated that Judge Potter would do what he did, but I kept hoping against hope
that he would not make an effort to turn back the clock," he said.
Davis said that the decision should be appealed and that blacks should use the interim delay in implementation of Potter's order to demand equity.
"If I had my way I'd tell black folks not to pass another bond issue for anything until you can
build new schools in the black community," Davis, a former chair of the Black Political Caucus, said. "We need to tell the powers that be that we need to spend $1.3 billion for
schools. We have proven the need to build schools in the black community that will turn out to be predominantly black."
School board chairman Arthur Griffin, who is seeking re-election in November, said that without an influx of resources - $1.3 billion for school buildings alone - inner city children will
be deprived in a neighborhood school system.
Griffin also noted that many white students will also be bused, since there are not enough schools to allow all of them to go to schools near their homes either. "I'm disappointed," he said. "The judge thought there were inequities, but did not think they
were vestiges (of past racial discrimination). That was the disappointment."
Griffin said the school board will decide within a few weeks whether to appeal Potter's ruling. The deadline for a decision is Oct. 12.
"It is being considered," Griffin said. "We met and received the courts ruling. I told the board
to read the ruling and think about it and get back in a week and talk about it in executive session.
"We are not going to rush on this. It is too important to rush. It is going to be an informed decision. We are not going to do it out of emotion." James Ferguson, whose law firm won the original landmark Swann case, said he is leaning
toward an appeal. Ferguson joined the lawsuit filed on behalf of the original Swann defendants, arguing that Charlotte-Mecklenburg failed to remove all vestiges of past discrimination as ordered in 1969. Ferguson was in South Africa when he learned of Potter's ruling.
"I thought 'maybe I ought to stay on over here,'" Ferguson said. "We are going backwards."
"As I look at the opinion, I think there are a number of factual and legal errors which the
judge made," Ferguson said. "My inclination presently is we will not let those go unchallenged. We are definitely leaning toward appeal." "There are three broad issues that will arise," he said. "One is the question of unitary status.
We think Charlotte-Mecklenburg is not unitary. We also think the judge was wrong legally in finding that the school board violated the constitutional rights of the (white) plaintiffs and
exceeded his authority in issuing an injunction in preventing use of race in pupil assignment. There are a number of sub-issues in those categories we are studying." Equity is still not a priority for some school board members.
Lindalyn Kakadelis, a neighborhood schools advocate who testified for the white plaintiffs, said she did not agree that the system needs to spend $1.3 billion for new school buildings.
She said the system may have to lease space for classes or build cheap modular schools as has been done in some Florida communities.
"I don't understand the $1.3 billion," Kakadelis said. "What I want to look at is where are the
needs. Where do we really need a school? For the short term, we may be looking at leasing schools. We have to think outside the box. We don't need to do any knee jerk reaction. We
are going to have to get creative. We are going to have to know what our needs are so we can go forward. We are going to build schools in the inner city. We may have look creatively
at what they are doing in other cities.
Potter's decision, which affects about 28,000 students who now ride buses past their neighborhood schools, has enormous symbolic significance for the lingering institution of
court-ordered busing, since it was in a 1971 ruling on Charlotte's plan that the U.S. Supreme Court first approved busing for desegregation in the nation.
"It's the end of an era in American social policy," said Glenn C. Loury, director of the Institute on Race and Social Division at Boston University. "The weight that was borne by school
desegregation, as the vehicle for trying to equalize opportunity, will now have to be borne elsewhere." When the busing plan was first imposed, the courts were trying to break up a pattern of
separate school systems for black and white students, and the Supreme Court said that busing students away from their neighborhoods was an appropriate tool to achieve a racial balance.
In the past five years, however, many busing plans have been dismantled by the same courts that imposed them, as judges ruled that the school districts have become "unitary," ending their old dual systems.
The New York Times contributed to this article.
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