THE PLAN IS NOT without its problems. As mentioned, seven school districts in Roxbury remain imbalanced and two other districts exceed state guidelines in distance. In addition, members of the black community have objected that black children will bear the brunt of the traveling. Still, out of the 15,000 non-white students at this time attending imbalanced schools, the plan would leave only 2300, and this would be achieved without large-scale, time-consuming busing.
Moreover, a successful integration program requires certain advance planning and sensitivity on the part of school officials. Repeatedly, when such planning has been absent, the result has been a heightening of hostility between the races. Blacks come to feel that they are not welcomed at the school, and whites resent the increased physical violence that frequently occurs. In many cases students are afraid to use the restrooms. One white mother whose son had been beaten up twice in the restroom explained: "Integration has made my son a racial bigot."
The state plan recognizes the need to bring the two communities together and counsel school officials. Among other things, it calls for the appointment in each district of an education planning committee of teachers and administrators to deal with curriculum changes; a bi-racial advisory committee in each district composed of students, parents, and teachers to deal with subjects of safety, transportation and human relations: and workshops for school officials and non-professionals to help them understand the plan.
The School Committee voted unanimously in November to oppose the plan. School committeeman Paul Ellison commented: "I would go to jail before I would let a single child be bused without parental consent," even though the plan, as mentioned, does not call for forced busing. "The people will not accept this," stated ex-Committee Committee chairman James Hennigan. "The only solution I can see is the repeal of the Racial Imbalance Law and to start all over again."
Still, on November 20 when he appeared at a seminar at Harvard, Greg Anrig, head of the state task force that prepared the plan and the recently appointed state Commissioner of Education, seemed confident that the plan would be approved. During the Court hearings Judge Sullivan seemed sympathetic to the state and interested in the details of the plan and intensely questioned Anrig and task force member Jack Finger.
On December 18 Sullivan handed down his decision rejecting the plan. He failed to explain the specific reasons for his rejection but made a number of comments on the plan: The districts were too "large and gerrymandered" and required excessive busing: it was not sufficiently proven that the safety of school children had been provided for; public hearings on the proposed changes in districts were not held: and the plan contained a number of "considerations which do not relate to racial balance" [referring to the implementation strategies].
The first comment is hard to understand since the districts comply with the standards set by the state. The other three comments were described by another lawyer as "nit-picking" and another as "irrelevancies."
The off-the-record explanation for the decision, given by a number of the participants in the case, was courtroom politics. The Boston School Committee had appealed the August decision to the Supreme Judicial Court and the appeal was heard at the same time as the hearings on the state plan.
During the appeal, the SJC made remarks which seemed to criticize Sullivan for getting too involved in the specifics of the racial balance plan. (In the Springfield case the SJC had ruled that "although we will pass on questions of law related to the interpretation and enforcement of the statute (RIA), it is not appropriate for us to enter directly into the form of the racial balance plans.") Sullivan, feeling he was being undercut, decided to throw the decision to the SJC.
On December 28, in a surprise Christmas week sitting, the SJC agreed to review Sullivan's decision beginning February 8, If the SJC overturns Sullivan's decision, the assignment of children to specific schools within the districts will begin immediately and take effect in September.
MEANWHILE, the School Committee and State Board are codefendants in a case to begin in the Federal court on January 22. The case offers the possibility of the integrating of Boston city schools with suburban schools. Black parents have charged the School Committee and State Board with failing to provide equal educational opportunities for black children, in violation of the 14th Amendment. Specific accusations include racial discrimination in the assignment recruitment and promotion of teachers, unequal spending in the schools, and the incorporation of segregated neighborhoods in school attendance zones. The plaintiffs have indicated that if they win, they will seek a plan to link Boston to the suburbs. Even if he does not go this far. Federal Court Judge Arthur Garrity could order out-of-district busing that is barred under state law.
Garrity's ruling will be strongly influenced by the upcoming rulings of the Supreme Court. The Court is expected to rule soon on the Denver Case, in which the city was ordered to integrate the entire system. In addition, the Appeals Court in Detroit, Michigan recently upheld federal court Judge Roth's decision to bus children between Detroit and 53 suburban cities and town. The decision was in direct conflict with a ruling in another appeals court which reversed a city-suburb plan for Richmond, Va. The Supreme Court will take up the issue in the near future.
Kevin McCluskey moved from Columbia Point to Dorchester and from Dever Elementary Harvard. Though the community in which he now lives has opposed school integration in the past, he believes that it would accept it if those authority were solidly behind it. "It's too bad that the whole thing is in the hands of politicians.