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NAACP files complaint over neighborhood schools

C_Felix

Master Poster
C_Felix
Joined
Jul 29, 2009
Messages
2,953
Location
Just outside Raleigh, NC
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/8348916/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/28raleigh.html

Long story short: Wake County Public Schools (That's where Raliegh is located) had a policy where a school cannot have more than 40% of their students receiving free and reduced lunch.* This lead to a busing program. A student passing 4 elementary schools on the way to his/her school wasn't uncommon. A new school board was voted in on the auspice of "We're gonna end this busing and do our best to go to neighborhood schools."

The new school board is doing their best to send students to schools much closer to home, if not the closest school.

The NAACP has been protesting this along with many churches.**

From the first link:
"We must fight re-segregation and demand high-quality, constitutional, diverse, well-funded education for all our children," State NAACP President Rev. William Barber said at a gathering at Christian Faith Baptist Church in Raleigh Saturday. "We believe this kind of disparity is illegal and must be challenged."

_______

So, uh, where's the resegregation?
To the best of my knowledge, people tend*** to self segregate.
Look at a high school cafeteria where the seating is open. The students tend to self segregate.

So, if the schools reflection of what society tends to do...Where's the resegregation?


_______
*Socio-economic status somehow and usually relates to how well children do in school. This is another topic for another day.

**Beats me!

***Why is it italicized? Because I want to point out that it isn't a rule, it isn't a law, it isn't something that happens 100% of the time.
 
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The schools are going broke and trying to save money by stopping the idiotic busing. I have no problem with that. It's not a racist policy to have people go to school in their own neighborhoods. It also saves on gas, and keeps kids from riding buses for hours a day.
 
C_Felix said:
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/8348916/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/28raleigh.html

Long story short: Wake County Public Schools (That's where Raliegh is located) had a policy where a school cannot have more than 40% of their students receiving free and reduced lunch.* This lead to a busing program. A student passing 4 elementary schools on the way to his/her school wasn't uncommon. A new school board was voted in on the auspice of "We're gonna end this busing and do our best to go to neighborhood schools."

The new school board is doing their best to send students to schools much closer to home, if not the closest school.

The NAACP has been protesting this along with many churches.**

From the first link:
"We must fight re-segregation and demand high-quality, constitutional, diverse, well-funded education for all our children," State NAACP President Rev. William Barber said at a gathering at Christian Faith Baptist Church in Raleigh Saturday. "We believe this kind of disparity is illegal and must be challenged."

_______

So, uh, where's the resegregation?
To the best of my knowledge, people tend*** to self segregate.
Look at a high school cafeteria where the seating is open. The students tend to self segregate.

So, if the schools reflection of what society tends to do...Where's the resegregation?


_______
*Socio-economic status somehow and usually relates to how well children do in school. This is another topic for another day.

**Beats me!

***Why is it italicized? Because I want to point out that it isn't a rule, it isn't a law, it isn't something that happens 100% of the time.
Click to expand...

Open enrollment allows the child access to higher scoring schools. Sadly, there is a correlation between predominantly minorty schools, low income areas ,and low test scores. If a parent cannot afford to live in a higher income area, the child is not forced to go to a school that is not making the grade.

I am not an expert, but I would assume that the district has to pay more to bus children to schools outside the zone. Common sense tells me that it might be more beneficial to the failing schools to put the money into programs designed to encourage more parental involvement. When you think about it, someone is going to end up having to go to the less desirable school.
 
LTC8K6 said:
IIRC, they were also hiding low performing students by busing them to certain schools where they would be hidden in the averages.
Click to expand...

I don't know how it works elsewhere but around here, higher performing schools get the funding. Why would a higher performing school allow failing students to bring down their average?
 
LTC8K6 said:
IIRC, they were also hiding low performing students by busing them to certain schools where they would be hidden in the averages.
Click to expand...

I guess that's slightly less horrible than the schools that encourage the low performing students to drop out entirely.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I guess that's slightly less horrible than the schools that encourage the low performing students to drop out entirely.
Click to expand...

Some (in Texas, per Molly Ivins) did this - to keep from losing good administrators who were often made the sacrificial goats for schools that couldn't perform any better without being moved 20 miles any direction and given a very different student body than they had.
 
I'm thinking that there is a limit to how much we can spend, especially in the current economy. So some luxuries have to go. Like the the same number of building inspectors, in an area with hardly any building going on. Traffic engineers, looking at adding stop lights wear there has never been any in 60 years, and no added traffic. The cities ought to be laying off LOTS of workers.

And busing costs money. And there isn't any study that shows it helps with education. And, it is only required to remedy PROVEN former segregation anyhow. Sell the buses, Black Power advocates be damned.
 
Cayvmann said:
The schools are going broke and trying to save money by stopping the idiotic busing. I have no problem with that. It's not a racist policy to have people go to school in their own neighborhoods. It also saves on gas, and keeps kids from riding buses for hours a day.
Click to expand...

Depends, if resources are allocated equally then it is not a problem, but rarely do school districts actually have an equal standard (in practice). Especially when you look at who has the newer school buildings and who doesn't, the suburb effect usually applies.
 
Cayvmann said:
The schools are going broke and trying to save money by stopping the idiotic busing. I have no problem with that. It's not a racist policy to have people go to school in their own neighborhoods. It also saves on gas, and keeps kids from riding buses for hours a day.
Click to expand...

From the outside, it can look like a racist act, especially when the schools of choice are a majority white. There is still the problem of children of parents who want them to have a better shot at a good education but can't afford to live in the neighborhoods of those schools.
 
C_Felix said:
*Socio-economic status somehow and usually relates to how well children do in school. This is another topic for another day.
Click to expand...

No, the point of the program, was to promote economic diversity, so I don't think you can just shrug it off as a "topic for another day."

casebro said:
I'm thinking that there is a limit to how much we can spend, especially in the current economy. So some luxuries have to go. <snip>

And busing costs money.
Click to expand...

Why are you attributing economic motives to this plan? Absolutely none of the local coverage of this issue over the past year that I've experienced has so much as mentioned cost as a factor in this decision.

It's all about wealthy white parents who don't want their poor baby to have to ride the bus. As someone who attended a rural school district, where long busing is the norm, I have to say that I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for them.
 
ZirconBlue said:
No, the point of the program, was to promote economic diversity, so I don't think you can just shrug it off as a "topic for another day."
Click to expand...

What I was getting at was, people in lower socio-economic classes/zones do worse in school, on average. If that is true or not and why it might be true is a whole 'nother topic for another day.
 
They were making noises about that in 2005, honestly. The separate busing WAS the segregation order imposed, which is probably why the NAACP isn't happy.

(Incidently, speaking as someone who went through WCPSS for most of my primary school sequence, that busing sequence? Didnt' work out so well for the first three schools. Because they were still in a white majority area.)
 
casebro said:
And busing costs money. And there isn't any study that shows it helps with education. And, it is only required to remedy PROVEN former segregation anyhow. Sell the buses, Black Power advocates be damned.
Click to expand...
Of the top 5 largest NC counties, Wake has the largest school district by a few thousand students. Of those 5 it also has the lowest tax rate.

P. 252 in PDF reader
http://www.wcpss.net/budget/2009-10-official-budget/2009-10-adopted-budget.pdf

And regardless of integration/economic diversity busing, ~75K of just under 140K students are currently bused to school (more than half). Of those who are not bused to school, I would not expect most of the remainder to be walking to school. If you know Wake county, you know it isn't particularly pedestrian friendly. That means many parents are likely driving their individual children in their individual vehicles to their school. If we end diversity busing, the majority of those bused students are likely to still be bused to different schools for population or proximity reasons. If your nearest school is more than 1.5mi away, you are eligible for busing.

The only way you eliminate busing or driving your child to school is if you live within 1.5mi of the school, the route is walkable, you decide to let your child walk that far and there is room there for the child to attend that particular school in the first place.

Having lived in both Raleigh proper and the suburbs (Apex), I know the sprawl and I know what the traffic looks like in the morning when parents decide to drive their children to school instead of having them bused, whether it be to the nearest school or to a school further away for reasons of economic diversity.

Wake county's transportation budget is huge, but it would still be huge even without diversity busing.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/02/02/316184/efficient-busing.html#storylink=misearch
Diversity busing accounts for ~1-2% of the total cost. For a comparison, the transportation budget is $56M, $17M+ is spent on field trips.
 
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C_Felix said:
I'm in Clayton!


But...back to my original point.

Where's the racism?
Where's the segregation?
Click to expand...

Clayton is nice. Man, I should go visit but.. OK, original point.

I know several areas of Garner for example that have become more or less racially homogenous. It's not de jure, but ...

I wouldn't say it's racism so much as they're worried about it becoming de facto segregation.
 
C_Felix said:
Where's the segregation?
Click to expand...
Isn't it in exactly the phenomenon you described? People tend to self-segregate. If you don't combat that tendency, you'll end up with segregated schools (that's what self-segregate means). QED.
 
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