The Calhoun County School District is by no means alone in dealing with desegregation. In fact, it is grappling with an issue that is much bigger than it is, and much older than the two schools the board has voted to close.

"They are dealing with the past," said Marcia Synnott, a history professor at the University of South Carolina. "It's an ongoing saga of well over 100 years."

In school districts across the nation, school populations are looking more like they did before the U.S. Supreme Court ordered desegregation in its Brown v. Board of Education decision. It's not a problem that just exists in the South. People across the nation are dealing with it, as whites, blacks and Latinos live in segregated neighborhoods and attend segregated schools.

"There is no law saying people have to live in a certain residential area," Synnott said. "As long as you have separate residential areas for people of different races and cultures and so forth, you'll get that pattern of schools of one predominant race or group."

Some districts have found ways to achieve a racial balance in schools, and have gotten desegregation orders lifted. Others continue to grapple with the issue, like Calhoun County. And some, who felt they had found the answer to desegregating schools, have found themselves defending their actions in front of the Supreme Court.

More and more, segregation in schools is mirroring the segregation in the nation's communities. The question before the highest court now is whether or not making school assignments solely based on race is unconstitutional.

Their decision could change it all.

Backward

since Brown

Thurgood Marshall, the winning lawyer in the Brown vs. the Board of Education case, exclaimed "we hit the jackpot" when the Supreme Court decided that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The road to complete integration has been somewhat like walking on a treadmill. Small gains have been made over a long period of time.

In terms of school desegregation, America's school boards are being tested by economics and geography in trying to achieve a racial a balance in schools. Blacks and whites still tend to earn different incomes and live in different areas.

"I think the Justice Department is starting to understand that when we divide attendance zones, then we get divided population in our schools," said Calhoun County Superintendent Ken Westbury.

In "Desegregation to Diversity: A Self Assessment Guide to Schools," the National School Boards Association explains that while student diversity may be an ideal part of an excellent education, it may not always be achievable.

"Historically and to the present, school districts around the nation have largely relied on geographic location to determine where a child will go to school," the study states. "A strong expectation had been built around neighborhood schools and the idea that students will attend a public school that is close to home. At the same time, the reality is that many American neighborhoods remain racially segregated.

"When a school district's attendance policy is simply to paint a ring around neighborhoods and assign children accordingly, the inevitable result will be that children of the same race, income and other characteristics will often attend homogeneous schools."

The South had the highest proportion of black students and the most rigid system of legal segregation. So, it was in the South that the most aggressive desegregation plans were implemented after the Brown decision. With the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and a series of decisions by the Supreme Court that followed, the integration efforts in the South intensified, ending delays in desegregation and authorizing busing.

According to the Civil Rights Project, a Harvard University report on the basic concerns about civil rights, the South became the nation's most integrated region for whites and blacks by 1970 and has been since. However, while integration efforts in the South were stable for decades, the South is now the region of the country that is resegregating the fastest.

"The evidence seems to be on the whole, there's been constant resegregation pretty widespread all over the country," Synnott said.

The Civil Rights Project found that the percentage of black students in majority-white schools peaked in the early 1980s and declined to the levels of the 1960s by the 1996-1997 school year. Latinos, the largest growing minority group in the country, are the most severely segregated, most intensely in the Northeast. In the West, where Latinos are the dominant minority group, 77 percent of Latino children are in predominantly minority schools. A large number of blacks and Latinos are moving into the suburbs, but are usually moving into segregated schools.

For example, Synnott noted that in Richland County in the Columbia area, there was a time when C.A. Johnson High School was close to 100 percent African American. It went from 20 percent white students to just two white students in 1995. Rezoning contributed to resegregation.

"That seems to be what has been happening. C.A. Johnson is one of six schools in Richland with almost an all-black body," she said, including once all-white Eau Claire. "A significant number of white residents in Richland sent their students to private schools or (predominantly) white schools. And it hasn't changed."

The question facing many school boards now is whether to keep focusing on the racial mix of each school, or to put their energy instead into disadvantages faced by any child, regardless of color. The Supreme Court may soon make this decision for them in its rulings dealing with schools in Seattle, Wash. and Jefferson County, Ky.

A Supreme

decision

The U.S. Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in two school integration cases. The cases involve voluntary school integration plans and their decision may affect how aggressive school districts can be in trying to achieve racial balance in schools.

In the two cases, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, the districts maintain racial balance in their schools through aggressive measures. With the Supreme Court's decision, they may not be able to continue.

In Seattle, where spaces in the most popular public schools are scarce, officials use race to decide who attends a school so that the racial mix won't deviate too much from the district average.

Jefferson County uses a similar system to ensure that black students, who are 35 percent of the total, make up 15 to 50 percent of the student mix at every school. A white student's mother there has claimed that her child was deprived of a good school placement to preserve this racial mix, violating his rights.

The lower courts upheld the school districts' methods, but the Supreme Court is examining the issue. During questioning, some justices highlighted the benefits of racial diversity in the classroom, while others worried whether the voluntary programs constitute illegal racial quotas.

"You're characterizing each student by reason of the color of his or her skin," said Justice Anthony Kennedy. "It seems to me that you should only be, if ever allowed, allowed as a last resort." He also noted that the court three years ago said, "outright racial balancing" was unconstitutional and "that seems to me what you have here."

Chief Justice John Roberts expressed concern about making school assignments based on skin color and not any other factor, while Justice Stephen Breyer seemed concerned that schools once again will become segregated.

"There's a terrible problem -- lots and lots of districts are becoming more and more segregated and school boards are struggling. And if they knew an easy way, they'd do it. I do know courts are not very good at figuring that out," Breyer said.

Solicitor General Paul Clement argued that school boards could pursue integration through other steps, such as creating magnet schools and reallocating resources.

Until 2000, Jefferson County was acting under a court desegregation order. Focusing on that point, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that overturning the school board's plan would have the effect of saying, "What's constitutionally permissible one day is constitutionally prohibited the next day."

Synnott said the court's decision may not favor the schools.

"One of the problems is it's harder to use some of the arguments that justify racial diversity in higher education in high school education," she said, referring to the court's 2003 decision that narrowly upheld the University of Michigan's affirmative action admissions program. " ... Some of the formulas for diversity will be harder to justify in say Seattle ... they may very well lose. Both plans could be shot down or curtailed."

The Supreme Court is expected to render a decision in the cases by the end of the term in June 2007.

A tipping point

There's no doubt that districts like Calhoun County wouldn't mind getting their desegregation orders lifted.

But Westbury says, for now, that's not an option. Simply put, the district has to earn credibility with the Department of Justice and prove it can run a desegregated school system. Despite hiring lawyers last year to achieve unitary status -- which signifies a school district has made the transition from a racially segregated school system to a desegregated system -- Westbury said they are not exploring that now.

"Other districts have gotten from under it (desegregation orders) as a result of what we are trying to do here," he said. " ... Right now we have to earn credibility with the Justice Department since 2002."

Synnott said desegregation in schools is both a tricky and difficult situation.

"There is a tipping point," she said. "If you could maintain 50-50 (racial balance) in a school, there wouldn't be white flight or black flight. When you get 40 percent white, then down to 20 percent, there's tipping, badly accelerating white flight. Then you're left trying to get a mixing there that makes sense without an extreme amount of busing.

"It will be interesting to see what the courts say. Magnet schools are a good option and transfers, creating more choice within the public school, more programs at different places. Using satellite learning, the Internet, things that can break down the confines of certain quality education. These are new ways (to achieve a racial mix) that may be considered in the future."

Charlene Slaughter can be reached by e-mail at cslaughter@timesanddemocrat .com or by phone at 803-533-5529. Discuss this and other stories online at TheT&D.com.

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