DISD BALANCE HANGS IN THE FUTURE

If U.S. District Judge Bare-foot Sanders orders more busing in the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) as the NAACP has asked him to do, the court order will create a virtually all-minority school system overnight, the results of a D Magazine poll indicate.

A majority of the white parents who still have children in Dallas public schools said they would remove their sons and daughters from the system if Sanders orders the level of busing in the DISD increased. The resulting white flight would mean that the school district would have a white population of about 17 per cent-less than 20,000 white students. And that figure doesn’t take into account the “second tier” white flight that would be likely to occur after the next round of white flight cuts the white/black ratio even lower than it is now.

In the poll, parents were asked, “As you probably know, the status of busing in the DISD is currently being considered in federal court. If the judge increases the amount of busing in the system, are you likely to take your children out of the public schools?” Fifty-six per cent of the respondents said they would, while 43 per cent said they would keep their children enrolled in the public schools.

Close observers of the case predict that the chances Sanders will increase the level of busing in DISD are about 50-50. Chances that the level of busing will be decreased by Sanders’ order are considered essentially nonexistent because of the court precedents Sanders is obligated to follow.

The first big exodus from DISD occurred in the Oak Cliff attendance districts most affected by the 1971 desegregation order handed down by Judge William Taylor. In 1970, Carter, Kimball, Adamson, and Sunset high schools all had white majorities. Last school year, none of them did. Kimball went from 1993 white students to 973; Sunset from 1575 to 674; and Adamson from 913 to 178.

In North Dallas, high schools that still have majority white enrollments have declined also. Thomas Jefferson had 1982 white students in 1970. Today it has 779. Hillcrest dropped from almost 2000 whites in 1970 to 1020 last year. The enrollments of all white majority schools continue to drop throughout the decade.

Overall, the enrollment of white students in the DISD has dropped from 94,000 (57.3 per cent of the total) 10 years ago to 59,000 (41 per cent) in 1975 (the year before the current desegregation order took effect) to 39,000 (30.4 per cent) last year. The black population has grown from 55,000 to 64,000, and the Mexican-American student population has increased from 13,000 to 24,000.

Supporters of the school system believe uncertainty over the busing situation only aggravates matters. “It’s killing the school system,” says Harvey Williams, president of the PTSA at W.T. White high school and one of the North Dallas interveners in the desegregation case. “Young executives don’t want to move here because they don’t know what’s going to happen to their children. Realtors steer people away from Dallas to Garland, Farmers Branch, and Piano.”

Opponents of busing also worry that the city’s fiscal health will decline if whites desert D1SD. “Look at any city where the whites fled the school system,” says another PTSA president who did not want to be identified. “The tax base falls. Look at Atlanta, or even better, Boston, And then what do you have? A totally segregated school system.”