Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

CHRIS TETLIN: The State desegregation law says all schools in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and Duluth must have ethnic minority enrollments within 15% of the given district's overall minority enrollment. In practice, that means individual Saint Paul schools can have no more than 53% and no less than 23% minority student enrollment.

Saint Paul has never used forced busing to desegregate schools, instead mixing of ethnic populations is achieved by enticing students to schools with special programs. More than one fourth of the district's students choose a school outside their neighborhoods. The plan is effective in mixing ethnicities among buildings, but some citizens are asking if that's enough.

KWAME MCDONALD: You have all of these segregated classes within the school building.

CHRIS TETLIN: Kwame McDonald of the Saint Paul Inner City Youth League.

KWAME MCDONALD: A token Black or person of other color in the talented programs and a token white in the ABC type programs or the letter programs that really spell d-u-m-b.

CHRIS TETLIN: Saint Paul Central High School is down the block from McDonald's office. The school's 1,500 students are of the same minority/majority mix as the district on a whole. Principal Bill Dunn admits that the school's accelerated program, called Quest, is dominated by white students. But he says the school is becoming more integrated. Bill Dunn says Kwame McDonald is exaggerating the problem.

BILL DUNN: It's probably not getting better as fast as Kwame and Bill Dunn would like to see it get better, but it's getting better. And it's getting better through the efforts of the staff and people like Kwame in the community-- people like Kwame calling attention to it.

CHRIS TETLIN: Central High School English teacher, Jack Schlukebier has been teaching at schools in this neighborhood for more than 20 years. He says there's been obvious progress on integration.

JACK SCHLUKEBIER: Kids tend to hang around in the same groups that they grow up in. And they hang around in the neighborhood. To put them in a school and expect right off the bat that they're going to start changing neighborhood allegiances and childhood allegiances and all that right away-- that's pretty silly idea. As they get to know each other more and more, will that cross fertilization of ideas and culture want to take place? Sure, it will. Will it take place to the degree that the social planners would like it to take place? I don't know.

CHRIS TETLIN: Speaking to a group of students of varying ethnicity, you'll hear much the same. Desegregation has worked pretty well. Schools have a reasonable mix of students. The focus now, according to students, should be on integrating education as well as buildings.

STUDENT 1: What really needs to happen is more awareness of each other's cultures. I'll tell you the truth, me and Jimmy, we both have been going here. We're fully aware of the European culture. I'd say myself, I probably know more about European culture than I know about my own.

STUDENT 2: We do have a Black History class. And I'm the only white person in there.

CHRIS TETLIN: Saint Paul School Superintendent David Bennett says true integration of the city's schools is a worthy goal. But Bennett says complete integration depends on profound changes in society at large.

DAVID BENNETT: I think there's very little contest over that goal and expectation. That is a so much a matter of changing people's hearts and minds over just creating individual circumstances of balance, whether it exists in classrooms or schools taken as a whole.

CHRIS TETLIN: Bennett says the district is making progress on integrating its programs for gifted students, particularly in elementary school. He says there are significantly more minority kids in accelerated programs in elementary school than there are in high school.

YOUNGER STUDENT: I will not-- I mean, I will go in--

CHRIS TETLIN: J.J. Hill Elementary, a few blocks from Central High School, is a magnet school for gifted students. A stroll through the halls reveals a diverse mix of ethnicities among the students. Principal Delores Henderson says the proportion of minority students at Hill is close to that of the entire district.

Henderson agrees with Central High principal Bill Dunn that parent involvement is the key to increasing the number of minority students in special programs. Henderson says she works extremely hard to involve parents in the school and keep them informed about students' options.

DELORES HENDERSON: Parents so often don't feel, by the time they get to the secondary schools, that they're welcome. That ownership and that stakeholder business is crucial. And we got to get that same feeling at the junior high and high school level in order for you to see the integration and the integral part of our gifted programs at the junior high and high school level.

CHRIS TETLIN: The current school year and the coming legislative session promise continued discussion of desegregation strategies. State officials are studying a plan for voluntary desegregation across the seven-county metro area. Legislators are sure to once again discuss a controversial proposal to create an all Native American school district in the metro area. And the state's education department is investigating the links among desegregation, housing, and income. This is Chris Tetlin.