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SPEAKER 1: State board of education today is considering a plan to involve suburban school districts in the desegregation of the Minneapolis and Saint Paul Public Schools. Under that plan, participation would be mandatory for some school districts. Children, however, would not be required to change schools.

Supporters say the plan would make it easier to desegregate schools in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. It would help reduce the education gap between white and minority students and improve the education of suburban students by increasing their contact with minorities. Curt Johnson is a senior aide to Governor Arne Carlson. He's been focusing on education issues for years now and joins us. Good morning, Curt.

CURTIS JOHNSON: Good morning, Gary.

SPEAKER 1: Any merit to this plan?

CURTIS JOHNSON: Well, I think so. It definitely gets at a couple of primary issues. One is just another piece of evidence that all the things ahead of us really have to be tackled as metropolitan issues and not city by city or not as matters of cities versus suburbs, that we have a metropolitan community. And this challenge is just another one of those.

And I think another driving force, Gary, is that while the center cities have been pursuing compliance with the state's desegregation rule now for years, part of that time under a court order-- and we're reasonably satisfied that we've complied, at least statistically, with that policy. We can bus kids to certain schools. And we can count them. And we can say, yes, we're within the limits of racial balance.

That doesn't mean that we really achieved integration. It doesn't mean that what goes on inside of that building has really raised the quality of the experience for people or really change the culture of the way whites and African-Americans and Hispanic people and Native Americans get along and understand with each other. And I think part of what the state Board is struggling with now is, how do we broaden this geographically? And how do we broaden it culturally?

SPEAKER 1: How does this plan, though, get at that issue of cultural integration, if you will?

CURTIS JOHNSON: Well, the experience generally is that using magnet schools, using a really interesting, superior, attractive program to draw kids in to a school, that you get the mix of races by doing that and you get the kind of interaction among the students with a magnet program that you don't just get in a conventional school. And at least what research that has been conducted about this approach tends to indicate that this is a pretty successful way and a way that can be done voluntarily of getting a better cultural experience as well as raising education achievement levels.

SPEAKER 1: That's the other part of this. The social benefits seem fairly obvious. But there is actual evidence to indicate that desegregation improves education scores?

CURTIS JOHNSON: Well, there is a body of academic research that suggests that, particularly if you compare the experience of mixing people with color with the white students, compared with having schools in the past that were racially segregated, that the achievement levels of their students of color does go up measurably to some degree. But we've tended to focus on that almost exclusively.

And when we talk about racial imbalance, we're almost always talking about too many people of color we think in a school. And I think part of what this is an opportunity to do is to look at the other side of that. Given the makeup of the workforce in the future, it may be that students in schools that are nearly all white are the ones who are culturally handicapped and are not getting the kind of exposure and experience and practice with people of different heritages and different appearance and different preferences. And we really, as a metropolitan community, should not be denying any kids this kind of experience and opportunity. So I'm sure part of what's behind this is the state board's effort to really take this issue to a metropolitan level but still make it operate on the spirit of family participation on a voluntary basis.

SPEAKER 1: Some school officials have indicated that the big problem here is not willingness to participate but money, specifically the transportation costs involved. Is the state ready to put some more money into this effort?

CURTIS JOHNSON: Well, I'm sure the state is ready to struggle with that question. It's like every other worthy thing that the vision only goes so far. And then you've got to have the financing.

There's some major questions to be faced. How much could we get out of assisting in the conversion of some existing schools so that they would accommodate magnet programs? Under what circumstances do we actually have to build wholly new schools? And who ought to be responsible for paying for those?

Should it be a shared cost? Should it be state-financed? If the state's going to be more heavily involved in financing this new desegregation kind of strategy, what's the implication for the state's management of all of that?

What's the implication for still having hundreds or more school districts in the metropolitan area instead of just one? I don't think we've gone very far in facing any of those questions yet. But there's little doubt that if we're going to succeed at higher levels, we're probably going to have to pour more resources into this strategy.

SPEAKER 1: Very briefly, do you think this is going to get resolved during the upcoming legislative session? Or is it going to take longer?

CURTIS JOHNSON: It's probably going to take longer. But it'll be regarded very seriously.