The Anniston Star from Anniston, Alabama • Page 5

school desegregation There is a sense of pride in the way the thing Art sk has worked9 (Continued From PagfJ) "I think the people in Boston would gladly give their interest in hell to trade places with us," Anniston High School Principal Robert Whitehead commented recently. And the Rev. Mr. Reynolds says "once they decided it was something they would have to do, everyone buckled down and started working and worked beautifully together." Today, with seven elementary schools, a high school and a junior high school, the Anniston schools are pretty well mixed. Exceptions are the two elementary schools already mentioned, Golden Springs with 285 students, all white, and Randolph Park with 331 black and three white students.

See 'Teen Dialogue' on Page 4A THE SCHOOL system is 55 per cent black, but the ratio varies from school to school. Constantine Elementary has 142 white and 58 black students. Cooper Elementary has 119 white and 169 black. Johnston Elementary, which houses most of the students from the five closed schools, has 428 white and 658 black students, Norwood Elementary has 139 white and 126 black students. Tenth Street Elementary has 260 white and 78 black indents.

Desegregation has been a gradual, step-by-step process, with changes being made from year to year. This year, for example, the system paired Cooper and Norwood Elementary schools to eliminate their former identifiable racial status. Despite the inconvenience of having to meet changing orders, though, the school system has managed to achieve some things with its new unitary system that it did not manage with its more far-flung segregated school system. In recent weeks, for example, the system's elementary schools all simultaneously gained accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Few elementary schools in the state have managed to attain such accreditation.

Many are still struggling to attain the lower standards of state accreditation, which under state mandate they must attain by 1980 or lose state funding. Accreditation by the Southern Association means the Anniston school system has managed to offer its students a higher standard of teaching staff and facilities than most school systems in the state are able to offer. ACADEMICALLY, the School system has had some adjustments to make and some problems to solve as a result of integration. Some of the adjustments are still being made. The system has added some remedial classes, particularly in reading and mathematics, to its curriculum in the wake of integration.

These classes have been funded largely through federal funds aimed at easing problems associated with integration. Socially, school officials say extracurricular activities at all grade levels are desegregated, and the level of integration is improving constantly. The students themselves say there's a tendency to split along racial lines when they feel they might wind up the lone representative of their race. For that reason, they say, the high school a. A girls' physical education class at Anniston High White enrollment is up at Cobb Jr.

High School has grown at a rate of about 200 students per year for the last five years. According to Supt. Charles Boozer, much of that growth has taken place in the schools nearest the City of Anniston, such as Saks and Weaver. But Boozer believes desegregation of the Anniston schools has had little to do with it, although the county schools are only nine per cent black. He attributes the growth to aff iuence which has enabled people to move out where they can buy a farm or mini-farm and live In comfort with more room around them.

A STUDY of census and enrollment data neither proves nor disproves the "white flight" thesis. In 1961, there were 5.201 white children enrolled In the Anniston City Schools. Blacks in that year comprised 35 per cent of the school population. That's close to the ratio of blacks to whites in ther city as a whole. In 1967, there were 4,409 whites and 3,387 blacks enrolled.

Blacks were 43.4 per cent of the school population. In January of 1970, 3,934 whites and 3,326 blacks were In the system and blacks were 45 per cent of the school population, although they remained at 34 per cent of the city population. Today, there are 2,484 whites and 2,919 blacks enrolled in the system for a 55 per cent black student body. According to 1970 census data, the population of the City of Anniston has decreased, but has remained at a steady 34 per cent black, 66 per cent white. Analysis of census data indicates blacks and whites were leaving Anniston at about an equal rate during the decade from 1960 to 1970, but that whites were moving to the suburbs around Anniston while blacks were leaving altogether.

Like Boozer, the Rev. Mr. Reynolds believes factors other than "white flight" are involved in the population and school enrollment data: "It (white flight) has become a whipping stone for the system," he says. I think without desegregation the majority would have gone anyway. It's a contributing factor, but not a major one.

other factors had to do with people moving out. It's a matter of the time in which we live. Resources are greater, and it's a matter of moving out for more breathing space and comfort." In 1973. the board requested an Alabama attorney general's opinion on whether the Anniston City Schools could, if the board chose, turn its schools over to the Calhoun County school system. The attorney general responded with an opinion that the schools could be merged only if both school boards agreed to thr merger.

Even then, the matter would have to 'be put up to a referendum if 25 per cent of the electors in either school system objected to the merger. County school board members indicated opposition to the merger. The attorney general's opinion led the educators to believe it would not be feasible to merge the city and county schools, and it was within days of the opinion that the system agreed to the consent order outlining the present desegregation plan. THE ANNISTON SYSTEM faces other problems that remain to be solved in months to come. The Cobb Junior High facility is old.

and the board has said it will be replaced when funds become available. Funding is one problem. Where to put the new building is another. Sentiment is divided on whether the new facility should be built near Anniston High School or whether it should be built near the present junior high school. But whatever problems the school system now faces, they are not the problems that seemed to face the system five years ago when school authorities complained that they sdw.

no end to court orders and desegregation plans. basketball team is all-black, and the women's volleyball team is nearly all-black. The football team is integrated, however, they say. Officials in the city system say they have faced a minor problem connected with sports as a result of integration: With the exception of the Oxford schools, surrounding schools no longer play Anniston in any sport. Anniston's teams go to Montgomery, Birmingham or Huntsville to play.

THE ANNISTON teams are rated 4A and surrounding schools are 3A, but before integration a rivalry had existed between Anniston and area schools, Fulmer and Whitehead say. Whitehead says Anniston and the surrounding schools are losing potential income from sports because of the refusal of surrounding schools to play Anniston. However, Charles Boozer, superintendent of the Calhoun County schools, and principals of three of the closest county schools, say there is little direct connection between desegregation and the decision to cease playing Anniston. Howard Waldrep, principal of Walter Wellborn High School, which traditionally had a rivalry with Anniston, says it was the combination of Cobb and Anniston to form a "powerhouse" team that prompted the decision to drop the rivalry. Coaches, he says, feel their jobs are endangered when they lose games, so there is a tendency not to schedule games they know they will lose.

Waldrep says the gate at recent games with Anniston was not good anyhow. Although desegregation has proceeded in a calm manner in the Anniston schools, not all Anniston residents have fully accepted the idea. In particular, not all white junior high school age students are attending Cobb Junior High. Administrators and the students themselves attribute this to the location of Cobb in a generally low economic status section of the black community. SOME STUDENTS have taken refuge in private schools to avoid at least some years in the desegregated Anniston system.

Officials of Anniston Academy say it does not exist to promote segregation and that it does not open its doors to students seeking to flee desegregation. In fact, the academy has enrolled several black students. However, some junior high children do elect to attend the academy to avoid attending Cobb Junior High, and some of these then return to the public system for high school, according to Anniston school officials and some students themselves. And some students of junior high age elect to attend Northside Baptist Junior High School, a school which opened simultaneously wiffl the conversion of Cobb to a Junior High facility. Most of those students also return to Anniston for high school.

High school principal Whitehead says the school gets between 20 and 30 students per year from these private junior high schools. A SOURCE at Northside Baptist Junior High says the school has enrolled 60 students this year, a 40 per cent drop from last year's 100 students. She says she does not know the reason for the decline in enrollment. Dr. Fulmer says he can't guess what impact these private schools and other private and parochial schools in and Oxford have had on enrollment in the Anniston system.

He believes a far more significant number of families have left Anniston for residences just outside the city limits, where thev can attend county public schools. It is true that while the Anniston system has lost students fairly steadily in recent years, the Calhoun County system desegregation process has come along at their school. "At the beginning," one student said, "The blacks sat on one Side of the room and the whites on the other and glared at each other." But all that has passed now, according to the students. Students mix at school and after school, they said. One white ninth grade girl said she had a black friend spend the night with her and some of her best friends were black.

"I get together with many of my white friends after school at the YMCA," said one black student. Others said they remained with their neighborhood friends. The students said the only problem with desegregation now was caused by a small number of students who don't want to get along. Although the students said desegregation had worked smoothly in the classroom, they said side effects have hurt them. "Before I came to Cobb, I was looking forward to all the activities and one black student said.

Now clubs must meet during school hours or not at all and dances are held for a short time after school. The reason for this is busing. Athletic teams have also been victims of busing. The girl's volleyball team formed earlier this year was all black because white students could not stay after school to practice. The boy's basketball team is predominantly black for the same reason.

THE ONLY student organization which the students mentioned as bothered with racial problems was the marching band. One white student attributed it to learning and marching under pressure. A white member of the band, said he was waiting after school one afternoon after practice when black youths threw rocks at him. The students said one problem desegregation was with the school administration. To queens and presidents are elected for everything, according to the students.

"They just want to make sure that one group doesn't get ahead of the other," said one black student. Teachers at Cobb pointed out another side effect of desegregation has been increased bus duty. "This has added a big responsibility to our workload," a black teachenfaid. Junior high school students did not feel the quality of education had gone down. They felt they were getting a better education.

Cobb and Cooper are the only Anniston schools showing significant growth and one white ninth grade girl said; "I guess the word has finally gotten out it's all right to go to Cobb." By MONDE MURPHY Star Staff Writer Although overcrowded conditions prevail at Johnston Elementary and Cobb Junior High School, desegregation is It is working so well at Cobb that according to one student, "whites aren't afraid to go there anymore." Cobb's enrollment has grown from 435 whites and 731 blacks in the 1973-1974 school year to 539 whites, 788 blacks this year. The 1973-1974 school year was the first year for the desegregated junior high. Teachers and students at Johnston and Cobb are pleased with the progress the two schools have made as thousands of students have attended the schools under federal court order. Johnston, once a junior high school, has an enrollment of more than 1,000 students in grades one through six. Cobb Junior High was a black high school turned into a junior high school three years ago under court order.

Johnston enrolled students from five closed elementary schools and Cobb's enrollment consists of students from all the elementary schools. THE BIGGEST complaint teachers at Johnston had about the desegregation process was that it was done too fast and without the neccessary changes needed to convert the school from a junior high school to an elementary school. One white first-grade teacher said, "They just didn't do as much as they could have with the building as far as adding restrooms and lowering the water fountains." A white sixth-grade teacher said, "the discrepancy in the transition was in not preparing the blacks for a white school. Without upgrading the education of the black student before they came to Johnston we have lowered the education standards of the white students." Reading is more of a problem than any other subject, he said. The white first-grade teacher said, "I have to go slower with many of the black students." A black fourth grade teacher said one of the advantages of the desegregation process was that students were getting exposed to many things they would not have been had they remained in a segregated school like music, art and books.

A white ninth grader at Cobb said "I came to Cobb to learn to live rather than to go to school just to go to school just to learn." COBB STUDENTS seem relatively happy with the way the I I nr 1 "Ni 11 rater; i It but not always but not always Cafeteria seating often reflects voluntary segregation.