Lansing State Journal from Lansing, Michigan • Page 7

Lansing State Journal Sunday, April 5, 1998 7A SIlansinCjSCHools Schools: Different approach offered Continued FROM 1A branch, applauds Lansing schools' commitment to integration. But the Lansing's road to desegregation The move to mandatory busing in Lansing schools didn't come easy. It took several resolutions, a recall election and a myriad of judicial rulings before the issue finally was settled. May 1954 U.S. Supreme Court rules in Brown vs.

Topeka (Kan.) Board of Education that school districts can't segregate schools based on race. September 1972 Lansing Board of Education appoints advisory committee to develop a desegregation plan for all schools. June 1972 Lansing Board of Education votes 5-3 to adopt a four-year desegregation and busing plan affecting 13 elementary schools. 1972 A group called Citizens for Neighborhood Schools gathers enough signatures to recall the five school board members who voted for the plan. November 1972 Five board members voted out of office.

January 1973 Five candidates, all endorsed by Citizens for Neighborhood Schools, are elected to board. February 1973 New board repeals desegregation plan and reinstitutes neighborhood system for the 1973-74 school year. August 1973 U.S. District Judge Noel Fox issues preliminary injunction against school board, reinstating the desegregation plan for the 1973-74 school year. December 1975 After two years of court battles, Fox rules the board "created and maintained" a segregated school system and orders the district to submit a comprehensive plan to "end racial isolation." May 1976 Fox orders implementation of expanded desegregation plan, affecting 20 schools, for 1976-77 school year.

About 2,400 students are bused the first year. Source: Lansing School District ROD SANFORDLansing State Journal I know: Tiffany Glover raises her hand to answer questions in a class at Gunnison Elementary School. She is surrounded by Robert Tostevin (left), Brian Frye (behind arm) and Lindsey Rey. irfSr i Jmain weakness of desegregation is schools didn't Afriran- i American heritage a more promi-! nent place in the classroom, he said. "I mink that where the fault comes I 4n is that the dominant culture doesn't want to recognize other cul-, Vures," he said.

"White people feel 'African Americans should learn to accept their culture and be part of it." I The ideal is for students to attend schools with a multicultural envi-ronment and learn about all hires equally, Caldwell said. "The fact that you have a choice is good," he said of charter schools. "For some people an education that "reinforces that you have value as an African American is what's needed to get the children to succeed." The NAACP and school district have had no conflict agreeing on the racial ratios at the schools, so the court has never had to get involved again. Halik said he believes it's the NAACP's place, as the original plaintiff, to challenge the charter schools. Busing patterns have changed little since the 1976 court order took effect, and only three buildings out of 34 have crept slightly out of compliance.

But the racial makeup of the district has changed widely in the last 20 years. When the court issued the desegregation order, about 30 percent of Lansing schools students 1 were minority. Last year, the district's minority population was 53 percent, with 34 percent of students being African American. Despite the movement jby African Americans to charters, the district's ratio of minority students has remained essentially unexchanged the last five years. The city's changing makeup is one reason the district has just be-( gun to look at a sweeping plan to change school and busing bound- aries.

The plan could renew the idea 'of sending children to schools in neighborhoods. Changing times also have made 'segregation at charter schools different from the systematic division once existed in Lansing, said Canady, a driving force behind desegregation as a Lansing school board member in the 1970s. Before desegregation, real-estate 'redlining determined where African 3 Americans lived and ultimately where their children attended school. Busing helped erase those boundaries and pushed diversification of neigh- borhoods, said Canady, who was repealled along with four other school board members because they sup- ported busing. Parents today aren't forced to live in predominantly African-American neighborhoods or send their children to a predominantly African- American school, she said.

Parents make an extra effort to enroll their children in Sankofa and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Academy, the city's second predominantly black charter school, and make sure 'n they get to school every day, she said. "It's about choice," Canady said. 0 "That's what it was about all along. --You have a choice. If there are par- ents who want to (send their children to all-black charter schools), that's fine.

But there are many par-ents who do not." When Canady served on the school board, all the African-American children attended aging inner- 1 city schools Main Street, Michi-' 1 gan Avenue and Kalamazoo. The student bodies were more than 90-percent minority. Modern southside "schools Kendon and Cavanaugh were primarily white. Main Street, Michigan Avenue and Kalamazoo have since been -closed because of declining enroll-ment. But the changes at Kendon and Cavanaugh are dramatic.

They now have minority populations of about 40 percent. The state's charter-school law, which allows people to form alter-native schools independent of the local school system, gave African Americans a chance to create schools that offer a different approach. They are funded with public mon-ey and answer to their chartering agencies universities, community colleges or local school districts. Sankofa, the charter school, goes beyond teaching about African cus-toms. The school day is structured around African principles and ideals, from a daily affirmation to start the day to the incorporation of -African dance into physical education.

Swahili words spelling out Afri-; can principles ana posters of an-Icient African kings share school 0 walls with models of the solar sys-? tern and maps of the states. "Before I just learned about Christopher Columbus," said Sierra Byers, 12, who used to attend Landing's Attwood Elementary School. "Now 1 know more and I'm exposed to more." But other cultures are taught as 1 well and the all-black faculty and student body doesn't breed intoler- ance or misunderstanding, said Riv- i ers, the school's administrator. The only rule at the school is respect: For one's self, the environment and all others. African-American students are by European culture on in their neighborhoods and in books, she said.

Instilling them with African culture and val- ROD SANFORDLansing State Journal Calling on the class: "I wouldn't trade my kids for anything," teacher Kristan Small-Grimes says of her Gunnison Elementary School class. "It's about choice. That's what it was about all along. You have a choice." Hortense Canady former school board member ues at school only balances the nals, she said. "We are not espousing separatism," Rivers said.

"What we're doing is teaching a culture, which is what the system has always done. But it's always been a European culture." Sankofa and Shabazz, both in their third years, can't turn away students because of race. But of the more than 300 students who attend the two schools this year, all but three are African American. Those three students, two white children and an Asian child, are enrolled at Shabazz. Shabazz also has a white teacher and another of Indian, descent.

Even Mid-Michigan Public School Academy, the state's largest charter school, has attracted most of its approximately 1,000 students from the African-American community. Nearly two-thirds are African American, although its curriculum doesn't emphasize African culture. A federal study released a year ago shows the state's charters have the highest percentage of minority students in the nation. Nearly 53 percent of the 4,639 students attending charter schools at the time were minorities, compared with 22 percent at all Michigan public schools. Charters have tended to develop in urban centers, but some of the other states like Arizona and Minnesota that have passed charter-school laws do not have populations with as many minorities as Michigan, said Michael Boulus, executive director of the Middle Cities Education Association at Michigan State University, which represents 27 urban schools in the state.

Plus, several Michigan charters, including Sierra Leone Educational Outreach Academy in Detroit, offer a specific African-American emphasis. Two schools in the Upper Penin-sula stress Native-American culture. The trend toward separation is disturbing to Boulus. "I'm not sure that's healthy," he said. One of the advantages of urban schools is their diversity and students who attend them are "much more tolerant when they grow up as adults," Boulus said.

Carl Candoli, the former Lansing superintendent hired on the condition that he desegregate the schools, said he's not surprised African Americans have taken advantage of the charter-school laws. He said they were forced into it by years of rejection from the system. "What charter schools might be showing us is we lost the intimacy and family-like atmosphere of schools," Goenner said. Shabazz was founded by members of the Parent Support Network, which formed because of concerns that Lansing schools weren't meeting the needs of African Americans. Parents had complained of a lack of communication, feeling and expectations from teachers in Lansing schools, said Ruby Helton, the building's administrator.

Anthony Dixon, a teacher and assistant principal at Shabazz, said parent involvement is the hallmark of the school and the family-like atmosphere has led to success. He has moved with students as they've graduated so they and their parents don't have to get used to a new teacher. "The one thing we give up is the extra cultural experience," Dixon said. "The question you have to ask is 'What are the other schools giving Rina Risper said Shabazz offers her a more flexible program for her 5-year-old son, Gianni Tripoli. He knows his multiplication tables and reads at a third-grade level, she said.

The traditional schools near her, Harley Franks and Wainwright ele-mentaries, offered her all-day kindergarten. Gianni is in second grade at Shabazz. "I couldn't even imagine my son being in kindergarten right now," she said. The busing program in Lansing has tended to make some parents feel disconnected from their children's educations, said Kristan Small-Grimes, a teacher at Gunni-sonville Elementary School. Gunni-sonville is in the Lansing School District but is in DeWitt Township miles outside the city limits.

Students are bused in from northwest Lansing near St. Lawrence Hospital to desegregate the school, which is in a mostly white neighborhood. Minority students enrich the class and add perspectives to discussions about slavery and other historical and social issues, Small-Grimes said. But some parents have trouble getting involved because of the 20-minute drive. "I wouldn't trade my kids for anything, but the fact that their parents have to hustle so much to be involved with their education is unfair," she said.

Tanoi Jackson, whose two African-American children are bused from Wisconsin Avenue to Gunni-sonville every day, said she considered moving her children to a closer school through the district's schools of choice program. "We're within walking distance of Willow," she said. "I always have thought that (busing) was a little far-fetched. The school is way out in the country." But Jackson has grown comfort- "1 see the reason for it," said Candoli, now retired and living in Austin, Texas. "They can say, 'We're doing our own More power to them, I guess.

"But I think it's wrong." Candoli, who is white, deliberately moved his family to the Sexton High School area so they could attend school in a multicultural environment. "It served the purpose for my kids," he said. "I reel so sorry for people who are so scared they won't realize that's a needed component of education." Single-race charter schools walk a thin line between innovation and discrimination, said Gary Orfield, a Harvard University professor of education and public policy who runs a research project on school desegregation. The co-author of "Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. the Board of Education" said he sees nothing wrong with alternative schools, even those that center on a specific culture.

But charters, as public schools, have to be careful not to discriminate in hiring or enrollment. That goes beyond not turning students or teachers away because of race, he said. Charters can't create an environment intimidating to a person of any race, he said. "If the state ends up subsidizing a system that is segregated in a serious way, and it appears to have been done intentionally, that raises a really big 14th-Amendment question," Orfield said. "Before I just learned about Christopher Columbus.

Now I know more and I'm exposed to more." Sierra Byers Sankofa student The 14th Amendment provides that all citizens have the right to equal protection to the law. Because of it, any schools that create a discriminatory atmosphere could be open to a lawsuit, as would the agency that charters them, he said. Jim Goenner, director of the charter schools office at Central Michigan University, which charters Lansing's schools, said predominantly African-American charter schools aren't discriminating. Sankofa and Shabazz don't attract parents solely with their African-American focus. The schools also give parents a voice in a smaller, more responsive system, he said.

rh 0 in and around downtown. Akers forged a longlasting friendship with Paull Fry, an African-American teacher. Fry said he was likely one of the first black teachers many of the white students bused to Michigan Avenue ever had. Fry is gratified to see the change in the city since those days, when he watches people of all races going to the mall and playing sports together. Students who attend all-black charter schools are missing out, he said.

"I was asked to leave Lansing to go to work at Sankofa Shule," he said. "I turned it down. I'm a teacher and I love my job. I want to teach children and I don't think you teach according to color "We're going back to segregation, and I'm against that" Janice Cabule shares some of the same views as Fry about education being color-blind. But the Lansing mother, who is African American, doesn't share his views about segregated classrooms.

Cabule sends her youngest daughter, Alexandra, 9, to Sankofa Shule, where all her classmates are African American. She sends her oldest daughter, Danielle, 17, to Lansing Catholic Central, where she is one of a handful of African-American students in a school that is 96 percent white. She made the choices she did for purely education reasons. The schools challenge her daughters' minds and push them to improve, she said. Sankofa, for instance, offers four elementary foreign languages, small classes and more individualized attention.

"You have to separate the color, and you have to look at the said. "Once you look at that, you're going to put your children in the best environment for them." able with the teachers at Gunnison-ville and is satisfied with the education. Now she's thinking about moving closer to Gunnisonville. She said she hasn't considered Sankofa, Shabazz or even Mid-Michigan, which is only a few blocks away. "My children are going to live in a world with people of every color, so they should go to a school and live with people of every color," she said.

Anthony Wix Aguilera, 11, an American Indian student in Small-Grimes' class, said he wouldn't want to go to a school with just people from his culture. "I want to meet different colored people," he said. "I want to know African people, white people. I want to make friends. I don't want to be racist." Sam Akers bus ride between Kessler Drive and Michigan Avenue in the 1970s lasted only a few minutes.

But he might as well have hopped a rocket ship to a new world. The south Lansing neighborhood he grew up in only had playmates and parents who looked very much like him. The 10-year-old's new school was much older and the faces around him much darker. But, more than 20 years later, he remembers the experience as more of a cultural awakening than culture shock. "I was from that Southern family where racism and prejudice was alive and well," said Akers, now 35 and owner of Big George's Home Appliance Mart in Okemos.

"YouVe gotta think it helped create a better mindset for me, being able to interact with black people." Akers was among the first elementary school students bused from Lansing's south side to integrate predominantly black schools.