40 years of segregation
THE SCHOOL REFORM Commission held a special meeting yesterday, during which it announced an imminent settlement of a 40-year-old school desegregation case.
That's right: it was 40 years ago, in 1970, when the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission sued the school district, maintaining that minority students were not given education equal to those of white students.
An order resulted for the district to bus students to get better racial balance in the schools.
We don't know what's more head-spinning: That school superintendents ignored the court order for four decades, that judges refused to enforce the order, or that the city - political leaders, parents, educators, citizens - were content to live with the symbolic tarnish of an unresolved desegregation case for so long.
Given all that, it should come as no surprise that shameful inequality in public education still exists. Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's five-year plan played a key role in the settlement, since its initiatives mirrored the recommendations of Judge Doris Smith-
Ribner.
Here's a final head-spinner: President Obama was nine years old when the case first hit the courts. *
