Kansas.com: Education
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- A history of desegregation in Wichita
• 1871-1905: Wichita public schools are integrated.
• 1906: The district sets up a "separate but equal" wing at Park School for black students. The segregated wing is abolished the next school year after the state Supreme Court rules that it is illegal.
• 1909: The Legislature passes a law allowing segregated schools in Wichita.
• 1912: The district requires black children to attend one of four new schools: Toussaint L'Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, Grand or Eighteenth. Black students living outside Wichita's "colored colony" are transported to L'Ouverture. In coming years, more schools will be built to handle the growing minority population.
• 1952: The school board ends forced segregation, allowing black students living in predominantly white areas to attend schools closest to home. The change sparks "white flight."
- District hopes to alter busing plan
Roughly 19,500 students ride Wichita school buses to class.
Only 1,370 are bused to integrate schools, compared to 5,000 in 1971, the year Wichita started "forced busing."
The district has changed, school officials say, and so should the busing plan.
Tuesday, the school board will hear a proposal from the administration that eventually could lead to the end of its long-standing integration agreement with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.
The district has discussed ending busing for integration before. The time is right, officials say, because:
- Supreme Court ruling presents opportunity
School systems nationwide have struggled to make sense of the Supreme Court's June ruling on voluntary busing programs in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, but the decision could present an opportunity for districts such as Wichita to find creative solutions to maintaining diversity, one expert says.
"Schools as institutions reflect the status of the kids who are in them. The more you mix up those elements in terms of diversity and (socioeconomic status), the better it is for all children," says Columbia University sociologist Amy Stuart Wells.
She notes that Wichita schools' racial makeup closely mirrors the national average for K-12 students. Housing patterns aren't likely to naturally integrate the city, she says, but the district could use other measures.
"They can put their heads in the sand and say everyone wants neighborhood schools, or they can think it about it more dynamically."
To Stuart Wells, some "dynamic" solutions might include planning to build new schools on the borders between neighborhoods or creating magnet schools that have as their theme geographic diversity so that all Wichita neighborhoods are represented. Instead of having a "forced" busing plan, Wichita's could become voluntary, she says, so that those parents who want their kids to help integrate schools can do so.
- Are some subjects worth extra?
Kansas lacks enough teachers in general, but that shortage is particularly noticeable in math, science and special education.
Several state lawmakers who met with north-central Kansas school officials on Friday said districts should consider higher pay for those teachers. Districts generally pay teachers based on their education and years of experience regardless of grade level or subject.
Rep. Clay Aurand, R-Courtland, chairman of the House Education Committee, said education should be treated like any other business that competitively compensates workers with in-demand skills.
Rep. Deena Horst, R-Salina, vice chairwoman of the education committee, said she agrees that districts need to find ways to pay more to teachers in math, science and special education. Horst is an art teacher at Salina Middle School and has been on the National Education Association-Salina contract negotiating team in the past.
"A few years ago, you'd have never heard me say that," Horst said. "Those of us on the side of the teachers associations are going to have to take a look at our past position on that."
- Families affected by busing share their experiences
Behind the numbers and the legalities of busing are individual narratives of families who have grown up with it.
Northwest High School senior Alicia Fullilove has been bused her entire school career, starting with elementary school at Chisholm Trail. Fullilove, a member of the busing task force, says she enjoyed that school.
But she remembers feeling isolated and lonely when she started at Northwest, a school few of her middle-school friends attended.
"The good thing is, you're forced into a situation where you have to cope," she said, and diverse schools help students learn about cultures other than their own.
Fullilove said she doesn't think busing should be mandatory, but should be an option.
- English class with no ABCs
Before Bob Jansen can teach English to the adult immigrants in his lowest-level class, he has to show about a quarter of them how to hold a pencil.
"It takes a lot of patience to teach this class," Jansen said before his students recited the alphabet and practiced vowel sounds during a recent phonics lesson at the Don Bosco Community Center.
Adult education teachers like Jansen are finding themselves starting from scratch as uneducated immigrants and refugees from conflict regions of Africa and rural areas of Mexico and Central America, Asia and the Middle East flock to the United States.
Jansen's students are among an estimated 400,000 legal and 350,000 illegal immigrants who are unable to read or write even in their native language, according to a July 2007 report from the Migration Policy Institute, an independent Washington think tank.
During one recent session, Jansen drew male and female stick figures on the dry erase board and taped pictures of different modes of transportation alongside the sketches. Students crafted sentences like, "He is on the orange airplane."
- Eagle: Refusal of access to busing meeting is violation
The Wichita Eagle has requested an investigation into what it believes to be violations of the Kansas Open Meetings Act by the Wichita school district.
Lyndon Vix, a lawyer representing The Eagle, filed a complaint with Sedgwick County Attorney Nola Foulston and with the Kansas attorney general's office on Thursday, saying the district's refusal to allow access to meetings of a community task force on busing constitutes a violation of the act.
District officials say the task force meetings are not subject to open-meetings laws because the group was created to advise Superintendent Winston Brooks on issues concerning the district's integration plan, not to develop a new plan.
Foulston's office received the request Friday, spokeswoman Georgia Cole said. She did not know how long it would take to review it.
According to the complaint, which cites information from the district's Web site, the task force was intended to "study the (busing for integration) plan and work with Superintendent Brooks to develop a recommendation."
- Recess limits draw criticism from parents and experts
Children at the Oakdale School here returned this fall to learn that their traditional recess had gone the way of the Gumby lunchbox.
No longer could they let off their youthful energy by cavorting outside for 22 minutes of unstructured play, or perhaps with a vigorous game of tag or dodgeball. Such games had been virtually banned by the principal, Mark S. Johnson, along with kickball, soccer and other "body-banging" activities, as he put it, where knees -- and feelings -- might get bruised.
Instead, children are encouraged to jump rope, play with hula hoops or fling a Frisbee. Balls are parceled out under close supervision by playground monitors.
The traditional recess, a rite of grade school, is endangered not only in the Oakdale School. From Wyoming to New Jersey, recess is being rethought and pared down.
In the face of this, a national campaign called Rescuing Recess, whose sponsors include the National Parent Teacher Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has taken hold at many schools where parents and children fear that recess is endangered.
- Officials urge parents to update school records
A man's attempt to remove a student from a Wichita middle school Monday so he could have sex with her proves why it's important for parents to update school contact information, officials said Thursday.
Jesus Gallardo-Gonzalez at first claimed to be the student's father, but Curtis Middle School staff were suspicious because the identification he provided looked phony. He also wasn't listed on the girl's pupil information form as someone to contact in case of emergency.
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