From Chad Rogers’ Dead Pelican comes this story:
Plan to end forced busing blasted
Racism alleged at tense board hearing
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
By Barri Bronston
An overflow crowd of mostly African-American parents, clergy, politicians and teachers packed a town hall meeting in Kenner Monday night to voice outrage and suspicions about a proposal by a Jefferson Parish School Board member to end forced busing and return to neighborhood schools.Protesters said the proposal by board member Ellen Kovach is nothing more than a veiled, racist attempt to separate black students from white students. They vowed to fight it with as many people and resources as they can muster.
“I distrust your motives, and I distrust the motives of the board,” said Martha Jean Williams, one of more than a dozen speakers who blasted Kovach and her attempt to free the board of 1971 desegregation order. “And I will not sit here and let you get away with this. It is not in the best interest of our children for them to be segregated.”
1971? They’re talking about a court order dated 1971? School districts fighting for every dime they spend. Teachers crying for pay raises. Tet scores plummeting and teachers asking for more parental involvement. And we’re still paying for buses to haul kids to schools far outside their neighborhoods?
The Rev. Joseph Walker of Second Highway Baptist Church of Marrero described Kovach as “David Duke with a dress” and called on the board “not to put this mess to sleep but to kill it.”
REv. Walker, if you can’t argue your point with facts and logic, then resort to calling names. That always serves to keep discussions at a highly mature level.
Kovach, a first-year board member, proposed her plan for a neighborhood-based school system in August, saying it is not racially motivated but an attempt to send students to schools closest to their homes. The plan, she said, would shorten the time students spend on buses and improve parents’ access to their children’s schools.
Oh, no! We don’t want those little brats home any sooner than they have to be.
“Neighborhood-based school system”? That implies that a parent would actually take the initiative to show up at a school. These people aren’t talking about themselves being active in their kids’ schools. They’re talking about YOU being active in their kids’ schools. It’s not a matter of funding. State law sees that all schools are funded at a very satisfactory (to anybody but a “professional educator”) level, no matter where the school is located within a district.
The proposal, which would affect about 1,000 of the system’s 42,000 students, met with an angry backlash, prompting Kovach to table the matter to give residents a forum for expressing their views. A second public hearing is scheduled Wednesday at 5 p.m. at the Jefferson Parish Council Chambers, 200 Derbigny St., Gretna. The board is scheduled to vote on the proposal Nov. 7.
We’re not talking “equal treatment” here. We’re talking preferential treatment. Of course, “if it helps just ONE child…”
Monday night’s hearing followed an hourlong protest organized by the Rev. Byron Clay, regional vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights group co-founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957.
More than two dozen protesters carried photographs of King and chanted hymns such as “We Shall Overcome.” They then moved into the meeting room, which by the start of the hearing had filled to overflow with more than 200 people.
Apparently Rev. Clay of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has been worried that he’s not getting enough “face time”.
Note the obligatory references to Dr. Martin Luther King. They wave his picture around like a bunch of jihadis waving pictures of the ayatollah of the week and sing protest songs, trying to relive the glory days of the struggle. “Content of their charcter” has nothing to do with this bunch.
Mrs. Kovach speaks:
…
“I know this is a sensitive issue with a painful past,” she said, “but I hope you will open your minds to the facts because if you do, you will see that this is in no way, shape or form an attempt to resegregate our schools and there is no racist intent driving this motion.”
She said she has studied the demographics of the school system as of Sept. 1 and believes the schools will continue to be diverse if her proposal passes, changing by only 2 or 3 percent. She added that some schools will actually become more diverse without forced busing.
There you go. She’s made the mistake of trying to make sense, to present a bit of logic. These protesters want nothing of logic. They “know” that busing is their right, a way to equality, and they don’t want to actually improve anything…
Barnes accused Kovach of using the African-American community to advance her own political agenda and said she will do everything in her power to defeat the plan. She told Kovach to “get her facts straight” when Kovach accused her of refusing to educate herself on how the proposal could be beneficial to black students.
Barnes, Clay and other opponents said they don’t see anything redeeming in the plan. “It is ill-timed, it is insulting, it is racially insensitive and it is suspicious,” Clay said. “That’s why it is important that we dramatize and protest. We have a moral obligation to take a stand.”
And so there you have it. Thirty-five years of forced busing by Federal court order. It hasn’t measurably improved things. But it’s important because we say it’s important. So you just live with it. Oh, and keep paying. And when test scores aren’t up to par, and the schools still can’t graduate our kids with a high school diploma and an eighth grade education, we’ll all get together and wave pictures and sing more songs and see if we can’t get another Federal court order to make things even better…
During the earlier protest, Clay vowed to draw national attention to the proposal if it passes. “We will not let this issue go away.”
I wonder how many more of these court orders are still in place?