Bill Could Upend Cross-County Busing In Louisville

To address racial segregation, students in Louisville, Ky. have long been bused to schools across the city. A bill advancing in the state legislature would end that program.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

For years, students in Louisville have been bused across the city and county, part of an effort to create more diverse schools. But as Ryland Barton from Kentucky Public Radio reports, a bill in the state legislature could upend that.

RYLAND BARTON, BYLINE: A couple of months ago, Shan'Taya Cowan got into Harvard.

SHAN'TAYA COWAN: I don't know. I just froze. I just saw the first word, which is, like, congratulations, and I was - didn't know what to do because, like, it was never really, like, an option for me.

BARTON: Cowan is one of the successes of Louisville's busing program. For the last four years, she woke up early to take a bus to Fairdale High School, 15 miles away from her home. She says she got a better education because of it.

COWAN: It's just way easier to, like, make a connection with people and, like, build a bond. And it's, like, you know that you have a lot of, like, people to help you along the way.

BARTON: Cowan is scared that ending the busing program would keep future kids in her neighborhood from experiencing the same benefits she did.

COWAN: They're going to grow up in a bubble. Like, all they're going to know is the kids that live down the street, around the corner and next door. Like, that's all they're going to know.

BARTON: The bill making its way through the legislature would give priority school assignments to students who live closest to schools. That flies in the face of how Louisville makes those assignments now. For middle and high schools, the local school board has drawn broad boundaries that include distant neighborhoods to promote diversity. And elementary students have to choose from a handful of schools based on their home addresses, some of which are far away. But the policy has its detractors. Louisville resident Peter Massey's seven-year-old daughter wasn't matched to the elementary school just three blocks away. She was assigned to a poorly performing school on the other side of town.

PETER MASSEY: We didn't want to put our - at the time - six-year-old on a school bus for 45, 50 minutes a day each way.

BARTON: The Masseys ended up enrolling their daughter in a nearby Catholic school. And he says they're pleased with their decision, but he still wants the policy changed.

MASSEY: To not be able to have that choice to go to school close to there and be involved in that and have our kids be able to know other kids in the neighborhood that go to school together just was a shock to us.

(SOUNDBITE OF RIOT)

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Inaudible).

BARTON: In 1975, riots broke out in Louisville after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the city to begin busing students to integrate white schools in the suburbs and largely black ones in the city. At suburban Fairdale High School, where Shan'Taya Cowan goes, people through breaks through bus and car windows, and armed guards were put on school buses. Louisville resident Amy Shir was in middle school at the time and had to switch from a white school to a predominantly black one.

AMY SHIR: There were people throwing bricks at each others cars. There were riots. I remember a lot of white flight, particularly into Catholic schools. It was a real tumultuous time.

BARTON: Louisville was released from desegregation orders in 2000, but the city has kept its policies in place with several tweaks over the years. Shir has two children in Jefferson County Public Schools. She doesn't want the policies to go away.

SHIR: As someone who wants to raise children that are open-minded and compassionate and whatnot, I think we start young. I think we get our kids together young so they get to know each other.

BARTON: The neighborhood schools bill has already passed Kentucky's House of Representatives and awaits a hearing in the state Senate, which has passed similar measures in recent years. For NPR News, I'm Ryland Barton in Louisville, Ky.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.