“It’s sad that it’s ending,” said Tom Williams, superintendent of Kirkwood schools. “For Kirkwood, having that diversity has been really rich for all our kids.”

Mixed results

Across the region, African-American graduates who participated in the program over the years give varied accounts of their experiences. Some remember the cultural isolation. Some talk of the profound impact that their exposure to classmates from different economic and racial backgrounds had on their own trajectory.

Octavia Sanders, who lives in the city and has three daughters going by bus to Parkway schools, said she signed her girls up because of her own experience as a transfer student in the West County district the 1990s.

“I loved it,” said Sanders, who does accounting work, during an interview last spring. “It encouraged me to go off and get a bachelor’s degree and go further. It definitely opens your eyes to way more possibilities. I knew I wanted to go to college.”

Over the years, researchers would evaluate how much better African-American students were faring in county schools. The results have been mixed.