Among the kids on the last bus was Kirkland’s daughter, LaShawn. The younger Kirkland, who graduated last month from Perry Township’s Southport High School, made the same daily journey her mother did from their Forest Manor neighborhood, though hers was a much less eventful trip than her mother’s had been, filled mostly with kids sleeping on their way to class.

Mother and daughter were on opposite ends of a painful chapter in Indianapolis history that started out with noble ambitions. The lawyers and advocates who fought for the city’s busing program believed it would give all Marion County kids the same access to quality schools. They aimed to reduce racial tension in a city that had a long history of official policies designed to keep people apart.

But 35 years after the bus program began, it’s not clear what it achieved.

Indianapolis Public Schools elementary buildings are more segregated today than they were when the busing program began in 1981. Back then, just 4 percent of elementary schools had 75 percent or more students of one race—white or black. Today, after decades of departures by middle-class families who’ve flocked to the suburbs, the system’s share of segregated elementary schools is now up to 20 percent—five times more than when busing began.

Nearly all of the students in Indianapolis Public Schools today, 74 percent, are black or Hispanic. Most of the students, 71 percent, are poor enough to qualify for meal assistance. And while the district has a handful of high-performing schools, kids who are poor and black or Hispanic are more likely to attend a school with perpetually low test scores—a sign that kids aren’t getting the resources they need to succeed.

Why inequality and segregation continue in Indianapolis 60 years after the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education outlawed “separate but equal” schools is complicated, cutting across economic and racial lines.

LaTonya Kirkland says busing was well-intentioned. It meant that her children were able to get a better education than they could if they’d stayed close to home. Over the last 35 years, the busing program created opportunities for students to attend better-funded schools that have had access to more resources—less teacher turnover, higher salaries and better-maintained buildings.

But as Kirkland sees it, busing bears some of the blame for what’s happened to her neighborhood. Looking around Forest Manor today, there’s not much left of the neighborhood she remembers from her youth—and it’s hard not to point a finger, at least in part, at busing.

By many accounts, black neighborhoods had to sacrifice more than white neighborhoods for integration. Only black students were bused out to the townships—white students were not ordered to come into Indianapolis Public Schools or to help remedy the divide. Neighborhood schools in Forest Manor and throughout the city have closed as students have left, leaving families confused about where to go and dissatisfied with the few options they have. “It did a disservice to that community,” Kirkland said. “I can honestly say I would not move there now.”