Monday, Apr. 03, 1972

Still Slipping

In the aftermath of President Nixon's slashing attack on busing, the nation continued to slip away from its intention to integrate its schools. Amid a growing but still ineffective counterattack by Nixon's critics, there were these major developments:

>Officials of HEW, the arm of the Government that had for years pressured Southern school districts to desegregate, announced that they had lifted their threat to cut off federal funds from school districts that have not yet complied with civil rights laws--at least until Congress decides what to do about the President's antibusing legislation. Most immediately relieved was Maryland's Prince Georges County, which had been faced with the possible loss of some $14 million.

-- The Justice Department, charged with enforcing civil rights laws in the courts, went into a U.S. district court in Detroit to urge postponement of a ruling on what Detroit officials must do to desegregate their schools. Yet there was evidence that federal judges might not go along with such delays. Rebuffing similar arguments from school officials in Memphis, Federal Judge Robert McRae said that his court had no authority to postpone action merely because Congress may act in unknown --and possibly unconstitutional--ways to change the law in the future. He is duty-bound to observe existing law.

-- The rise of local resistance to new integration plans (see EDUCATION) was dramatized by the school board of Buffalo, which refused by a 4-3 vote to comply with an order by New York Education Commissioner Ewald Nyquist to present a plan for a better racial balance in its 98 public schools. When New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller endorsed Nixon's busing moratorium and urged state education officials to review their probusing policies, he was stiffly rebuked by the New York Board of Regents, which supervises all public education in the state. "In a multiracial society," a Regents statement said, "a person cannot be considered educated if he remains unexposed on a personal basis to the cultural richness and the individual diversity of his neighbors."

-- The fate of the President's busing moratorium and proposals for improving inferior schools remained in doubt in Congress. Although they probably enjoy strong support, they are opposed by some key committee chairmen, including the House Education Committee's Carl Perkins of Kentucky. As hearings opened in a Senate subcommittee, HEW Secretary Elliot Richardson defended Nixon's proposals. Missouri Democrat Thomas Eagleton bluntly branded Richardson's arguments for the President's compensatory education plan "hypocritical hogwash."

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