Anything but Busing

Chicago weighs a hotly disputed voluntary integration plan

"I'm not going in there wringing my hands," snapped Chicago School Superintendent Joseph P. Hannon last week as he prepared to face critics on the Illinois Board of Education. Concerned about the persistent separation of races in the city's 512,000-student public school system, third largest in the U.S. (after New York City and Los Angeles), the state board put Chicago's schools on probation in 1976. It will take another hard look at segregation in the system at a public meeting later this month. If the board does not like what it finds, it could move to halt state and federal education aid to Chicago, thereby cutting the city's $1.2 billion annual school budget in half.

Chief object of the board's current scrutiny is Chicago's first citywide school desegregation program, which was unveiled earlier this year by Hannon, 46, a feisty and effective administrator who took office in 1975 after serving as one of the city's assistant superintendents. Hannon's plan, known as Access to Excellence, avoids mandatory busing. Instead, it permits pupils to transfer to any Chicago school with vacancies if the transfer aids desegregation. More significant, ATE seeks integration by creating magnet schools that offer advanced programs to qualified students who live anywhere in the city, and by setting up more than 100 part-time career counseling, cultural and remedial programs. These include natural science courses at the lakefront Shedd Aquarium and courses in hotel management offered at two downtown Holiday Inns.

Those part-time offerings have so far been underwhelmed with applicants, but some full-time ATE programs are S.R.O. No fewer than 1,521 students applied for 805 places in three "classical" schools that offer enriched programs from kindergarten through the sixth grade. La-Salle Elementary School, an ATE language academy, received 1,000 applicants for 450 slots. According to preliminary head counts, ATE has drawn 18,100 students to desegregated courses for the first time. Says Hannon, "The program is only three months old, and I think we're off to a solid start."

Hannon's critics see the program as too little, too late. They complain that ATE's 18,100-student turnout falls short of the 30,000 Hannon expected this year, and even that figure is a minute fraction of the system's total enrollment. The Chicago Urban League School that two-thirds of the city's 512 elementary schools remain either 90% white or 90% nonwhite. The state board points out that state rules require every school to have a racial composition approximating that of the school system as a whole; yet in Chicago, where 23% of students are white and 77% are nonwhite, Hannon wants a minimum racial mix of only 90%-10% by 1983.

The Urban League has called for mandatory integration quotas, and the state board believes there should at least be back-up planning for a mandatory program. Hannon insists that quality education is more important than racial balance. Emphatically, he says: "If we get a program that is 99% black, and the parents consider it a good solid program, we'll continue it. We're not going to close the door and turn the lights out because it isn't integrated."

A key reason Hannon has resisted mandatory desegregation is his fear of white flight. Whites currently are less than half of Chicago's population, down from two-thirds in 1970. Maintains Hannon: "I would not like ever to recommend anything that would further reduce the middle-class tax base of this city."

The magnet school program is not Hannon's only concern. In 1977 the school system lost an eight-year legal battle against a federal order for reassignment of teachers and principals to increase integration. Hannon thereupon transferred 3,500 teachers and principals in an integration program that Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano called "a model for the nation." But last month a federal judge declared the scheme unconstitutional because it exempted teachers over age 55, thereby discriminating against younger teachers. Meanwhile, Hannon has ignored a recommendation from the school board's City-Wide Advisory Committee, made up of church, labor and business groups, that the schools prepare a contingency plan for mandatory pupil integration.

Chicago's Tribune and Sun-Times, as well as major Loop business leaders, have endorsed ATE. Not even the critics have urged a program of mandatory busing for the entire city. "That would be ridiculous," concedes Carey Preston, one of three blacks on Chicago's school board, all of whom voted against trying ATE. Local insiders are betting that the state board will take no action this month tougher than continuing Chicago's probationary status, while settling for Hannon's promise to expand ATE and its brand of voluntary integration.

There seems to be a consensus among Chicagoans that an expensive and bitterly resisted busing program, like the one imposed in Los Angeles this fall by a federal district judge, would not lead either to quality education or to integration. University of Chicago Sociologist James Coleman, whose antibusing views have stirred academic controversy, believes a voluntary plan is the only way lasting desegregation can be achieved in Chicago. Says he: "The apparent solution requires going back to the fundamental issue of equal education opportunity, regardless of race. Every child should have an opportunity to attend a school other than the one that is imposed by residence."

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