Almost Free in Boston

By Ezra Bowen

After 13 years of battling over desegregation, Boston's school system still chafes under federal-court jurisdiction. That acrimonious situation headed toward a solution this month, when U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr., 65, made known that he would return control of the public schools to the city's 13-member school committee. At the news, a former Massachusetts judge commented, "He couldn't be leaving soon enough."

Garrity has been resented ever since he took over Boston's notoriously racist system in 1974 to ensure compliance with his own edicts for desegregation. When the judge ordered thousands of students bused across neighborhood lines and created nine new school districts, parts of the city erupted in riots and demonstrations. The fighting subsided, but schools deteriorated as whites and middle-class blacks fled. Garrity, an unassuming, private man who seemed puzzled by the furor he was creating, stuck to his course, issuing more than 400 desegregation directives so complex that some students were carted to a different school every year. Local control and interest in the schools all but vanished. By 1981 the system was such a mess that it had gone through three superintendents in a single year.

Then things began to improve under yet another superintendent, the outspoken Robert Spillane, 50. From 1981 to 1985, Spillane reduced incidents of school violence by 70%, eliminated a $31 million budget deficit and raised the majority of student-achievement scores to equal or exceed the national medians in math and English. Garrity, too, seemed to be winning some converts to his tough policies. "He's the bravest guy in Boston in the past 15 years," says Jerome Winegar, headmaster of now thoroughly integrated South Boston High School.

Still, the schools remained in trouble. Last year Boston's enrollment had plummeted to 56,000, from 93,000 in 1973. Whites account for just 27% of the remaining students. Illiteracy in high schools stands at 20%, the dropout rate at about 48%. But Garrity, displaying an odd mixture of public belligerence and personal shyness, refused invitations from Superintendent Spillane to visit the schools. "The pathetic part," says Spillane, "is that it seems that he's almost in fear of discovering what is really going on."

This month Spillane departed for a quieter job, running the Fairfax County, Va., schools. Garrity has decided that the school committee has the "willingness and ability" to run a desegregated system. But he has set such stringent conditions for his withdrawal that one education official described the plans as "Garrity-plus." Among them: a school's racial mix must reflect a district's population ratios, and the percentage of black staff must be roughly equivalent to the 23% black population of the city.

The judge set a deadline of the end of July to accede or propose acceptable modifications. The committee met last week and decided to ask that a three-year limit be put on some of Garrity's open-ended requirements. Overall, the mood in Boston is to give the judge what he wants as he heads for the door, regain control of the schools and then prove that the city can run a desegregated, quality system. John Lawson, commissioner of education for Massachusetts, summed up the feeling of good riddance with the terse comment, "Boston is at a point where it needs to be on its own." --By Ezra Bowen. Reported by Joelle Attinger/Boston

With reporting by Reported by Joelle Attinger/Boston