Could MPS End Busing?

Milwaukee Public Schools’ longtime busing program could be drastically reduced if MPS Director Michael Bonds has his way. Bonds, who has sponsored a resolution to phase out most busing services within four years, says the $58 million spent on transportation each year could be better utilized by reopening closed schools and restoring cut programs.

“The goal is to open quality schools in the city instead of constantly busing kids,” Bonds said. He said the once-admirable goal of desegregation isn’t attainable in 2008, since the overwhelming majority of MPS students are minority students. So classrooms are still segregated and kids aren’t getting a better education.

“It’s not serving any integration purpose because 88% of the students in the district are minorities,” Bonds said. “It’s not doing anything for academic performance. We’ve got some of the lowest reading and math scores in the nation.”

Bonds said the busing program will cost roughly $80 million annually in the coming years, a price tag the district cannot afford. “I don’t believe that taxpayers should give MPS another penny as long as they have this failed tax policy,” Bonds said. “We are asking the taxpayers to give more and we haven’t cleaned up our own house.”

Bonds has a long history with MPS’s busing program, which began with a court order in 1976. Bonds was a plaintiff in an integration suit and worked with the late Lloyd Barbee in 1981 to monitor the desegregation order. But he said the implementation of the busing program went awry. Bonds said that the emergence of educational experiments such as the choice program and charter schools helped to cause oncefunctioning schools in stable North Side neighborhoods to close.

“It went wrong when people found dollars in education,” Bonds said. “I truly believe that there was some sort of agreement, either verbally or written, to partition the North Side where the voucher schools and choice schools could come in.”

Under his plan, some busing would still remain for students who attend citywide schools; are disabled; must travel more than 2 miles to get to a neighborhood school; or are chronic disrupters. Bonds’ resolution will be debated at an April 22 Finance and Personnel Committee meeting.

Last year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race cannot be considered when assigning students to schools, so Bonds said his plan to reduce busing would be legal. Bonds said that the extensive busing program adversely affects students and their parents. The long bus ride extends a student’s day, hinders parents from becoming involved in their child’s school and leads to a lack of unity in the student’s neighborhood, since kids who grow up together can be scattered to schools throughout the city, he said.