Nineteen years ago, I proposed that New Bedford redistrict its elementary schools so that the middle-class and working-class neighborhoods on the peninsula could attend school together.
At the time, I wrote about plans to build two new elementary schools at the top of the South End, arguing that the city only needed one school given its declining enrollment.
But the reason I wanted only one school wasn’t enrollment or saving money. It was because the proposed school on the south end of the peninsula (The Taylor at Sea Lab) and the proposed school on the north end of the peninsula (which became known as Jacobs School) were quite segregated by income and also race.
The Taylor School, located in a neighborhood of predominantly single-family homes, was more middle-class and white; the later Jacobs School (which replaced the old Hannigan School, whose roof had collapsed, and which was located in a neighborhood of three-story high-rises) was more geared toward low-income and black students.
City officials at the time rejected my views. Former Mayor Scott Lang told me there was no call from the two districts on the peninsula to combine them into a single school.
The rest is history.
It took about a decade for the two schools to be completed.
The city lost state support for the construction of several elementary schools after cost overruns occurred during the construction of the new Keith Middle School on an environmentally contaminated site. A few years later, the state significantly reduced the amount it reimbursed municipalities for school construction.
New Mayor Jon Mitchell showed no more interest in a shared school for the peninsula than Mayor Lang. He successfully argued to me that educational research has shown that smaller schools in urban areas are better than medium or large ones.
My brilliant ideas to redraw New Bedford’s elementary school districts to mix poor and middle-class neighborhoods came to nothing. At the time, I had also argued that elementary school district boundaries in the large central part of the city should be redrawn east-west rather than north-south to better mix middle-class neighborhoods with poor ones.
The idea of mixing neighboring low- and middle-income neighborhoods (which really means mixing black, brown, and white neighborhoods) has been political suicide in this country for more than 50 years. We saw it in Boston with the great school busing controversy of the 1970s and 1980s. And we saw it in New Bedford with the way school districts and admissions sites have been determined for decades.
It’s not surprising that no one in New Bedford ever wanted better integration of school districts, and it’s also not surprising that the state has never enforced existing school segregation laws, even though they have been weakened since the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. All of this was demonstrated in Colin Hogan’s great story, “New Bedford Light,” a few weeks ago.
When I wrote my columns and blogs years ago, I didn’t realize that the desegregation law classified schools as segregated if they were more than 71% of one race. During the civil rights movement, the limit was 50%.
If I had known this, I think I could have made a better argument that the way school district boundaries are drawn in New Bedford is directly related to the success (or failure) of schools with homogeneous boundaries in low-income neighborhoods.
Hogan’s story revealed that the state Advisory Council on Racial Imbalances’ annual report recently showed that ten New Bedford schools (nine district schools and one charter school) are currently classified as segregated for non-white children.
In case you’re curious, those schools are: Carney, DeValles, Gomes, Jacobs, Hayden-McFadden, Pacheco and Parker elementary schools, Roosevelt Middle School, Whaling City Jr./Sr. High School and Alma del Mar Charter School.
Ironically, Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School is described as ethnically diverse, but when it comes to low-income and immigrant students, it is not. One could argue that segregation today is not just a matter of race, but also of income and language.
By the way, I am talking about de facto Separation, not de jure Segregation that existed in the Old South. De jure segregation is required by law, while de facto segregation is determined by circumstance or reality.
Hogan’s story noted that Voc-Tech’s percentage of English learners is the lowest of any school in the city, at 4%, and that it also has a smaller percentage of students from low-income families than New Bedford High. Voc-Tech’s student body also includes students from the suburbs of Dartmouth and Fairhaven.
The reason for the difference between Voc-Tech and New Bedford High is that Voc-Tech is an admissions school and is free to choose its student body. There are not enough safeguards to ensure minority participation, but someday there will be.
By the way, if you’re looking for predominantly racially segregated schools, you’ll find them in New Bedford’s suburbs. Hogan’s article reported that DeMello Elementary in South Dartmouth, just a stone’s throw from the New Bedford border from the DeValles in the south of the city, has only 4% ELL students, while DeValles has 53%.
Don’t wait too long for suburbs to make a concerted effort to integrate their schools into surrounding urban communities.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1991 that repealing a state desegregation ordinance was constitutional if it eliminated past discrimination, Massachusetts’ desegregation law has rarely been enforced.
Among the penalties this law provides are the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education cutting off government aid, denying funds for school construction projects, and even removing exemptions from school choice restrictions. School choice is a system in which committed parents send their children to schools they perceive as better, while children whose parents are not as committed stay where they are.
The problem, or at least the reality, is that the penalties for segregation in Massachusetts are never enforced. When the Racial Imbalance Advisory Council asked DESE this year whether local school committees had ever been informed in the past 20 years that schools in their district were practicing racial segregation, DESE answered no.
New Bedford School Superintendent Andrew O’Leary said while he was pleased with the focus of the RIAC – this year marks the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education – he was concerned because segregated schools in urban settings are often negatively portrayed due to poor academic performance.
However, O’Leary praised RIAC’s focus on the inequities in the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s construction and renovation plan, which he has long called biased against low-income and urban communities. He also condemned the current system in which public charter and vocational schools determine their own student bodies as a major reason the racial and income composition of district schools, particularly in New Bedford, is becoming even more unbalanced.
O’Leary supports free school choice within the same school district. And during an interview with me this week, he said he would have “no problem” with changing the boundaries of some districts in New Bedford if the initiative came from the community.
But again, don’t expect too much. Middle-class neighborhoods have never shown much willingness to integrate their children into low-income neighborhoods. That’s why I propose merging neighboring neighborhoods with different population structures.
But I’m glad you said that, Superintendent O’Leary. Let’s see if there’s a movement in the city for more integration of New Bedford’s middle- and low-income neighborhoods into single-school settings.
Yes, we have magnet schools where parents can advocate for their children to attend the school they think is best across the city. But spaces are limited. Schools that mix the surrounding neighborhoods would help us create a more holistic and successful school system.
And while we’re at it, we need to make sure that middle and reception schools also build an integrated student body by reserving places for English learners, children with disabilities, and children from poor neighborhoods.
Email columnist Jack Spillane at [email protected].
