Time to get off the bus?

...Opponents of the OCSD decision contend that the most dangerous aspect of the ruling is that it may offer a precedent for cities to limit expensive busing programs in favor of singlerace schools...

...The proponents of absolute desegregation maintain that unless all public schools are racially integrated (including Oklahoma City's), the mandates of Brown are being eroded...

...Craven, Archibald's wonderfully inept cousin in the novel, has been promoted to brother, providing belated sibling rivalry...

...In the meantime, the fact of "separate but equal" schools remains a problem with only partial solutions...

...This was recognized by several federal courts in cities like St...

...The opera version of the work (music by Greg Pliska, libretto by David Ives) was presented by the Pennsylvania Operatic Theater in March...

...Happily, however, a number of suburban districts have opened their schools to city children either through metropolitanizafion, as in Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina, or through city-suburban agreements, as in Milwaukee, Boston, Louisville, and St...

...In short, by acting against single-race [white] schools, one may produce single-race [black] school systems...

...Admittedly, two-way busing as mandated by Federal Judge Arthur Garrity in Boston has not been successful in the forty largest U.S...

...More unexpectedly, considerable support for single-race schools comes from disenchanted black parents and citizens who have waited overlong for school integration and school improvement...

...Although the process may be admirable (it bears more than a slight resemblance to the present workshop-to-Broadway development of musical comedies), the result is a static work in which set pieces replace dramatic action...

...Finally, a willingness to live with some single-race schools comes from realistic blacks and whites who see no immediate end to the de facto segregation of housing...

...That is a contemporary reaction...

...Where discrimination is found, the courts most likely will uphold busing as a remedy...

...and where there is segregated housing, busing is an effective tool to bring about such racial integration...

...The Supreme Court upheld the decision of the lower federal court that the OCSD had performed in a nondiscriminatory manner for several years, administering a "unitary" not a "dual" system, and that court supervision of the OCSD was no longer necessary...

...Finally, the OCSD offered evidence that black parents and the black community generally preferred to have their own schools improved so that their young children would not have to be bused out of the community to obtain quality education...

...It may well be that until this gap is closed, court supervision should be continued...

...The Secret Garden was never a boy's book, and it is probably not best to come to it for the fn'st rime, as I did, as a sixty-five-year-old boy...

...Racially integrated schools are better for black and 404: Commonweal white children...

...These families refused to have their children bused to black schools in black neighborhoods...

...Since housing integration is proceeding at a snail's pace, many cities throughout the country, from Berkeley and Fresno in California to Buffalo, Rochester, and New Rochelle in New York, rely on busing...

...Despite the more conservative bent of the federal courts, that may not be an easy task...

...is the widespread success of busing in achieving both racial integration in schools and improved education and socialization...

...The racial distribution of the school system as a whole is 45 percent white, 40 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic, 5 percent Native American, and 2 percent Asian...

...The production did not have the budget for the expensive elegance of the Broadway musical...

...More than simply a commission, it was a collaborative effort...

...court ruled that the government could not mandate the integration of city with suburban districts, it was virtually inevitable that the big cities, of which there are about forty, with large black populations and even larger black student concentrations (averaging 72 percent per city), would have many all-black schools...

...On the other hand, critics of the Supreme Court decision on the OCSD argue, along with the dissent offered by Justice Thurgood Marshall, that by definition single-race schools are discriminatory...

...Supreme Court ruled on a school desegregation case, Oklahoma City School District (OCSD) v. Dowell, that permits the OCSD to continue to operate eleven all-black public elementary schools (known as the Dowell schools...

...A readiness to live with single-race schools comes from several quarters, however...

...It is certainly much easier to read than Gene Stratton Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost, another popular turn-of-the-century redemprion-and-reconciliation novel that I struggled with recently...

...In fact, more than half the children 14 June 1991:403 in the system are still bused...

...The corollary of residential segregation is school racial separation...

...The most effective scene theatrically--and musically, for that matter--had nothing to do with the secret garden...

...An orphan (read, child who feels isolated), she discovers the secret garden and there creates her own family--flora, fauna, and a few choice human beings...

...Many white segregationists are all too happy to have blacks demanding their own schools...

...Additionally, many of these blacks believe that black schools and black teachers provide better education, better socialization, and better role models for black children...

...To be accepted by the courts, however, school systems will have to prove, as the OCSD did, that they are in fact nondiscriminatory...

...Pliska and Ives had worked since 1987 with Barbara Silverstein, the artistic director of the company who was also conductor and musical director of the performance, with Michael Montel, the stage director, and with company singers to test the musical and theatrical viability of scenes, music, lyrics...

...The book's theme about the reinvigorating power of nature and the great chain of being as a kind of daisy chain in which plants, animals, and people join hands seems particularly pertinent in the age of ozone depletion...

...A greater push towards integrated schools may come down the road...

...Only a reversal or a reappraisal of Milliken v. Bradley will more completely integrate city schools...

...I never expected to feel protective toward the book, but I did, which was altogether the wrong state of mind to approach the two new stage adaptations...

...The new main plot is how Archibald (Mandy Pantinkin) finally comes to terms with the death of his wife (Rebecca Luker) and incidentally rediscovers his son...

...The question is: Is the Court backsliding...

...STAGE LOST IN TRANSLATION 'THE SECRET GARDEN(S)' udging by the number of editions of Frances Hodgson Bumett's The Secret Garden currently in print, there are a great many ten-year-old girls out there discovering the book and identifying with Mary Lennox, the novel's touchy heroine...

...Finally, to those who are concerned that OCSD v. Dowell represents backsliding, it should be noted that the case merely recognizes what has been afait accompli in big cities for many years...

...Furthermore, the OCSD has used few creative approaches such as magnet schools...

...Hardcore antibusers are gloating over the possible demise of public school desegregation...

...Most of the schools in question were substantially inferior...

...But the OCSD does offer integrated schooling to a large number of white, black, Indian, and Hispanic children--something that cannot be overlooked...

...In this context, the OCSD case helps illuminate a basic paradox of the federal government's continuing effort to desegregate public education...

...Finally, however, I was simply sucked into the story, rooting for Mary and Colin and Dickon and the magic they were working in the garden...

...Apart from the black separatists, who are few though on the increase, many blacks and Hispanics recognize that while awaiting the day of complete integration, there is a pressing need for allocating substantially more money to the strengthening of these single-race schools...

...both were/are in love with the dead Lily's eyes (see the song of that title) and 14 June 1991:405...

...Better principals, teaching staff, equipment, services, and buildings are needed...

...Teachers in the black schools are substantially less experienced, they add, and the schools themselves are less well equipped than those in the average district schools...

...Too many cooks" t is undoubtedly correct that the educational system of the Oklahoma City School District has a very long way to go, and the racial integration of black and white students in its public schools, while comparatively good for the South, leaves much to be desired...

...Further, they argue, with some merit, that the present rates of improvement in all-black schools in Oklahoma City are still pathetically inadequate and that regardless of their possible merit, the schools serving the low-income families in these areas are not adequately funded...

...Even in those cities where one-way busing has been successful, there has been some decline in the number of white students who participate in school integration where the numbers of minorities are too great...

...Further, the OCSD averred that it currently is spending $2,300 per capita for black children ($200 more than for the average child), and the number of children per class in the all-black schools is only seventeen versus twenty in the district generally...

...Additionally, the OCSD emphasized that the educational gap between black and white children as measured by reading andmath scores had narrowed...

...Already the opposing sides are beginning to crystallize...

...But the sentimental passages were obvious to me, as they would not have been to the book's proper audience, and I could not help feeling that the book should not have ended in the embrace of the Cravens, father and son, but that Archibald should have been had up for child abuse...

...Observers also claim that black parents in these areas are reluctant to take advantage of optional busing, and that not enough publicity about this option has been made available...

...Additionally, in cities with smaller black percentages, even two-way busing has been successful...

...Louis...

...At the same time, it must also be recognized that many schools exclusively serving black children will be with us for the calculable future--certainly as long as there is a degree of segregated housing-and that these schools must be better financed...

...In arguing its case, the OCSD noted that the eleven all-black schools integrated by the OCSD board following the first court decision in 1972 reverted to all-black status when white families either moved away or took their children out of the school system...

...Although the Supreme Court did not specifically note this point in its decision, it is clear that the only way that the OCSD was able to implement its nondiscriminatory policies was by the extensive use of busing...

...In Oklahoma City there are eleven all-black elementary schools, a few other schools with heavy black majorities, and a few with mostly white students...

...Responsible educators such as Harold Howe, former secretary of education, and Kenneth Clark of Columbia University, also agree that busing students to inferior schools is no remedy for segregation...

...There is a great deal of singing about trying to find the secret garden, which turns out not to be difficult since the book's buried key is hanging from a tree limb here and the discovery of the hidden entrance is the exclamation, "There's the door...

...The score, as Silverstein indicates in the theater newsletter, is a blend of styles, but it is oddly bland...

...Moreover, the overwhelming and greatly overlooked fact is that an increasing number of cities and towns are educating black and white children together, and this is mostly being effectuated through busing...

...Other blacks have been angered and disappointed by the results of integration...

...but The Secret Garden needs real children...

...But the OCSD decision was anything but clear-cut...

...Nevertheless, the significant fact remains that growing numbers of white and black, Hispanic and Asian children are going to school together...

...Likewise, as the OCSD stressed, any parent of a child in these all-black schools, or in fact in any other school, who wishes her child to go to a racially integrated school has only to request it...

...This obviousness suggests that the opera is kidding the original, which is not the intention...

...Despite the naysayers, there is considerable agreement that the general principles of Brown v. Board of Education are correct...

...After all, Bumett's greatest accomplishment in the novel--even more than her recognition that every child needs a secret garden--is her child's view of the world in which all adults are either indifferent or incompetent...

...Admittedly, however, the complex question of single-race schools in districts where school boards are not guilty of racially segregating students will be around for the foreseeable future...

...cities and has brought on an exodus of white families...

...Unfortunately, no reversal ofMiUiken v. Bradley, which might require integration between city and suburban school districts, is on the horizon...

...The decision can be construed as a modification of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 desegregation decision that ruled against so-called "separate but equal" schools...

...Many federal judges have not even included two-way busing in their remedial programs except on a purely voluntary basis...

...Once the high J.S...

...Of course citizens have the right to move and thus to some degree to frustrate the desegregation rulings of federal courts...

...As Justice Lewis Powell said in a 1980 Dallas school case (Estes v. NAACP), "out of zeal to remedy one evil, courts may set the stage for other evils...

...he Secret Garden, on Broadway, is a handsome and often appearing show, but Marsha Norman, who did the book and lyrics, is only minimally interested in Bumett's novel...

...It is important to understand that more than half of the 6 million black children in public schools are studying along side white children...

...but this has almost always taken place when the schools in the black neighborhoods have been converted into special magnet schools...

...In essence, the decision does not undermine busing but is built upon a largely successful busing program or option...

...In other words, as long as there is significant housing segregation, and all-black urban inner city areas with considerable clusters of minorities, and as long as Milliken v. Bradley is not reversed, there will be some all-black schools...

...Although the show has three attractive performers in what should be the three leading roles (Daisy Eagan has deservedly been much praised as Mary Lennox), the children are upstaged by adults, living and dead...

...In all likelihood, the impact of the decision will be minimal, although economic u n i t i e s - - - b u s i n g costs money--will be exploited by antibusing right wingers...

...Still, busing programs are in place in most large cities across the nation...

...Certainly many well-to-do whites have fled Oklahoma City, or at least have taken their children out of the public schools...

...Colin, by the way, was an extremely healthy looking invalid in the person of Peter Gillis, which was one of the problems for me...

...It would not be too much to say that one of the best kept secrets in the U.S...

...It was Mary's wandering through the nearly deserted mansion in which the small chorus, manipulating mirrors, could suggest the portrait gallery and the extent of Mary's solitariness...

...In many cities there are not enough whites to make any effective school integration possible...

...In a work like Ravel' s L'enfant et les sortil~ges, an adult can sing the bratty child effectively since other grown-ups are singing furniture, trees, and frogs...

...Busing black children to white schools and white children to black schools in grades kindergarten through four had been discontinued in the Dowell schools...

...The need for some formal court acceptance of single-race schools has been apparent since 1974 when the Supreme Court, in Milliken v. Bradley, overturned a lower court decision to integrate the urban and suburban schools of Detroit...

...Louis and Milwaukee where judges imposed school integration ratios within districts which took into account the reality of a certain proportion of single-race schools...

...FUERST teaches in the school of social work at Loyola University in Chicago...

...Moreover, children at these all-black schools eventually attend secondary schools with white children, thus conforming to the terms and the aims of Brown v. Board of Education...

...The use of busing to achieve racial integration is endorsed by many school administrators, and in many cities busing is no longer an issue...

...The remaining schools--well over half---are integrated and show even more racial balance...

...My uneducated ear seemed at times to get a hint of Sondheim, and the piece could certainly have used some of that composer's sardonic force and a touch of his into-the-woods joy...

...The regenerative power of spring is muted here, although the miracle-gro song to encourage the dead-looking garden to blossom ("seed rise up and meet the sun") is reprised to get the sickly Colin to his feet ("Colin rise up and meet the sun...