DESEG MOVEMENT

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon has outlined details of his plan to phase out the St. Louis area's court-ordered school desegregation. The proposals would affect city students who attend suburban schools and county students who attend city magnet schools. In exchange for ending the state's participation, the attorney general is offering extra state aid for three years to help pay for additional city schools.

One interesting development was that praise for the plan came from St. Louis Mayor Freeman Bosley, who shares Nixon's view that the program needs to end. Bosley praised Nixon for "searching for middle ground."

Nixon's chief aim is to end state desegregation payments, which have totalled more that $1.5 billion since busing began in 1980. Nixon's plan for St. Louis has these key features:

Beginning with the next school year, no new students would be allowed into the city-county transfer program. The 13,500 black students from the city who are currently in the transfer plan would be allowed to finish at the county school they are attending, but wouldn't be able to go any further. For example, a kindergartener could stay at the county elementary school but would return to city junior high and high schools. State money for the magnet schools would be cut by one-third next year and two-thirds for the 1997-98 school year. Beginning in late 1997 and continuing for three years, about 25 percent of the state's savings would go to finance new public schools.

Missourians have for 15 years been groaning under the burden of the two most expensive desegregation cases in America. Nixon's proposal will be considered by U.S. District Judge George Gunn at a March 4 hearing. His plan gives Missouri taxpayers some hope, a prospect made all the more so by Mayor Bosley's tentative kind words. Let's hope these hopes won't be dashed yet again.