MAYOR BOSLEY IS RIGHT IN HIS DESEGREGATION ASSESSMENT

Somebody needed to say it, and we applaud Freeman Bosley Jr., the new mayor of St. Louis, for his political courage. In published reports this week, Mayor Bosley took a bold stand in calling for an end to the public school desegregation plan in St. Louis. He did so, we believe, in recognition that the plan hasn't worked, that it is harmful to his city and its citizens, and that it has not produced better educational opportunities for the school children of St. Louis.

What the mayor points out, quite properly, is that the city he leads suffers the effects of the desegregation plan because it has led to the breakdown of neighborhoods. Under the plan, which has been in place since 1981, 14,500 black students are bused this year from St. Louis to school districts in St. Louis County. In this, you see the removal of a key element in any neighborhood: the neighborhood school. Absent that component, erosion of the neighborhood becomes a simpler process.

"If you don't have good neighborhood schools," said the mayor, "people won't live there. If you live there and send your kids to school somewhere else, there's no sense of commitment."

His thoughts are exactly on the point and demonstrate a desire to act in the best interests of his city ... and not necessarily in his own political interests. If he can't hold the individual pieces of St. Louis together (and he correctly identifies good schools as a unifying force), then he can't make the city function, either short-term or long-term. Over the long haul, and most importantly, he sees the education of St. Louis children being given second priority to the goal of racial integration. Their best interests, and not that of some social engineers, should be the utmost concern ... and that feeling comes across in the mayor's remarks.

The reason his comments are courageous is that they fly in the face of political and fiscal correctness. In response to his position, one person who helps direct the desegregation plan said this week, "It's a tremendous amount (of money) per year that will not be available once the program terminates." The financial pressure is enormous, and the easy way out for the mayor would have been to maintain the status quo. (So deeply entrenched is the desegregation plan that some believe it will take up to $80 million to bring it to a proper halt.)

Further, Mr. Bosley, the first black mayor of St. Louis, does not couch his opinions in the language of racial politics. In dealing with the problems of his city (such as confronting gang leaders about violence on the streets of St. Louis), the mayor has shown himself in the first months of his tenure to be a straight shooter, a man who says what he thinks regardless of political consequence.

View the St. Louis desegregation plan in this way. Mayor Bosley is for breaking it up. So is Eddie Davis, also black and recently elected president of the St. Louis School Board. So are taxpayers of Missouri, who have seen court-ordered desegregation plans in St. Louis and Kansas City eat into the same treasury that fuels all public schools in the state. Only the federal courts, some special interest groups and various urban concerns that like the direction of this money flow believe busing is a viable undertaking.

Mayor Bosley is correct. The desegregation plan in St. Louis, however well-intended, is doing more harm than good. It should be ended.