MISSOURI COMMENTARY: ARE WE AT THE END OF THE BUS RIDE?

We know when school desegregation was born and now we know when school desegregation began to die. It began with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. It probably started to die last week with Missouri v. Jenkins -- the Kansas City school case.

A federal judge in Kansas City felt he could integrate the inner city schools by making the facilities and programs so attractive that white kids from the suburbs would voluntarily flock in to participate. They didn't flock. A thousand plus came in each year to test the water, but a significant number left. The black/white ratio remained pretty much the same (69 percent black; 24 percent white; 7 percent other minority).

An essential issue in Missouri v. Jenkins was the role of student achievement. Some proponents of judicially supervised integration argue that the school district must stay under court jurisdiction until academic results noticeably increase. Achievement levels in Kansas City continued to lag behind despite the $1.1 billion poured into the system. Missouri's 10th grade reading test average is 311, but in Kansas City it is 266. A 45 point differential is significant -- very significant.

The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, said in Jenkins that low achievement levels were no longer a reason for schools to stay under judicial control. Rehnquist wrote "The district court should sharply limit, if not dispense with reliance on this factor ... The district court must bear in mind that its end purpose is not only to remedy the violation to the extent practicable, but also to restore state and local authorities to the control of a school system that is operating in compliance with the Constitution."

In essence, the court is saying that is a school district has done its best to remove the external factors of segregation, it has done what is constitutionally required. There is a time to bring desegregation lawsuits and there is a time to end them -- soon.

A different situation exists in St. Louis. There the remedy is the more familiar one of busing -- one way busing of 14,702 blacks into the white suburbs. St. Louis has been litigating its desegregation program for 15 years. In St. Louis, as in Kansas City, student achievement has not improved. The test scores of blacks who remain in the 78 percent black City of St. Louis schools are the same as the scores of blacks who are bused to the predominantly white county.

The saga of court-ordered school desegregation began in Topeka in 1954 with Brown. The final chapter may have begun 40 years later and 60 miles away in Kansas City. Earlier cases in Oklahoma City and Atlanta were indicators of a trend; Missouri v. Jenkins makes the trend inescapably clear.

Regardless of how one feels about federal court control over public schools, there remains the persistent question of how education is to be financed in cities where there has been white flight and a diminishing tax base.

Both Kansas City and St. Louis cannot afford to operate even second-rate schools on their own without substantial state assistance. If court-supervised education is on the way out, what is on the way in? Are public schools in Kansas City and St. Louis to become all black facilities with dilapidated buildings, broken-down equipment and underpaid teachers? Are inner city schools doomed forever to be warehouses of last resort?

Federal courts running schools in perpetuity can surely be faulted. But abandoning and bankrupting the inner city schools can be faulted even more.

The national mood is that the states, as contrasted with the federal government, will do what is best for their citizens. The inner city school crisis is a test of the notion that all fairness, wisdom and decency resides in the state capitols.

Whether Missouri v. Jenkins has a lasting impact will be decided by the 1996 presidential election. The decision was 5-4. A likely retiree, Justice John Paul Stevens, appointed by President Gerald Ford, is 75 and can be classified as a court progressive. He was one of the minority dissenters in Jenkins. Does he retire soon and give the appointment to President Bill Clinton or does he wait and possibly give the appointment to a Republican conservative president? According to news accounts, Justice Stevens is in "great health" and is hiring law clerks for this year and the next. One more vote in the majority column would irrevocably resolve the issue of court-supervised schools.

Likewise, the president elected in November, 1996 will most likely have the opportunity to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist. The future of school desegregation could well be decided at the polling booth.

~Tom Eagleton is a former U.S. senator from Missouri and a columnist for the Pulitzer Publishing Co.