MORE SEGREGATION WOES

The morass that goes by the name of school desegregation in Kansas City keeps swallowing more and more common sense in spite of clear indications that Missourians are about to stop footing the hefty bill.

The latest scenario is a continuation of a long string, more than a decade's worth, of bad judgment, bad decisions and bad results. The aim of the desegregation plan imposed by U.S. District Judge Russell G. Clark was to improve the racial balance in the Kansas City district. This was to be accomplished, under the Clark plan, by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on fancy buildings and even fancier magnet programs like law and engineering. The judge's thinking, it seems, was that all the expensive glitz would make white suburban students flock to the inner city for their education.

Judge Clark was wrong then, and he is still wrong as he continues to hold sway over a system that has failed miserably. How badly has the plan failed? The schools on which so much money has been spent are only half full. Overall enrollment is only 37,000, well below the 43,000 students forecast for 1995. Now district administrators are about to offer another plan to the judge that would find new uses for the half-empty schools, such as moving administrative offices there and fiddling with the magnet programs.

Meanwhile, Kansas City's mayor, Emanuel Cleaver, is strongly hinting once again that the city ought to take more a role in running the school district. At least this would put the control in local hands instead of the iron grasp of a federal judge in Springfield, Mo.

Something else is missing too: A strong move in Jefferson City, either from the Legislature or the governor's office, to disengage Missouri taxpayers from the incredibly costly burden of running a failed system in Kansas City.