WHERE IS THE FAIRNESS IN DESEGREGATION COSTS?

Here is the problem in trying to digest the long-running Kansas City desegregation case: Just when you think you've heard the most ludicrous example of excessive spending of taxpayer dollars, something comes along to top it.

In this instance, the Kansas City school district, with the sanction of its prime benefactor, U.S. District Russell G. Clark, is spending $10,000 this year to send one - just one - of its athletes to tennis tournaments across the nation, from Boston to Phoenix. The talented 16-year-old, along with a chaperone, is in Nashville for a tournament this week, and a tournament is already penciled in for Kalamazoo, Mich., next month.

To its credit, the Desegregation Monitoring Committee sitting in review of this program has called into question these expenditures. However, the program administrator sees the money as being "well-spent," and Judge Clark ruled recently that it is acceptable for the school to pay to send athletes to compete nationally. Thousands have also been spent to send fencing and weightlifting teams to national and international competitions. For all these, the judge approved a $95,000 travel budget for the coming school year, $45,000 more than in the recent budget.

Certainly, this sort of budget may be cause for envy at places like Cape Girardeau Central High School, where band members have been known to work for months to raise money to represent their school at a bowl game performance in Arizona and where talented singers must bear the fundraising load for putting together a choir trip to the nation's capital.

Meanwhile, the Kansas City desegregation program grinds along with the inertia of excess, a ball and chain on the state's budget (and all other schools in the state) because a federal judge has staked a claim on the Missouri treasury, now to the tune of more than $2 billion.

Don't let it be said that our beef here is with the success of a teen tennis sensation. If the local high school could field a fencing team, we would surely take great pride in its achievements. Public education should be about bringing out the best in each of its students. However, where is the equity in this situation, where a judge is guarding the interests of athletes in Kansas City when art programs are being from curriculums in Southeast Missouri? If the intent of the desegregation program is to bring about a sense of fairness, we ask that this particular view of fairness be reevaluated.