Affirmative reaction - problems with school desegregation in Kansas City

National Review, Sept 15, 1989 by Richard Nadler, Tom Donelson

These assertions were documented in the petition which attorneys Richard and Stephen Miller filed with the court on July 14. Some fifty private schools-Lutheran, Catholic, and secular-have agreed to take in four thousand applicants from the KCMSD if the court will consent to a voucher plan. The petition emphasizes that the private schools would receive no direct public funding. Instead, the grants would go to the parents, to be applied toward tuition at a private school of their own choosing.

The costs? At present, the average annual expenditure per student in the KCMSD is $6,000. By contrast, the average tuition charged by the elementary schools identified in the petition is less than $2,000 per year; the average private high-school tuition, less than $3,000 per year.

The Millers contend that private schools are willing to do what the suburban school districts are not. "Our petition," said Stephen Miller, "represents a middle ground between extremes of social coercion. What we're saying is that you don't have to accept segregation, nor do you have to force integration. Let the free choice of parents determine how money is spent for education and you'll get schools that are not discriminatory, and that give a better education to boot."

The Rivarde complaint speaks the language of the Jenkins decision in terms of its racial goals, but it does so without the social coercion or runaway costs of the current remedy. "There is simply no place," says civilrights attorney John E. Coons, "for these kids to go for a desegregated education in the public sector."

The question remains: Will the courts tolerate a private solution?