[quote=UCGal]I was a student in San Diego unified when the busing was going on. San Diego did NOT have forced busing. They were able to achieve their numbers with volunteer busing and magnet schools.
My junior high (before they called it a middle school) and high school had kids bused in.
There was some racial tension… but this was the 70’s – we students did a sit-in to get the administration to help deal with it. LOL. (I’ll admit – for many it was an excuse to ditch a class to do the sit-in.)
I don’t know of ANY parents that pulled their kids when the voluntary busing started. And UC was pretty affluent. Very few of my friends went to private school. One friend went to a magnet school – for the performing arts. This was before UC high and Standley middle – UC kids went to Marston and Clairemont.
There’s a reason magnet schools in San Diego unified are often in less desirable neighborhoods – it’s a way of drawing the white kids from the neighborhood schools to the more inner city neighorhoods – look at what used to be San Diego High (near downtown), south end of Balboa Park. It was a pretty poor performing school, very inner city in it’s demographics – now it’s a cluster of magnet schools – schools within the larger campus. And it draws from all over the district For the leadership school, the arts school, the business school, international studies. The demographics changed with the magnet programs. http://www.sandi.net/20451072011457293/blank/browse.asp?a=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&c=66267%5B/quote%5D
Perhaps the size and racial makeup of SD Unified allowed it to handle the desegregation issue voluntarily. We were in L.A. Unified (the largest district in the state), where it was forced. They were going to take us from our local, clean, safe, middle-class schools where we walked to school, and bus us ~1 1/2 hours — each way — into some of the most dangerous, gang-infested parts of downtown L.A.
Needless to say, that was not going to happen. EVERY kid we knew (including Mr. CAR and myself) was pulled out of public school and sent to private school, if their parents could afford it. Some who couldn’t afford it, homeschooled their kids.
This is where they were going to send the kids from our school in a middle/upper-middle class part of the SF Valley (for those who are familiar with LA):
When they started the magnet schools in the poorer neighborhoods, it helped a bit with integration, but LA Unified never recovered from the “white flight” that occurred as a result of the desegregation busing fiasco.
