Then we got the letter.
Turned out the Los Angeles Metropolitan Unified School District was finally going to comply with court ordered busing for integration. Big meeting at the elementary school so parents would learn just what the ramifications of the court order were and how it applied to their kids.
The room was packed solid, of course, with angry parents saying, in essence, Hell, no. No way is my kid getting on a school bus to be driven across the valley to god's knows where just so "those people*" can be integrated.
Well, at least the system for determining who got on the bus was fair: it went by birth month. Kids born in the odd months (January, March, May, July, September, November) got to stay at Noble Avenue; kids born in the even months (February, April, June, August, October, and December) would ride the bus. I hit August and December in the dropping babies lottery; my two got on the bus.
Of course, out on the other end of the line, in the much wealthier and whiter suburb of Canoga Park, the parents reacted not with resignation but with last minute enrolments at private schools. End result? See above photo.
As for my kids, who got bused out from the inner city school with too many minority students to the predominantly white 'burbs in the interest of diversity, the younger one is the only girl in the back row of the photo. I've always kind of wondered if her first grade spelling lists included "irony."
*upper middle class white suburbanites
