In 1976, a federal judge ordered Dayton Public Schools to desegregate to more closely reflect the racial makeup of the City of Dayton.
This resulted in some students being bussed to schools outside of their neighborhood. How successful was this effort?
Eileen McClory, education reporter for the Dayton Daily News wrote about the attempt to desegregate Dayton Public Schools.
The catalyst for the Dayton Daily News article was an essay from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation titled Grading Desegregation: Dayton Gets an Incomplete. The foundation article included the early history of the desegregation effort. A committee first pushed for a metropolitan-wide desegregation plan, saying it would be necessary to prevent white families from avoiding integration by moving to the suburbs. But a Supreme Court order limited the busing effort to just DPS.
Decades later, the desegregation order has ended and the region's schools remain heavily segregated.
The interview transcript has been edited for clarity.
Eileen McClory: We saw this essay from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, which pointed out that the Dayton region, in fact, never desegregated its schools. Most of the kids in Dayton public schools identify as a minority, and also total enrollment is significantly less than what it was before the district attempted to desegregate. But if you look at the largest suburbs in the region, those have majority white enrollment. So when we looked at this essay, we decided to look into it ourselves at the Dayton Daily News.
Mike Frazier: And what did you find?
McClory: We found that this essay is correct. The Charles F. Kettering Foundation is correct in their idea that most large local school districts are not racially diverse, and they do not reflect Montgomery County's population. Montgomery County as a whole is 22% Black. We looked at five school districts, four of which are in Montgomery County. The only one that we didn't look at in Montgomery County is Beavercreek, which is the third largest school district in the region. So Dayton Public Schools, for example, is 63% Black and 21% white. Centerville Schools is the second largest school district in the region. They’re 73% white versus 8% Black. Beavercreek schools are 80% white and 4% Black. Kettering schools are 76% White and 8% Black. Huber Heights schools are 54% white and 24% Black, which is actually pretty close to what we would see across the entire area.
In the 1970s, Dayton Public Schools enrollment was about 40,000 kids. By 2002, which is when the desegregation order ended, there were fewer than 21,000 kids. At this point, Dayton Public Schools has about 12,000 kids.
Where did all those kids go? A lot of those kids ended up going to suburban schools. So a lot of those kids ended up going south to Centerville, into Kettering for really common ones. Going further west into Trotwood, there were plenty of Black kids who actually ended up in Trotwood. There's plenty of kids who ended up going north to Huber Heights. So there were a lot of kids who ended up just leaving the Dayton public school system because their parents were not interested in having them go to a desegregated school.
There's this concept of white flight that really happened in the '60s and '70s around this time. A lot of white families were leaving the traditionally urban areas to go to the suburbs. And that's basically what was happening in Dayton.
Mike: And that helped contribute to the decline of Dayton Public School enrollment.
McClory: Exactly, yes.
Mike: The purpose of the desegregation order was - when it was ended in 2002 - is the conclusion that it was or was not successful in its goal?
McClory: At that point, the idea was that it was causing more harm than good to keep busing kids to school. I think people saw that there were plenty of families who were leaving because they didn't want to bus. It's also just really annoying to bus your kids around to different schools. And there's also always been this concept of your neighborhood school is your best school. So, for most kids, the idea is that the closest school is the one that can most closely understand your community. Those teachers are maybe more likely to live in your community, and those teachers are more likely to understand what's going on. So in 2002, when that desegregation order ended, the stories that I read from 2002, they were mostly just talking about, we don't want to do this anymore. Not that it had met its goal, but the schools were more integrated. The effort that it was taking was not helpful anymore, and more people wanted to be able to go to their neighborhood schools.
McClory: Since the desegregation order has ended, do you think that has benefited Dayton Public Schools?
Eileen: I don't think that anybody I talked to said that they would like to go back to that desegregation order. But the city is still very segregated. The west side is primarily the Black side of town, and the east side is still primarily the White side of town. So it's still not a very integrated school district.
That was Eileen McClory, Education Reporter for the Dayton Daily News speaking with WYSO’s Mike Frazier. You can read her article about the attempt to desegregate Dayton schools on the Dayton Daily News’ website.
