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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—Jan. 6, 1955—PAGE II Missouri St. Louis Redistricting Plan New Districts HERE ARE SHOWN St. Louis high school districts be fore (left) and after adoption of the racial integration plan which will go into effect Feb. 1. In each map the shaded area shows the principal Negro residential section, which is pushing steadily outward. In the map on the left, the Map By Frank Krieg dotted line shows the demarcation between the two dis tricts served by Negro high schools (Sumner and Vashon). Solid lines show boundaries of the old districts for the 7 white high schools. New districts and the schools which will serve them without racial distinctions are at right. ST. LOUIS, Mo. HE second phase of racial integra tion in the St. Louis public schools will begin Feb. 1, and the city is taking stock of what the change will mean in altered educational pat terns. With the beginning of the second semester, the seven white high schools and two Negro high schools are to become nine desegregated schools, each serving a given district without regard to the racial charac teristics of students living in the dis trict. Segregation in the elementary and technical high schools will end in September 1955, according to the board of education’s schedule. As the accompanying map shows, the end of official segregation in the high schools does not mean the im mediate conversion of all high schools to interracial student populations in the same degree. One-third of the city’s public school pupils are Ne groes, but it does not follow that all of the nine high schools will have one-third Negro occupancy. Because the Negro population tends to be con centrated in a belt cutting through the central and central-northwest sections of the city, the effects will vary. PRESENT SITUATION At present the city’s two Negro high schools are heavily overcrowd ed, each serving a district represent ing roughly half the total area and half the Nesro population. Naturally enough, both of these schools (Sum ner and Vashon) are located in densely Negro residential areas. They will, therefore, remain Negro schools after integration, since the logical attendance districts drawn around them will cover Negro residential areas almost exclusively. The main effect upon these two high schools will be a marked re duction in overcrowding. They can be returned to something apuroach- ing a normal registration while other high schools, some of which have been underpopulated, take up the slack. The seven presently white high schools have also been redistricted, each district shrinking in size by vir tue of the addition of the two for merly Negro schools to the total available for the entire student popu lation. Total high school enrollment cur rently is 14,093, of which 4,275 or 30 per cent are Negroes. The 9,818 white students are distributed among seven schools with an average enrollment of 1,402, while the Negroes attend two schools (located in three build ups) with an average enrollment of 2,137. Here are the figures: WHITE Beaumont—1,839 Central—1,005 Cleveland—1,473 McKinley—1,184 Roosevelt—1,754 Soldan-Blewett—938 Southwest—1,625 negro Sumner—1,568; freshman branch —701; total—2,269 Vashon—2,006 As nearly as board of education of ficials can estimate, the most drastic Wunediate change will take place at Soldan-Blewett, in the western end °f the city, now the smallest in en rollment. This school lies directly in foe path of the principal Negro resi- ucntial migration now going on. Whites are moving out and Negroes “ a ve moved into the district in sub stantial numbers as the outward Pressure of the Negro areas has Readily opened block after block to e gro occupancy. Hence Soldan-Blewett, an all- white school up to Feb. 1, is expected o " ave 25% or 30% Negro students ^mediately after that date. As the ®gro migration into the district pro- it may approach a 50-50 ratio Negro students to whites within a few years. ^Heaumont high school, which ., rv ' es the northwest section of the 0 j A raay find as many as 10 per cent student body to be Negroes ^ er integration, for the new Beau- intn district includes some territory which Negroes have been mov ing. Central high school, the city’s oldest, will probably pick up a Negro student body of 5% to 10% for the same reason. On the South Side, McKinley is expected to have 10% or 12% Ne groes. Roosevelt and Cleveland will have quite small Negro enrollments, the result of relatively minor Negro residential enclaves in their districts. Southwest high school, which serves the most newly developed neighbor hoods within the city limits, will have almost no Negro students at all. To sum up: in only three of the seven presently white high schools is a Negro population of 10% or more expected to be added immediately by integration. The other four will have small Negro accretions or none, while the two presently Negro schools remain Negro for all practi cal purposes. PATTERN TO CHANGE As time goes on the pattern will change. The Negro residential dis tribution is in flux. As new neighbor hoods to the west and northwest are taken over by Negroes, or become mixed neighborhoods (something which is rare in St. Louis to date), the racial composition of the high school districts will change. In setting up the new districts, board of education officials began with a block-by-block survey, for which the principal of each school was responsible. He reported how many children of elementary and of high school age lived in each block. These and other data were trans ferred to IBM punched cards, one for each block in the city. The data did not include the race of the children. So when the punched cards were run through sorting machines to deter mine the proper number for each dis trict, race was not a primary deter mining factor in the definition of dis trict boundaries. The standards used in drawing the new district lines began with the ca pacity of the high school building in each district. This figure superim posed upon the potential nearby school population determined the first rough boundaries. These were then adjusted to minimize as far as possible the distance to be traveled by all students attending the school, and finally they were adjusted to keep the disruption of convenient at tendance patterns as slight as possi ble. Since the race of the students is not known in detail, it is impossible to say how many Negroes live in each high school district. Inevitably, how ever, the district lines tend in some degree to follow residential lines. The most convenient school for a Negro living in a heavily Negro area is nat urally a predominantly Negro school. The board of education officials who drafted the new districts include Ne gro administrators who are confident that the districts represent a non- racial solution of the problem. OPTION PROVIDED At the start, provided no serious overcrowding results, students al ready attending any high school will be permitted to continue attending that school until graduation, if they wish. All new students coming into high school from the elementary grades, however, will be required to attend the school in the district where they live. The question of how many will exercise the option to attend a school outside their home districts lends some uncertainty to the poten tial enrollment in each school. Boundaries of the new districts were published Nov. 12, two and a half months before they become ef fective, in order to give parents and students plenty of time to adjust to them. Few complaints have been re ported. There has been no open sign of any significant opposition to high school integration. Apart from general intergroup re lations programs which have been conducted in the St. Louis school sys tem for some years, no concerted preparatory program is being im posed on the system as a whole. Principals of each high school have been urged to anticipate and meet the problems of each district in their own way. The board of education and the administrative staff of the system have made it clear, however, that in tegration is a fixed policy to be fol lowed firmly according to the sched ule laid down last summer. WORKSHOPS HELD In observance of Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, the St. Louis Council on Human Relations turned its an nual institute into a day of work shops on school integration. The ses sions were held at Kiel Auditorium, the city’s largest downtown conven tion hall. Five workshops composed of ad ministrators in elementary and high schools, parent groups and school counselors undertook to provide guidance for an orderly transition to desegregation. Herbert K. Walther, chairman of the department of teacher education, University of Denver, told the gen eral session that high school students can survive bad teaching and inade quate facilities, but should not “be deprived of a wholesome social cli mate” to which minority groups, par ents and instructors all contribute. If schools do a good job in elim inating discrimination, parent groups need not worry about community integration, said another speaker, Daniel Dodson, professor of educa tional sociology at New York Univer sity. Speaking from experience, Clifford Bassfield, Negro principal in East St. Louis, Ill., told the group that prob lems of assignments of teachers to mixed schools and of students to seats in clasrooms will be the most difficult to face. Counselors were told by Miss Mary Corre, director of guidance for Cin cinnati public schools, that their job is to help develop in children, teach ers and parents the idea that integra tion will succeed. YOUTH GROUPS MEET Another preparatory effort, this one addressed to high school stu dents, is being carried out by the In tergroup Youth Movement, sponsored by the National Conference of Chris tians and Jews. With cooperation of teachers and community leaders, but primarily under the direction of high school youth themselves, representa tives of public, parochial and private high schools in the city and sur rounding suburban area gather weekly to thresh out problems aris ing from integration. Discussions are informal and unin hibited. Those who attend the com munity-wide meetings report back to their individual school groups. In va rious schools, human relations clubs have been set up. Panel discussions, student assemblies, addresses by well-known speakers, exchange meetings with other schools, all help to accustom the participants to inter group activity and to frank discussion of their problems. One question which is holding the attention of the intergroup sessions is the incompatibility of school integra tion with segregation in theatres, res taurants and hotels. When school friends of different races want to at tend a movie or lunch together, they may find that the discrimination which is being ended in the school still is practiced in other public places. What to do about it is a ques tion frequently asked. The National Council of Christians and Jews further expressed its inter est in school integration by paying tribute Dec. 10 to both parochial and public schools in St. Louis for lead ership in that direction. Arthur H. Compton, former chan cellor of Washington University and now distinguished professor of nat ural philosophy there, presented scrolls to Catholic school officials in honor of their ending of segregation in 1948. Superintendent of Instruction Philip J. Hickey of the public school system gave citations to representa tives of seven public schools which pioneered in intergroup education. ECONOMIC STUDY The integration of high schools finds St. Louis Negroes definitely im proving in general status in the com munity. A recent study by two Washington University economists and the St. Louis Urban League found “most encouraging” advances in Negroes’ educational attainment and average income here. With the possible exception of the best-edu cated individuals, the survey con cluded, however, that Negroes in general still had not attained by the end of 1953 the economic position at tained by whites in 1950. Negroes have been upgraded in numerous job categories in recent years, the study reported. Negroes aged 20 to 29 were found to have achieved a much higher occupational and industrial status than those in higher age classifications. About three out of every five Negroes aged 20 to 29 work in the six top ranking occupational categories, as contrasted with an average of less than three out of eight in the same categories among older groups. The University of Missouri at Co lumbia ended all racial restrictions on admissions soon after the Supreme Court decision in the public school cases last summer. The only problem so far encountered, according to Act ing President Elmer Ellis, is some fear that discussing integration as “a problem” might create one. Negroes were first admitted to the University in September 1950 on or der of Circuit Judge Sam Bair. These were students who wished to enroll for courses not available at Lincoln University (Negro) in Jefferson City. Graduate students and undergrad uates as well came in under this plan, but the rule was that if Lincoln Uni versity offered a certain course equivalent to that offered at the Uni versity (as decided in conference be tween Missouri and Lincoln Univer sity officials), then Negroes were ex pected to attend there. This is the rule that was abrogated in favor of complete integration last summer. As a matter of principle, the Uni versity does not record on its books anything regarding the race of a stu dent. So it is not known how many Negroes are attending. Acting Presi dent Ellis says “we obviously have considerably more than we had a year ago,” but estimates of enrollment of ficials and student counselors vary markedly. The Negro students en gage in all university activities. They live in the regular dormitories, eat in the cafeterias, make use of the Union building, hold university scholar- shros. One is on the freshman foot ball squad, others are in ROTC units and musical organizations. Negro parents participated in Parents Day events. The general feeling at the Univer sity, says Dr. Ellis, is that the smooth adjustment will continue as Negro numbers increase.