Even amid bathroom requests and one boy's repeated removing his red turtleneck, Bodnar kept everyone's attention as she called out different letters during a word game. Like this,'' said one boy, clasping his hands and simulating a dive. Across town, youngsters at a Spanish language magnet comment en espanol about the last time they stayed home sick. Farther away, there's Central High School, the city's showcase magnet with an Olympic-size swimming pool and gymnastics center. If all this sounds expensive, it is.
Experts say it's the most expensive desegregation plan ever.
When the school system sued for a desegregation plan in 1977, the pattern of white-family flight from the city to surrounding suburbs was already entrenched. City schools were literally crumbling after years of failed efforts to build and maintain schools. Judge Clark ruled in 1986 that the elaborate network of magnet schools was the city's only hope for luring white students from the suburbs. He made the participation of white suburban students voluntary because the suburban school systems were separate and not legally responsible for the city system's plight. But the magnet plan later triggered a key U.S. Supreme Court decision that signaled the high court's discomfort with race-based school plans.