I grew up in a predominantly African American neighborhood where busing was used. Both my elementary school and my middle school were in the old money neighborhoods. Both these schools were predominantly white and pretty much the only reason they had some diversity was because of the busing. The weird thing to me, is that my best friend went to an elementary school that is 5 minutes away from my house (she applied to get in b/c it was a magnet school) while I traveled 15 minutes to and from everyday to get to my base school (which was also a magnet school). The same was true for middle school, the middle school by my house was not the one I went to. I went to the one 15-20 minutes away rather than the one 5 minutes away. Luckily my high school which is less than a mile from my house was the also my base school, but for the other schools it seemed a bit ridiculous.

Statesville, the town where I grew up, also used busing for some of the school districts. The elementary school district in which I lived consisted of a two block wide strip that snaked through town in order to pick up African American students. The school was at the edge of the country/rural area about 15 minutes away (driving on the interstate) from my house. The school had quite a diverse group with the African Americans from the town and the white kids from the country. This was a great school, with a great principal, so my parents and I didn't really mind going so far even though there were 6-8 closer elementary schools. I hope it was worth it for everyone else.....
I remember there being controversy in the town over this issue.
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Audrey Fowler

I don't really think I've had an experience with busing. Everyone in my schools lived close to the school they attended. My school was mildy diverse with maybe a 15-20 percent population of minorities but other than that it was pretty homogeneous. I don't think that until this class I had really even considered busing an issue that schools must face.

I did not have experience with busing while I was in school, but recently my high school started busing kids from the predominantly African American school across town. This school was doing so poorly on test scores and having so many behavior problems, a judge threatened to shut it down. So, the students from there get bused to my old high school because we had good test scores. There has been a lot of controversy about this busing in my hometown.

I have never had an experience with busing but I don't really understand the process. In Ashley's high school what is the purpose of busing because of poor test scores? Many times these things are related to the teachers or materials available/not available.

Ashley,
When the bused student's from one school to yours, did they bus some students from your school to the poor performing school?

I understand that racial diverstity is important in schools but it is so unfair to make some children go to schools 30 mins away when they live right by a school. Neighborhods are usually made up by race and maybe this is the problem that needs to be solved.
I know that I never had to deal with this but when I was in highschool they were gonna re-drew the lines that determined what school you went to and this was gonna affect some of my friends who lived in the middle of two schools.
In my county we had two county schools and one city school. The county schools did not recieve the same support that the city schools did so there were many advantages that school had. The wierd part of our situation is that the city school was in the middle of Shelby where the majority of the African Americans lived. So the school was majoritly black. It was also right near the "gheto" where people sold drugs and the school had more violence than the county schools so many people perfered their kids to go to the county schools.

I understand everyone's confusion about busing because there are many things about it that I don't understand, but being from the CharMeck school system this is something that has been in practice for as long as I can remember. The one thing that I do know is that busing gives many students from the inner city a chance to get out of the city and get a better education than they may have been offered at an inner city school. However, in places like my high school which was in a suburb of Charlotte, busing brought many gang related and safety issues to my school that weren't previously there. Even so, I wouldn't have changed a thing about the busing because I know that it gave me and everyone from the 'burbs a chance to experience what the world outside our town is really like. We live in a diverse world and I can see why our schools should reflect that. My school upbringing left me with friends of every race, color, ethnicity, etc. and I am pretty proud that I was able to have a real-world experience.

I as well did not have busing in my schools. Busing to me is very confusing as well. Although, Taylor does make me understand it a little bit more of it. I am glad that I did not have to go through busing. Busing does sound like maybe it is a good idea for areas like Charlotte, but for a lot of rural areas I would not see that as something we would need.

I agree that busing would probably not be very helpful for rural schools. In fact, I don't really see how it would make any sense at all, because you would be bringing kids from a rural area into another school in the same type of area. In Charlotte you are bringing kids from the inner city into the schools that are less urban. I would be curious to know the perspective of a student who was bused out of an inner city area into a rural area because I would like to know if they think it made a difference in the opportunities presented to them.

I really do not understand busing either as in my neighborhood is very diverse and there is a elementary school that is right down the road from us. So my school was diverse because of the local community itself so we did not have to bus people to give our school diversity.

So i guess my question is why do we bus? Is it to give schools diversity and to have every school be represented the same so there is no favoritism?

Ashley,
To answer your question, I am pretty sure that busing is used to "diversify" schools which in theory will make them equal. The best example to see the attempt at diversity would be with the Boston case we saw in class. The predominately African American schools were poorer and less supported than others; so some people pushed for busing so that there would be a mixture of students at every school. Again, in theory, this diversity would make the educational opportunities equal.

I'm still unsure as to what busing really is. Is it bringing kids from outside of the school district into the school? I don't get what ya'll are talking about. At my schools (elementary through high school) we had buses that ran and took kids to and from school, but I'm pretty sure that the buses only ran in the school district. Does this mean my school did or did not have busing? We still had parents bring their kids from outside of the district to our school, but I don't think that we had buses available for them, but they were definitely allowed to attend our school. I don’t remember there ever being any issues about busing at my schools and I rode the bus until I could drive myself to school.

Maria, as far as my experience goes, "busing" meant that some kids within our county were bused from the inner city into the suburbs. For example, I had a friend that lived 5 minutes away from a Charlotte high school but she was bused out to a school 30 minutes away. I guess the people behind this plan wanted to diversify suburban schools as well as give inner-city kids a chance for a better education. It sounds like your school probably did not have "busing" in the way that we are refering to it, although they did provide transportation for kids to and from school. "Busing" is not just refering to providing transportation, it refers to placing kids in schools that may provide them with better opportunities.
I hope this helps a little bit!