The school board member: 'I don't think it (busing) changed many housing patterns'

Ellen Roe is unapologetic about her decision nearly 30 years ago to cast the lone vote against Seattle's mandatory desegregation busing plan.

And she finds vindication in the fact that the School Board now is considering shifting some of the $26 million it spends on bus transportation into stronger academic programs and support services for low-performing students.

Busing, either for desegregation or to give families their choice of schools, is "a high cost that draws away from the things you can do in the schools, like field trips and more books," Roe says.

Kids as young as 6, many of them minorities, had to take long bus rides north from the city's Central Area or South End. Busing, in part, alleviated crowding in predominantly minority schools south of the Ship Canal and filled empty seats in white North End schools.

But desegregation was a rallying cry for many supporters of the Seattle Plan.

"I don't think it changed many housing patterns, which is the main issue, (and) what causes a lot of the segregation," said Roe, who would have preferred to see busing remain voluntary. "To me that was better than making everybody mad."

	BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES School Board members, from left, T.J. Vassar, Ellen Roe and Susan Haris and Superintendent Robert Nelson listen to a 1986 discussion about busing.

Roe still lunches with colleague Dorothy Hollingsworth, a black retired elementary-school teacher and former School Board member who voted for the Seattle Plan. Hollingsworth said busing but didn't go far enough to achieve true integration and educational equality.

"We moved bodies around, but there was some resistance, and I don't think we ever accomplished an integrated approach to the education of all children," she said.