The Michigan Daily-Thursday, June 7, 1979-Page 9
FINA L PLAN DUE JUNE 15
A2 committee studies school integration
By ELEONORA DI LISCIA
The Citizen's Committee for Racial
Balance and Equal Opportunity last
week considered five plans for
alleviating racial imbalance in Ann Ar-
bor schools, but failed to make a
decision on submitting a final plan to
the city's board of education.
The committee will meet again at 7
p.m. today in Slauson Junior High
School.
THE 60-MEMBER committee, com-
posed of parents, administrators, and
community members, must submit a
plan to the board by June 15. The com-
mittee was organized last year to make
recommendations for fulfilling state
guidelines on racial imbalance in Ann
Arbor schools. According to Michigan
guidelines, six Ann Arbor elementary
schools are racially imbalanced.
Busing is critical to each of the five
plans. According to committee member
Gerald Abruscato, one subcommittee
worked on finding ways to ease a tran-
sition to busing with little disruptions to,
students.
"We've called it 'de minimus'
because we've tried to come-up with a
proposal that would have a minimal
amount of busing and expenditure,"
said Abruscato.
THE SUBCOMMITTEE found it
could reassign 978 children currently
bused to different schools. However, 356
children who currently walk to school.
would be bused under this plan. Eighty-
four children who now are bused would
walk, said Abruscato.
According to Abruscato, not all sub-
committee members agree that busing
is necessary. "There are several who
are more in favor of some of the other
proposals than this one," he indicated.
A second subcommittee submitted a
proposal that would provide separate
schools for kindergarten through fourth
grades and for fifth and sixth grades.
Children in the fifth and sixth grade
schools would then channel into the
same intermediate and secondary
schools.
According to spokeswoman Lynn
Johnson, this plan utilizes busing, but
would achieve racial balance by
redrawing boundaries. Johnson said
the plan would increase educational
opportunity because "you would have
to include more students in K through 4.
With more students at a grade level you
would be able to have more curriculum
such as electives," she explained.
"I feel racial balance would be
beneficial because some schools don't
do well educationally and culturally. It
would help all of us. In areas where the
schools have become desegregated, the
community has become
desegregated," she added.
A third subcommittee suggested
challenging the state's guidelines. Ac-
cording to spokesman Lyndon Welch,
"Any guidelines should be given in the
context of the community it is being ap-
plied."
Krakow welcomes Pope
KRAKOW, Poland (AP) - Jubilant
residents of ancient Krakow greeted
Pope John Paul II yesterday with chan-
ts of "It's your town! It's your town!"
when the Polish pontiff returned to the
city he once served as archbishop.
Thousands stood in the-rain to cheer
his helicopter as it landed in center of
the city, bringing the pontiff to his old
bishopric after three days in
Czestochowa.
Thousands more, chanting and clap-
ping as he went by, stood 20-deep along
the twisted, flower-decked procession
route leading to Krakow's hilltop for-
tress, Wawel Castle, where he held
evening prayer services in the
cathedral at the tomb of St. Stanislaw,
Poland's patron.
HIGH ABOVE the cathedral,
Poland's mightiest bell, the 16-ton dub-
bed "Zygmunt" for a Polish king,
boomed out a welcome as the papal
motorcade climbed the approach to the
castle.
The former Cardinal Karol Wojtyla
served as archbishop of Krakow, in
southern Poland, before being elected
pope last October. It was here that he
confronted communist authorities with
demands for greater religious freedom
for Poland's 30 million Roman
Catholics.
After praying at the cathedral, the
pope spoke briefly to an audience of
priests and church officials before
retiring to the archbishop's residence,
where he chose to stay in the same.
Ypsilanti police apprehend'
escapees from county jail
(Continued from Page).r drobber
apprehended as he was hitchhiking on arme ery.
Ecorse Rd. near Michigan - Ave. Hopkins was in jail awaiting trial on
Hopkins surrendered without incident, charges of carrying a concealed
and because he was wearjng civilian weapon and possession of stolen
clothing at the time of capture, Zakr- property.-
zewski speculated that "he had help
(escaping) on the outside." ZAKRZEWSKI ADMITTED the locks
MINICK SAID both men probably on the jail's steel doors were a potential
contacted the same outside acquain- security problem.
tance. "It was a part of the original building
In 1977, Cross was convicted of design," he said. "Several complaints
burglary and sentenced to a five-year were made about the locks by prison of-
maximum prison term. Prior to the ficials, but nothing was ever done to
escape, Cross was being held at the change them."
Washtenaw County Jail on a special Minick said, "Yes, something will be
writ from the state prison. He is being done. We've got to try to reinforce the
questioned by Ypsilanti police on dead-bolt concept lock. We'll pursue a
charges of breaking and entering and more secure iron-type door."
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sparse room he used when he was arch-
bishop.
HE APPEARED at a window and
said to the chanting mass of people
below: "I never used to talk up to the
windows when I lived here before." The
crowd shouted, "It's your town! It's
your town!"
"Aren't you going to sleep?" the pope
asked repeatedly. Each time the
response a resounding "No!"
"Well, Iam," he said, and calmed the
boistrous crowd by asking them to join
him in saying an evening prayer.
ON SUNDAY, the pope plans to
celebrate a Mass in honor of St.
Stanislaw, a Pole who was martyred
900 years ago in a dispute over whether
the church or state should be supreme.
During his visit to his homeland -
and most strongly in the three days he
was in the city of Czestochowa - the
pope has challenged the communist
government to recognize religious
rights and improve the conditions in
which the church operates.
Yesterday, a government spokesper-
son expressed "surprise" at how much
the pontiff was speaking out about mat-
ters that touched on politics. Later in
the day, the pope preached against
building the human spirit only on the
basis of labor.
SPEAKING AT a second Mass in two
days for Silesian workers, he said work
was "the fundamental dimension of
man's life on earth," but added: -
"Do not let yourself be seduced by the
temptation to think that man can fully
find himself by denying God, erasing
prayer from his life and remaining only
a worker, deluding himself that what he
produces can on its own fill the needs of
the human heart."
WELCH POINTED out that even the
schools with the lowest academic
achievement still had higher test scores
than the national average. "The
question is whether racial imbalance
causes bad education in Ann Arbor. I
don't think they are related. We really
have to have a better reason for busing
than just racial balance," he said.
The third subcommittee also
suggested a review of housing patterns,
particularly government-subsidized
housing projects, which are attractive
to lower-income families. Welch said
planning for future housing should take
racial balance into account.
According to committee
spokeswoman Nancy Darnell, a fourth
subcommittee discussed the concept of
magnet schools. "Magnets are schools
that are set up with a special learning
style or something that is different
from the regular schools. They are set
up or placed in a way that would draw
people to integrate the school," Darnell
said.
THE SUBCOMMITTEE suggested,
for example, employing programs at-
tractive to black students in a
predominantly white school by using
survey data.
"The strongest point is that we could
get desegregation voluntarily and also
give people choices that they don't have
now. Thiswouldn't put the burden of
transportation on people except people
who wanted to," Darnell explained.
. Darnell said she felt desegregation is
important in changing perceptions so
people "don't see schools as good or
bad, black or white" since there would
be no racially identifiable schools.
THE LAST subcommittee's plan
would regroup elementary schools into
clusters. The clusters then would feed
into the same intermediate schools.
This proposal would leave integration
plans up to individual clusters instead
of to the community at large. Once the
clusters were formed, community in-
volvement committees would decide
the program and budget matters of
their individual schools
. I W 111 k,
AVENUE at LIBERTY-ST. 761-9700
Formerly.Fifth Forum i heater
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EsT FOREFILM
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SAT-SUN 1:30-3:205:207:10-9:00
The Ann Arbor Film Cooperetive presents at Aud A
$1.50 THURSDAY, .JUNE,7
THE KING OF HEARTS
(Philippe de Broca, 1967) 7 & 9-Aud A
Our most popular film. A Scottish soldier during WWI is sent to a French town,
evacuated except for an asylum. Meanwhile the fleeing Germans have left a
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A ver funny comedy and a powerful anti-war film ALAN BATES, GENEVIEVE
BUJO(DI. "Delightfully subtle satire-penetratin comedy encased in a most
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Tomorrow: Woody Allen in EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW
ABOUT SEX BUT WERE AFRAID 10 ASK and WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY?