I.

In September, Mark Lewis was among 81 students bused from his mostly black, low income Jefferson Elementary School neighborhood to white, middle income Valerie Elementary School in Harrison Township. A short time later, he was suspended for 10 days. "The little primary school kids were playing outside at lunchtime, white kids and black kids. I saw a little white boy going back into the building, crying. I stopped him and asked him what was wrong. He said that he and Dan Freeman, a black boy, had been fighting. I started to take him over to Dan to talk things out. The white boy's brother tried to take him from me and back into the building, but I brought the white boy to the primary school entrance. Someone else brought Dan Freeman."

Instead of talking things out, the white boy, frightened, got on his knees and begged Dan Freeman not to hit him again. Everyone went back inside to class.

"The next morning, Dr. Fields, the principal, called me into his office. The little white boy and his mother were sitting in the office. Dr. Fields asked the white boy if I had egged on the fight. The boy said yes. Dr. Fields said to me: 'From this minute on, you are suspended from school until further notice. I will take you home. Go get your books and come back to the office.'

"It was about 10 o'clock. Dr. Fields drove me home and let me out in front of my house. He told me to tell my mother to call him. He drove off. My mother didn't get home until 2:30 in the afternoon. I went over to my brother's house and kept checking to see when my mother would get home."

Four and a half hours after Dr. Fields had left Mark out on the street, Mrs. Josephine Hobson, Mark's mother, came home. "I took Mark right back to school," she says, "to see Dr. Fields. He told me that if Mark hadn't stopped the white boy from going back into the building, the fight wouldn't have happened. Mark got to tell his side of the story for the first time. He told Dr. Fields that the fight had happened before he saw the white boy and that the white boy was crying from the fight when he saw him.

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"Dr. Fields listened. Then he apologized to me and Mark for what he had done. Dr. Fields told us he had gotten angry and acted too quickly. He said he knew he shouldn't have suspended Mark and left him in the street like that. He said Mark could come back to school the next day."

II.

The Dayton Board of Education's rule on suspension, published on official administration stationery and signed by Dr. William Goff, assistant superintendent in charge of pupil personnel, states:

"Ohio law grants to the building principal the authority to suspend a student from school for a period of not more than 10 days. The use of suspension as a disciplinary measure should always be preceded by a careful and judicious evaluation of the total situation involving the student. Normally, other methods of guidance and control should have been tried and the parents should have been apprised of the growing seriousness of the student's behavior."

III.

Late in January, Dr. Fields received a letter from Elizabeth Scondrick, an employee of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1456, whose job it is to ride buses where children have misbehaved consistently and to report on the situation.

In her letter, she listed the names of 29 Valerie School children, accusing them of swearing, name calling, talking to the driver, moving from one seat to another, leaving the bus before it stopped, and defying authority. In order to get the children's names, she passed a piece of paper around and asked them to sign it. Then she wrote down her accusations and sent her letter to Dr. Fields.

Only nine of the 29 names had individual discipline violations next to them. After the names of four students, Mrs. Scondrick wrote: "more or less with the crowd." After two others, she wrote: "late every morning." After Mark Lewis' name, she wrote: "I told him to

RAP OF DAYTON: JUNE