children were having a snowball fight after school next to the bus stop. Mark Lewis explains what happened:

"We were throwing snowballs and when the buses pulled up to take us home, most of us got on. A few kids were still throwing snowballs at each other. Naturally, the buses got hit. Some kids on the bus had snowballs and were throwing them through the open windows at the kids outside.

"I was standing by an open window without a snowball when the driver of the other bus walked over to my window. Somebody behind me threw a snowball out the window and hit her. She got on the bus and put her face close to mine. She said, 'Did you throw that snowball at me?' I told her no. She put her face a little closer. 'I asked you did you throw that snowball at me?' I said, 'And I just told you no.' She asked me two more times. The bus was silent. She left, cursing me out under her breath. The whole bus heard what she called me.

"She went and got Dr. Fields. He told her to point out who was throwing the snowballs. She pointed out Thomas Glover and Anthony Harris and then she looked over at me and said, "This one here hit me with a snowball.'

"Dr. Fields told us to follow him. The buses got ready to leave and began driving off. I asked Dr. Fields how I was going to get home. He said, 'You are going to walk.' I told him I was going inside the school to call my mother to come get me. He said he would call her and let her know we were on our way home. He started going toward the school. We started home."

The walk was five miles on a cold day. It took the boys two hours to reach their Lower Dayton View homes. "I kept Mark home the next day," Mrs. Hobson says. "Fed him aspirins all day long and kept checking to make sure he wasn't running a fever. The following day, I sent him back to school."

A meeting was scheduled at the Board of Education with Dr. Fields and Dr. Goff. "I told Dr. Fields that he had done a cruel thing and that he had no reason to make the children walk home. I asked why he hadn't asked the children for their side of the story. He told me he had to back up the bus driver. He said that he couldn't take the word of the children. He said that all children tell lies when they do something wrong.

"I asked why didn't he take them inside and call me. He said he didn't see the point of taking them inside. He said that if they had waited outside, they were in a dry place. He said he had other work to do."

Mrs. Hobson showed Dr. Fields the Dayton Board of Education's official policy on busing which says that "Any child who insists on misbehaving shall be denied the privilege of riding the bus by the proper authority." There was no evidence of the children's insisting on misbehaving. There is no rule that permits a principal to make children walk five miles home as punishment. Dr. Fields told Mrs. Hobson that he did not tell the boys to walk home. He said he left them on the school grounds and went inside the school building.

By this time, Mrs. Hobson was disgusted and feeling completely helpless. She asked that her son be trans

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ferred back to a school in her neighborhood. Dr. Goff and Dr. Fields immediately agreed to this. At a second meeting with them, she asked that all three suspensions involving Mark be erased from his permanent record. She said they were clearly in violation of the Dayton Board's own suspension and busing regulations, and she didn't want her son's new principal and teachers to look at the permanent record and get a first impression that Mark was a problem child. Dr. Goff agreed to erase all three incidents from Mark's permanent record. Mrs. Hobson asked to see the record so that she could be sure of this. Dr. Goff refused.

V.

Mark transferred to Longfellow School. "There has been no trouble at all since the transfer," Mrs. Hobson says. "At first, Mark missed his friends at Valerie, but he adjusted quickly. He gets good grades and he will start at Patterson Co-op in the fall."

VI.

A month after Mark left Valerie School, Dr. Fields, who is white and speaks with a soft Southern twang, discussed integration at Valerie and sounded wise and gentle. It was as if Mark Lewis and other black students who had been expelled from or had "decided" to trans fer from Valerie after several run-ins with Dr. Fields, couldn't possibly have existed.

"The inner city children like our Jefferson students have two marks against them before they set foot in a white school like Valerie. First, they are black. Second, they come from a disadvantaged socio-economic background. These differences create a wide gap in learning achievement. This gap must be accounted for, and accommodations made.

"When you have diversified cultures merging like we have at Valerie, you are going to have some problems, which I feel is a natural outgrowth of mastrust and identification misunderstandings. For example, a child from the inner city might take a pencil when he needs one from another student's desk, and then replace it, without asking if he could use it. At Valerie, the stu dents would call it stealing. But it isn't, taken in the context of the situation. The basic problem as one of majority values displacing minority values (black stu dents learning white values) over a period of time, with out losing individual identity.

"Other misunderstandings arise from differences in how the kids play. The inner city students are a bit more rough in their play because they are less protected at home and learn at an earlier age how to play Lan guage is one more difference as just an idle comment by a black child will be taken in an offensive manner by a white child. But with time these differences will shside."

Dr. Fields' comments about "play" were ironic in view of his actions after the snowball fight. This year at Valerie School, there was also the case of Melvin Rohen

son, a black eighth grader who was suspended several times and then expelled for fighting. One of Melvin's suspensions was for hitting a white child in the face during the bus ride to school. Melvin claimed the white child had called him a nigger. The white child denied this. Not content to suspend Melvin, Dr. Fields informed the white child's parents that Melvin hated all white people, that he came from a home where his mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Robinson, hated all white people and taught this hatred to her children, and that the only solution was psychiatric help for Melvin. Acting on the advice Dr. Fields had given them, never having met either Melvin or Mrs. Robinson, the white parents decided to file an assault and battery charge against Melvin in Juvenile Court.

Had Dr. Fields been better informed, he would have known that Mrs. Robinson is state chairman of the Welfare Rights Organization and has been an active welfare rights leader for years here. She has worked closely with a large number of Appalachian welfare mothers and black welfare mothers during those years. Her position is a non-salaried one.

When the case came up in Juvenile Court, the referee explained to the white parents that the problem never

should have reached court. He said it should have been settled between the families, or at school.

VII.

"Sometimes, we fail to see the child's problems," Dr. Fields reflected, "and we only see ours in relation to his. When a child is disruptive, we try 100 per cent to keep him in school. What must be noted is the child's actual behavior and the child's perception of the situation.

"When a problem occurs, the first step involves the counselor and a general discussion with the child about how he perceives the situation. If the child is referred again, there is a conference between the student and the principal where firm guidelines about the situation are established. If he still persists, a note is sent to the. parent and a face-to-face conference may be held with student, principal, and parent.

"If this fails, the child is given a choice of corporal punishment or suspension. This is only after all other methods of keeping the child in school have been expended. Usually the child will take the corporal punishment. If this doesn't work, we will resort to suspension. Suspensions are normally from one to three days. But it

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24

varies."

Dr. Fields was asked why, in view of the many steps he says are taken to keep a child in school, Mark Lewis was suspended so quickly. "Nothing I said seemed to make an impression on Mark," he said. "You know. Some kids will look at you, and you know that you are not getting through. There was no behavior change, no attitude change that I could see. Punishment did not teach Mark anything. So I suspended him."

How much counseling did Mark Lewis and Melvin Robinson receive? How did the staff at Valerie deal with Mark's and Melvin's adjustment problems? "I don't know how much counseling they received, but I don't think it was much. We have one counselor here for 450 children."

When his counselor was pointed out to Melvin, he said, "I've seen her walking around the halls. But I never knew what she did here." By that time, Melvin had been suspended twice, was regarded by teachers and Dr. Fields as "trouble", and was only a short time away from expulsion and three months on the street.

VIII.

Students are suspended from the Dayton school system at the rate of almost 3,500 per year. Suspension is the first step in a clearly documented pattern. Several suspensions add up to expulsion from school, or dropping out. Expulsion or dropping out ends up as juvenile court referral. Juvenile court referral ends up as jail.

There are some startling facts in the Dayton Board of Education's own "Dropout Profile" book. During the 1969-70 school year, 1,380 students dropped out of the Dayton schools. As it has for 10 years now, Roosevelt High School, with a student body that comes largely from low income, black neighborhoods, led the city (247 dropouts). At Stivers High School, where the student body comes largely from low income, white neighborhoods, 235 students, an amazing 21.5 per cent of the total student body, dropped out.

In making its "profile", the administration researchers questioned one boy and one girl dropout from the 9, 10, 11, and 12 grade levels at each high school. Administration statistics show that almost half of the dropouts had intelligence ratings of average and above, yet 62.1 per cent had failing grade point averages, 62.1 per cent missed 26 or more days of school, and 69 per cent were in the General Course, referred to by students as The Dumping Ground. "I was in that General Course for awhile, man," says Donnie Moore, a graduating Dunbar senior who got out of the General Course and is now headed for college. "Spent all semester bullshitting and making a broom, man. Worked on that broom for MONTHS. Got a 'A'."

The two key facts in suspension and dropout statistics are the high percentage of students who fail to adjust to school in low income areas, and the Board of Education's own information on the relationship of student dropouts to the people in school who could have helped them.

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More than half of the dropouts in the survey said they wanted more classroom discipline from the teachers; 65.4 per cent wanted more "counseling for direction and guidance." More than half rated "communication between pupil and disciplinarian poor"; 43 per cent rated communication between pupil and counselor poor; 51.6 per cent rated communication between pupil and principal and between pupil and assistant principal

poor.

The reason lies in the difference between how most teachers and administrators see students, and how students see themselves. The difference is as basic as language.

IX.

The administration researchers explain that their dropout study is "designed to ascertain what must be provided for the dropouts to beget the apparent despair of meaninglessness, senselessness, pointless affirmation of nonentity; how he is to relieve himself of the impossible predicament of the autonomous suicidal destruction of his worthwhileness...

"One who feels worthwhile comprehends it as an act which is utterly (probably) beyond a complete scientific explanation. To comprehend worthwhileness is an act of contemplation and philosophical wisdom mutated with the fruit of scientific analyses. Most can identify 'there is a tree; that is a man'. But few are struck by the realization of the real import or input of what is really meant by 'is'."

X.

Luke Huggins, a Roosevelt freshman, writes: "One day as I was walking down the street this lady came out of a house say you black bitch. I didn't know what was going on but she had caught this lady in the house with her man. The lady came out the door with a gun in her hand and said come out of there. The other lady came out the house and the man with her. He said don't you shoot her or you shoot me. Then she drop the gun on the ground and said God be with me."

XI.

"The Roosevelt Seal which is in the main hall by the Mathison Street entrance is not to be walked on by anyone. This is a sacred symbol of our school and is to be respected at all times." (Roosevelt student handbook, "Rally for Roosevelt")

XII.

"I don't see why pimp hit their women when they don't get any money and there is no reason for that because she can't help it. And all pimp want is new cars and lot of money and he should want the woman herself." (Tycelia Whatley, Roosevelt freshman)