But now a strategy to tackle racial inequity in the school district is challenging the town’s self-image, casting a harsh light on segregation and the stark achievement gaps between black and white students — and raising pointed questions about race and class.
In the district that serves Maplewood and its neighbor, South Orange, the plan is to eliminate guaranteed seats in neighborhood elementary schools, bus children to other buildings and reduce the grouping of students by test scores, which has resulted in white students filling a disproportionate share of higher-level classes.
Though children of all backgrounds would be bused, a significant number would likely be white because of school enrollment trends.
Johanna Wright, a member of the district’s board of education, said the clear racial disparities in the system should make everyone feel the need to respond.
“There can be no more lying about the racism that infects public education in our school district,” she said.
While the district is generally considered high performing based on measurements like standardized test scores and the number of high school graduates bound for college, there are major differences between white students and black students.
The school district has, as far back as the 1960s, made efforts to racially integrate its schools — including using busing. But critics say some of the schools have struggled to achieve the ultimate goal of full integration. While Marshall & Jefferson Elementary Schools have participated in busing before, Seth Boyden Elementary School has not.
Black students in the district are, on average, academically three grades behind their white peers and are five times likelier to be suspended than white students, according to an analysis in 2017 by ProPublica. On state tests in math and language arts, black students lagged behind their white classmates in all seven elementary schools.
And though the district has just one high school, white and black students have disparate experiences. White students made up 64% of the students who took Advanced Placement courses at Columbia High School, the ProPublica analysis found, while black students represented just 22%. In classes geared toward gifted and talented students, 83% of the seats were filled by white students, compared with the 7% of seats filled by black students.
“You can peer through a doorway of a classroom and you can tell, based on the racial makeup of the class, what level it is,” said Walter Fields, leader of the Black Parents Workshop, a local advocacy group that filed a lawsuit this year accusing the district of discriminating against students of color.
In private Facebook groups and online forums, the district’s initiatives have set off impassioned clashes: Some parents say neighborhood schools provide convenience and familiarity; others worry that their children will be placed in less rigorous classes, and some question the district’s commitment to improving the treatment of black and Hispanic students.
Elizabeth Payne, a parent, was one of the few residents willing to talk openly about her opposition to busing, saying it was pointless unless the towns addressed economic disparity first. She said it would cause problems “down the line.”
“They don’t really put kids first at all,” Payne said in an interview. “And I don’t think that shipping them across town to another school is going to help.”
Across the country, school districts are grappling with similar issues involving segregation and racial inequities.
The topic has also seeped into the race for the White House after Sen. Kamala Harris took former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading Democratic contender, to task for his past opposition to busing.
On the surface, Maplewood and South Orange are fairly diverse — about 60% of the combined population of 42,000 is white, while the rest of the residents are people of color. And the towns are well-off; the median household income in both communities exceeds $120,000, more than double the national average.
But housing patterns have divided the district. Of its seven elementary schools, one is predominantly nonwhite students, while the rest are majority white. The school with more students of color lags behind the others in academic achievement and has a higher concentration of low-income students.
While the schools, like the towns, are diverse, students are often separated by race. White students represent about half of the roughly 7,100 students. African Americans make up 35%, and the rest are Hispanic, Asian or of mixed race, according to the census.
But those figures mask significant differences in the elementary schools.
At Seth Boyden Elementary School, which is in a section of Maplewood that is less well-off than other parts of the district, 57% of the 522 students are black. The highest African American enrollment in the town’s other elementary schools is 18%.
Over half the students at Seth Boyden receive free or reduced-price lunches; in the town’s other elementary schools that figure never climbs above 20%.
The district has long tried to address the differences by allowing white parents to send their children to Seth Boyden, though that has largely failed to rectify the imbalance. Black parents at Seth Boyden had not been allowed to send their children to other schools until 18 months ago, when the district ended that policy.
“To find a segregated elementary school in probably one of the most progressive towns in New Jersey, I mean, on the East Coast outside of New York, I don’t know how that happened there,” said Thomas Ficarra, who started the integration effort during the 20 months he served as interim superintendent, before leaving in June. “It was astounding to me.”
Ronald Taylor, who took over as superintendent in July after leading another New Jersey school district, said in emailed responses to written questions that the integration plan was still evolving and was “far from complete.’’ He said he was confident that once finished and “properly rolled out,’’ it would help achieve racial equity.
Taylor said he did not have enough information to address questions about the achievement gap. “I am in the earliest stages of my appointment and cannot make rushed judgment of our challenges,” he said.
In 2014, after the federal Office of Civil Rights found black students significantly underrepresented in advanced classes, the district agreed to hire a consultant to develop solutions. But the consultant, Thelma Ramsey, left without producing a plan.
Ramsey said school officials and some parents thwarted her efforts.
“In America, in order to have real equality, the other side thinks they have to give up something: ‘If I give you two pennies, I’m going to lose one penny,’” said Ramsey, a school principal in New Jersey. “And that’s not it.”
The school district is aiming to address the educational disparities by adopting controlled choice — a system used elsewhere that is designed to ensure that schools reflect a community’s demographic and economic makeup. Parents would be allowed to rank their school choices, but there would be no guarantee they would get their top pick. Children would have to travel to other parts of the district.
School officials said many children already are bused to schools outside their neighborhoods, in part because of overcrowding.
Many details of the plan, which also includes spending $140 million to renovate and repair school buildings, have yet to be sorted out, and it is not expected to begin before September 2021.
Ficarra recalled how some parents reacted when the integration plan was first presented.
“We got the kind of resistance where people say, ‘We are very much in favor of total integration — but,’ ” he said.
Rhea Mokund-Beck, a leader of the South Orange-Maplewood Community Coalition on Race, a grassroots group, said the district’s integration plan was “the beginning of the conversation that in so many other places we don’t even have the opportunity to start.”
Parents and former students said they believed one reason black students have struggled is teacher bias in a district where the vast majority of the workforce is white. Of the district’s 712 school employees, 554 are white, while 123 are black.
White teachers need training to “step away from their biases,’’ Mokund-Beck said. “We need to make sure that students can opt in to challenging classes that have nothing to do with race.”
T.J. Whitaker, who teaches English at Columbia High School and is one of its few black teachers, said black students often begin high school having rarely read books by black authors.
He said officers are sometimes summoned to deal with unruly students, a practice he opposes. “We have to battle to keep the police out of the classroom,” he said. “We have to battle to have students access higher-level classes. We have battles we continuously have to fight.”
Khadijah White, who graduated from Columbia High School in 2000, remembers being told by a white teacher that she wasn’t smart enough to take high-level science classes, including an AP biology class. As a result, she said, she gave up her dream of becoming a forensic investigator.
“I was very much discouraged,” said White, who lives in Maplewood. She ended up getting a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is now an assistant professor of journalism at Rutgers University.
Some parents wonder whether the district’s integration plan can really close a persistent achievement gap.
At Columbia High School, White said, “The kids are all in the same building, and they’re still segregated. Who gets to be put in the top levels of the school, versus who gets put in the bottom levels?”
Some residents say the towns’ progressive self-promotion too often stops at the school door.
“Very liberal,” Whitaker, the high school teacher, said. “But rarely radical.”
This article originally appeared in
.