Opinion: AISD Officials, Lamar Parents Should Learn From the Past

Since the April 17 email from Austin Independent School District Superintendent Matias Segura disclosing the likelihood of busing Dobie Middle School students to Lamar Middle School, Lamar parents have risen up in opposition. “We need to make sure that doesn’t happen,” the Lamar PTA newsletter sent on Tuesday said.

Lamar parents have legitimate concerns about the logistics of adding students to an overcrowded campus, but the tone of parental complaints immediately recall a previous school closure and wealthy white schools’ hostility to Black students entering previously white spaces.

AISD closed Anderson High School and Kealing Middle School in 1971 in order to desegregate the district’s secondary schools, after white parents refused to send their children to Anderson. In oral histories taken 30 years later, former Anderson students still recalled the hostility they faced upon entering new schools.

Alice Darden Davis, a student who transferred to what was then Reagan High School, experienced profound alienation. “I remember raising my hand to answer a question and the entire room stopping and turning, looking at you, and you’d speak, and it was as if you could hear your own voice for the silence,” she said. “And then they would just turn back around and continue with wherever they stopped before you spoke.”

While logistical concerns are legitimate, the Lamar community’s response to the idea of Dobie students entering the school very much echo white schools’ lack of welcoming to Black students from 1971. We must hope that parents, teachers, and students can change the target of their frustration to TEA, rather than to the children that will be experiencing the trauma of a school closure.

The Lamar PTA newsletter also referenced “the 1980’s when Austin ISD tried forced student busing the first time.” This refers to when Austin finally fulfilled its court desegregation order in 1980 – 26 years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision – by implementing two-way busing at the elementary level, rather than the one-way busing experienced only by Black students after the closure of Anderson and Kealing. Framing Dobie students entering Lamar as “forced busing” both diminishes the reason AISD bused students in the first place and underscores the Lamar community’s lack of welcoming toward students that they see as “other.”

AISD officials, too, should learn from the Anderson closure and center the concerns of the Dobie community. Anderson High faculty, staff, parents, and students fought for their school to stay open, and lost it due to white resistance. The district attempted to maintain the legacy of Anderson High by naming a new high school Anderson. But the new Anderson, far from the Eastside in Northwest Hills, chose a new mascot and new colors, and refused to display any of Old Anderson’s excellence – not even the state football championship trophies. AISD has been working to mend its relationship with Old Anderson alumni in the last few years, with the establishment of Eastside Memorial at the L.C. Anderson campus, and that work should be commended.

The school board and superintendent should maintain that recent commitment to ensure that all voices matter in AISD, not just West Austin. Dobie’s PTA president has clearly stated that their community does not want a charter school, since that would necessitate firings across the board. If a temporary closure is what the community wants, Superintendent Segura should be applauded for trying to make that happen.

AISD is right to do everything they can to avoid a state takeover like Houston is experiencing, and Superintendent Segura is right to put forth plans in response to the Dobie community’s requests. We can only hope that the Lamar community remembers that this is about what’s right for children – all children, even those that don’t live in West Austin.

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Allison Raven is a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University and a graduate of McCallum High School. Her dissertation on Austin desegregation and resegregation won the C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize from the Southern Historical Association.