Louisiana: The State We're In; 601

Funding for the production of Louisiana: The State We're In is provided in part by the Zigler Foundation of Jennings, Gulf States Utilities helping Louisiana bridge the gap to our energy future and the Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation. Hello, I'm Beth George. Welcome to this edition of Louisiana: The State We're In. This week begins

our seventh season on Louisiana Public Broadcasting and we have three reports. September is certainly a time for new beginnings. For many of the state's schoolchildren, it will be a time to attend classes very different from those they attended last year. We have a report this week on the wave of new desegregation in the state's schools. And reporter David Young gives us the first in a two-part series on safety at the state's airports. Finally we'll visit the New Orleans Museum of Art where the exhibit Search for Alexander is attracting record crowds. But first as schools opened across the state, desegregation continued to be a major concern to many school leaders. In East Baton Rouge Parish, educators are attempting to implement a court order for mixing secondary schools. And at the same time pondering the possible effects of a recent change in philosophy by the United States Justice Department. LPB producer Rick Smith has a report on the action in this parish. Reporter Robyn Ekings looks at all of the media attention it has generated. But every report that we have is that things are going fine. It's a great opening day and it's very smooth. No problems for students

other than transportation problems. With those words Superintendent Raymond Arveson summed up the first day of school in East Baton Rouge Parish. Officials there were closely following the implementation of a desegregation plan for the secondary schools in East Baton Rouge, a plan that had been drawn up by Federal District Judge John Parker, a plan that calls for massive busing. Five out of six students in the system are now being bused. That requires almost 600 buses to get them to school. Problems with the new bus routes caused busy phone lines and long waiting lines at the School Board's transportation office. But while early morning news was good, the prospects dimmed somewhat that afternoon when the enrollment figures came in. Even with expected increases following Labor Day, East Baton Rouge figures to have 2,000 fewer students than last year. That follows a loss of 4,000 students from 1981. That also means less money from the state with which to pay teachers. As expected private schools in Baton Rouge are doing a booming business. Still, for most parents, public education is the most viable choice even if it does mean their children have to leave the

neighborhood. Doug and Suzy Gonzales live on the outskirts of Baton Rouge and they were hoping to attend a high school just 15 minutes from their house. Instead they must ride the bus 45 minutes into the inner city. Doug and Suzy's mother says that it's the distance, not the school that bothers her. Somebody come up and say my kid was at that school next year, they have to go to another school. It's just, it's not bad. The kids, I think they ought to be worried about building up the education rather than building up putting them somewheres else to achieve something that may not work in the first place. Cynthia Jones and her husband moved out from town into a neighborhood that they felt had exceptionally good schools. Now their daughter Dekendra has been assigned to a school closer into town. Her bus ride takes 40 minutes. Her parents are not happy with that, but say they'll tolerate the method if the result is the same. If it's just a matter of her, changing schools, you know. She's going to ride maybe 10 to 15 minutes longer. That's fine as long as she achieves the same quality education that we have set

out for her in the beginning. You know, we can handle that. And we will. Our main priority is her getting a quality education. I think that's what the issue is here -- that all parents want quality education for their children. And if we can have quality education with this system, then my hat is off to them. Everyone involved, you know, including parents, students, school board and whoever was involved in it. But many critics of the new plan blame the school board for not providing the proper leadership in the desegregation of East Baton Rouge Parish. Judge Parker himself called the hearing on the Friday before school began to express his displeasure with the school board's attitude. School board member Press Robinson agrees with Judge Parker that the board as a whole should be more positive in their approach because the plan can work. As for the loss of students, Dr. Robinson thinks the blame must be shared. You will recall that there were several members of the board who did what I call a real acting job in terms of talking about the order and how educationally unsound it was, talking about the judge himself

and talking about other things. If that board had given the kind of leadership that this community really needed what they would have done was said to this community, "This is now the law of the land until it's overturned by a higher court. We are obligated as law-abiding citizens to implement this plan. We're going to go full steam ahead in implementing the plan. We need your help and your support and your blessings in doing so." I doubt very seriously if we would have lost as many as 500 students. But of course we didn't do that. So what we did was not only encourage, we strongly recommend it to the community, that they take the actions that they did. As you require the school system to do things that the people are not willing to accept, they leave. School board attorney John Moore feels that the drop in enrollment shows that citizens are rejecting the court's remedy. The only ones that can afford to leave are those that can have the mobility to move out, move to some other state, some other town, or to afford private schools.

Those are the most affluent ones. That hurts your tax base to begin with. But more important than that, it takes away community support for your public school system which is the most important thing of all. The loss of community support has more than just officials in East Baton Rouge concerned. Three weeks before school began, the U.S. Justice Departent asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to delay its hearing of the school board's appeal of Judge Parker's plan, saying it wanted to explore new methods of achieving desegregation. In essence, the Justice Department said that it no longer believed busing to be a viable means of achieving effective school desegregation. The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board voted to ask for a stay of Judge Parker's secondary school plan. Although it was denied, the loss was offset by a hope that the new federal policy would mean his plan was only temporary. Along with other busing opponents, they saw a break in the clouds. This is a development of the profoundest dimensions. It's the first time the Justice Department has ever taken a position that busing has not worked. And I

believe they'll be able to prove it. It will take some time to do so. You'll have to build a record in the district court, bring in facts, figures and experts and studies to show that rather than helping education, rather than helping integration, that busing has done just the opposite. But I believe that case can be made. And with the Justice Department's desire to do so, I think it is a very hopeful event. Of course not everyone shares Senator Johnston's enthusiasm. Civil rights leaders have seen many changes at the federal level, so they have come to trust only themselves to press the issue of desegregation. In busing they have a reliable tool for getting the job done. And it's not a tool they are willing to lay down without a proven replacement. From the standpoint of the black citizen, all we look upon busing is just a tool to force people to comply with the Constitution. Most white people look upon busing as something that is foreign to their nature, something that the federal government in Washington is forcing them to put their

children in perilous situation and a method by which we, you know, in effect causing the school system to, to become deteriorated and cause them to to become inferior. So busing mean different things, from different things to different people. We want a lot of innovative things to make integration work, but work voluntarily. But what doesn't work and the evidence, I think, is clear on this -- is these forced orders to take 6 year olds for an hour and 15 minutes and in one direction. And, by the way, the blacks don't like that either. The poll we recently took in one of the black legislative districts here showed that blacks opposed busing by 60-40 margin except those whose children were bused and they opposed by a more than two to one margin. So I don't think it's popular and if it's not popular with blacks or with whites or with the children or their parents, just for whose benefit, you might ask, is it being done?

I really do not know. Are we constantly studying ways to desegregate? We have never decided busing is the way, the only way, and this what we shall pursue. However, as we have looked at the national level, the state and the local levels, as we have looked at other options, nothing seems to achieve that racial balance, that unitary system and that's what the balance is all about: a single system. And until such time as we see more viable tools, then we can only follow what we know to at least bring the children of all races together and that's what we have to stick with, you know. We are not close minded. We are not locked into a system. After 26 years of litigation, the question marks still remain in the case of Davis versus the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board. In the coming months, the courts will try again to answer those questions and most everyone involved agrees that the real answers will come from the students, the teachers and the parents.

The majority of the white people who -- the white flight -- the people who fled from the public school system did so out of fear, out of these concerns, and I think that we all on an individual basis have to take responsibility for our public school system. The whirr of the camera, the smell of the newsprint. Certainly the most popular story with the Baton Rouge news media this week was the implementation of the second phase of desegregation. The first school bell of the year even drew national attention reported on Monday night's network news. A spokesman for ABC News said the size of the effort, along with the Justice Department's apparent shift of position on busing, were reasons enough to send out a reporter. While one reporter was enough for the network, ABC's Baton Rouge affiliate felt it needed a few more for its local coverage, about nine more. We sat down and weeks of planning prior to the opening day of school and looked at the issues and felt like we had to staff them and had to cover them. And there were many issues. There were many

questions around unanswered transportation problems. There were certain schools where major changes were brought about by a court order had to be covered. Security problems were another one. Being with the elected officials, the president of the school board and his superintendent had to be covered. We felt like 10 crews was the minimum we could get by with in order to adequately cover it. Spain admits that much of what his 10 reporters and 10 photographers brought in on Monday wasn't used. All the news time on the station's evening newscast was used to report what turned out to be a mostly routine opening day of school. There is a way of covering it that would have resulted in sensationalism and media hype that day. That's one way of doing it. I feel like, after looking at it, that it was done very mature and reported pretty much as it went -- smooth but with some complications. I don't have any regrets about what we did. What the first day of school lacked an action, it made up for an information. With every major Baton Rouge news organization sending the parishes more than 50,000 public school students off to

school, it was difficult to avoid keeping up with the progress of the court's busing plan. School officials helped feed the media's appetite with news conferences at the beginning and the end of the day. All that still left some hungry. Where do you draw the line between the responsibility we have to make sure parents understand what is happening and adequately educate them and say this is what you need to know to make sure you can make a rightful decision for your child: where they have to go, what curriculum to choose, whether or not you want to stay or get out of the system. Where do you draw the line between giving them enough information and giving them too much? I suspect that my opinion would differ from a lot of our viewers. Maybe they think and on the one hand we've given them too much. My thought is probably we haven't given them enough. The eyes of the world were focused on Louisiana recently when the nation's second-worst air disaster occurred. When a Pan Am flight crashed into a Kenner neighborhood, it obviously

caused an increased concern over airport safety. This week we begin a two-part series on the state's airports. David Young reports. Aviation is really taking off in Louisiana. There are 12,000 pilots and 5,000 airplanes registered in this state. In other words at any one given time, there may be hundreds of airplanes flying all over Louisiana or looking for a place to land. That's when a pilot can run into a problem. There are 65 airports in Louisiana, most of them general aviation facilities. The state's only air carrier airports are located in each of our seven major cities. And how safe, you ask, are they? Well, they're on an upswing in safety but have for a long time and many of them remain, in my opinion, very unsafe. The reason being that they were not constructed for the types of aircraft that we have today. The aviation system in the state began with the Department of Public Works many years ago, and there were a great number of facilities that were developed that were totally and completely adequate for the Piper Cub and the

small single-engine aircraft. But there was no provision given to the protection of property or for the expansion of the airport to handle larger and faster airplanes. Flying high on the list of problems are the major obstructions to most of the runways. Louisiana's airports are, for the most part, 25 years old. Some older. And local governments have done very little to zone out what are considered to be very unsafe development virtually bordering the runways. This is the Ruston Municipal Airport. Typical of many general aviation facilities around the state, it's located in the middle of a growing community. It's a vital public service necessary for continued growth. But yet, according to state officials, it is one of the most unsafe airports in the state. And here's why. Pilots approaching Ruston for a landing must clear these huge trees then drop immediately to the runway. Besides being dangerous, these obstructions take away half of the usable runway space leaving very little margin for error. The newly elected mayor of Ruston is in a hurry to have the state help him get his airport in shape.

But as always, a lack of money seems to stall any effective airport improvements. Now that's one of our problems. Finance is a little problem with us, but we're working on that and I think the state will. And they are very interested in helping us and the federal aviation department is interested also. Certainly we'll solve our problems. It's just going to take a lot of time to do it. Nothing happens immediately. But we will be working immediately on the safety problems. I think in the future it will become more important as more people need additional time in the use of airplanes. It's going to be a very usable mode of travel and we're going to go to more and more. This is the current airport system. This is what a state study concludes will be needed by 1995 to keep the state's airports viable for the future. But as usual money is the key to airport improvements and

legislators so far have failed to address the soaring list of concerns at our state airports. Our situation in Louisiana has been extremely good. Our problem, of course, is that there are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of improvements needed. And our budget ranges between two to three million dollars a year, more in some cases, to be able to address those needs. So with there's no way that we can get on with improving the safety of the facilities with the money that's been made available for the job. Now we are supplemented by the Federal Aviation Administration whose own programs have been clogged in Congress for in nearly two years now. But there are some smaller amounts of federal money that are available for all the airports. All told, counting the large and the small, probably in the neighborhood of oh, $10 million to $12 million a year of federal funds that can be input. The Legislature in Louisiana, sticking with the state, has not had an adequate opportunity to examine the real needs of aviation because we have always operated on what lots of folks like to call the pork

barrel method. Our funds have been allocated through the public improvements program of the Department of Public Works, later part of this department. And what we profess to do, at least in the state level this year, is try to develop a comprehensive priority program system just as we have in highways. This will allow a legislator or a legislative committee to examine what the needs are and will a legislator to understand that where he cannot have his project built this year or next year, that if he votes for the program and allocates the money that's necessary, that his program is on line and is not going to be interrupted by the political whims of others who might be in greater power from one time or another. Aviation does not fly by money alone. Airplanes do need a place to light. Even if legislators approve more money than the state Office of Aviation could spend, airport sites could prove hard to find. A few years ago former Baton Rouge Mayor Woody Dumas closed a facility in the middle of downtown Baton Rouge and gave the use of the property to the

state. In lieu of paying the city for the land, the state agreed to put up $6 million dollars to build another general aviation airport somewhere in the vicinity. But one after another Livingston, Ascension, West Baton Rouge and Iberville parishes told the state by way of public outcry that they didn't want an airport in their backyard. Dumas was frustrated by the experience. Nobody wants it. It's just that they don't mind flying out of your backyard, but they don't want you flying out of their backyard and it's. We're trying to find a place that would have done the least amount of, would have been at least inconvenience to anyone. You know, I think it's a matter of self-preservation. And they say self-preservation is the first law of nature and I hold no malice to those people that fought it. I think in some way they may of uh, uh been uh, responsible for retarding progress. But if they don't think that that's progress and they are probably ???? The public does not generally relate

the airport to anything that is important to each individual citizen. Everybody has one, two or three cars in the driveway. Everybody has one, two or three bathrooms at home. And the public interest in politics is generally oriented toward streets and sewers, highways if you will. Many members of the general public feel that an airport is some plaything for some doctor, lawyer or professional person who has a surplus income. Fly around the flagpole on Sundays and enjoy themselves. So few perceive that the job that they hold may be totally related to the airport and its bringing in industry or servicing industry in the community. As a result, there's very little public support for airport construction. Aviation comes out by far at the top of the pile, because one mile of secondary road which is almost 5,000 for general aviation airport. Yes in terms of pavement strength and widths and things of that nature.

One mile of secondary road used for an airport connects that community with every place in the world. And yet you can't by rail, water, or any other mechanism of highway connect to any other place in the world except an undivided, uninterrupted ribbon of something -- either water, rail or concrete. So it's amazing that what we can get our investment in aviation is so thoroughly overlooked by the people who are pursuing the developments in all of the other areas. Although general aviation faces a bright future in Louisiana, there are certainly some nagging problems which will have to be overcome. And as we will see in our next report, the bigger the airport the bigger the problems. Certainly soaring at the New Orleans Museum of Art where the exhibit's Search for Alexander is on display, those artifacts will be there until September 19th. Our own reporter Robyn Ecking paid a visit to New Orleans in Search of Alexander and here is what she found. The show has so many different types of things in it.It's one of those real something for everyone

kinds of things. There's a lot of jewelry. There are coins. There are portraits. There are very special objects that have only been discovered in the last four or five years. And people just seem to find something in it ,no matter what their background is. It really excites them. Well he almost looks like a god in a lot of the depictions. And, you know, someone

of that power and that importance is going to be shown with no flaws, of course. But there is a good bit of portraiture and you can start to see from one from one portrait bust to another that there are similarities in the features and you can start to recognize a certain type that becomes the Alexander portrait. His story and his presence were electrifying. His magnetism was enough to draw 50,000 Greek soldiers on a grim, 11-year, 25,000-mile trek across Asia to expand his empire. Alexander the Great died at the pinnacle of his power. He was only 32 years old, but his death would not dim his personal magic. Today centuries later the pieces of his time are proving a powerful magnet for the New Orleans Museum of Art. More than 100,000 have been attracted this summer to visit the Search for Alexander. The nationally touring exhibit has become known as a powerful draw in the museum business, a blockbuster.

Blockbuster really means those exhibitions that have enormous drawing power. They pull in a lot of people to come see them and they are usually exhibitions that have a great deal of historical importance. They involve a lot of objects pulled together from all over the world. They are well presented. They're well researched, well documented. And they have some sort of public, you know, popular public appeal. Much of that appeal can be found in the action set forth in the exhibit. Alexander the Warrior and the Beast Slayer, a figure from a time and place that has archaeological study until only recent times. Most of the 175 objects in the exhibit have been discovered only in the past 40 years. Just five years ago, the most dramatic find yet of Alexander's time was made. Here in Vergina, in Macedonia, a royal tomb believed to belong to Alexander's father, King Philip the Second, was found. A gold bow and arrow case, spearheads and leg shields pale in comparison to the largest treasure: 24 pounds of gold, this burial box was opened to reveal bones thought to

belong to Philip, plus a regal golden oak-leaved wreath. Sites near the royal tomb continue to be explored. It's very exciting to people to come in and see things have only been unearthed in the last five years and to know that they're still digging at that site and who knows what they're going to find this afternoon or tomorrow or next week. It makes it a real alive, ongoing sort of exploration. They feel Alexander the Great is. They thin they feel they could know him as a person.

I think so. I think they're also intrigued by the search. The title of it is the Search for Alexander and it's exciting to know that there are digs going on now where they're, you know, working on archaeological sites. Alexander's remains have never been found. It leaves you with some sense of mystery and excitement of what might be discovered in the times to come. That's our program for this week. Next week we'll be back with the second in our series on airport safety. And I'll go to Shreveport to look at a church that is using satellite technology to bring it's message to the people. And finally we'll look at the situation in the Lafayette jail. Until then, I'm Beth George. Good evening. Funding for the production of Louisiana: The State We're in is provided in part by

by the Zigler Foundation of Jennings, Gulf States Utilities helping Louisiana bridge the gap to our energy future and the Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation.