New Plan Could End Segregation in Boston

Speaking to a Harvard conference on metropolitan education, Massachusett's deputy commissioner of education Saturday proposed a revolutionary plan to help end de facto segregation in Boston.

Thomas J. Curtin asked that a proposed educational research laboratory be combined with a regional school system that would send hundreds of Boston's Negro students to the suburbs and bring hundreds of suburban students to the city.

"You can't solve the problem of imbalance completely within the city itself. But sending students to the suburbs is only a partial answer," Curtin said. "Any exchange ought to be mutual. Any plan ought to recognize the city's dignity and respect."

The laboratory, which would be built with federal funds, is now being planned by a committee which includes Theodore R. Sizer, Dean of the Faculty of Education, representatives of other area schools, and Boston and state officials.

Under Curtin's proposal, it would become part of a 1000-pupil regional school, possibly located in Roxbury. Some 400 students from Roxbury would attend it together with 600 students bussed in from the suburbs. In exchange, 600 Roxbury students would be bussed to suburban schools.

According to Curtin, Massachusetts law permits a regional district wherever a majority of voters approve it--and provides 100 per cent state aid for transportation within the district and 65 per cent aid for new school buildings.

"The low cost of the school would make it difficult to defeat in Boston," Curtin explained yesterday. "And the laboratory facility with its experimental programs, would make it attractive in the suburbs."

Curtin said he felt that at least 15 suburban towns would join the regional program now if given a chance. "This would accommodate a number of the 10,000 Boston students now in imbalanced districts," he said. "The large majority, of course, will have to be taken care of by changes within the city."

The proposal will be presented to the laboratory committee today. Sizer said yesterday that the committee is just beginning to discuss detailed plans for the project, which must be submitted to the federal government for approval.