What is bringing everyone out? Funding cutbacks - to the tune of $24 million dollars. The city of Yonkers and the state of New York, under the Republican leadership of George Pataki have thumbed their noses to the federal court-ordered desegregation plans for Yonkers public schools.

Two thousand children and their families are feeling the first affects of this attack when the city and Board of Education have refused to provide school bus service for the students enrolled in the district’s magnet schools. Magnet schools were a first remedy for the years of racist segregation.

"There is no plan to get the kids to school. And it hits the poorest the hardest, many of who are minority kids," said Julie Weiner of the NAACP. "Two to three hundred furious parents showed up at our last meeting and 1,500 complaints have been registered with the Board of Ed."

After twenty years of fighting for desegregated public schools the residents of Yonkers, a town just north of NYC, face a hostile mayor and governor who want to "restore local control and remove the federal government." The federal government’s role is to ensure the Court Ordered Desegregation Plan of May 1986 is fulfilled. This includes funding and plans to overcome the "vestiges of segregation."

Following the historic Court Ordered Desegregation Plan of May 1986, the NAACP moved to put teeth in the 1986 order by adding another lawsuit requiring the state and city be held liable for any remenants of those racist practices. The decision to fund and guarantee the end of the "vestiges of segregation" is known as EIP II (educational improvement plan).

The NAACP and many other educational activists argue the most visible vestige of segregation are the test score gaps between Black and Latino students and their white counterparts. The former Yonkers Superintendent, Dr. Andre Hornsby, at first praised by the mayor, and worked successfully to bring up these test scores, was recently fired. According to the Yonkers NAACP Hornsby was fired "after he criticized the City for failing to adequately fund the public schools."

EIP II has come under vicious attack by Yonkers Mayor John Spencer and has recently been over-turned by the district court. This is under appeal.

Mayor Spencer in his 2000 State of the City speech threw down the gauntlet when he said "Since 1986, our school system has been subject to a reign of federal intrusion brought on by an activist judge..." In convoluted attempts to talk about better state funding for Yonkers school Mayor Spencer falsely pits more school funding against EIP II. He went on to say "The way to correct [under-funding] is through a settlement with the state of New York over funding of the so-called educational improvement plan know as EIP II. Gov. Pataki and I have spoken on this matter...and the governor agrees that we need to resolve this case to restore local control and remove the federal government." Gov. Pataki pledged $10 million dollars for this effort.

Mayor Spencer and Gov. Pataki are wheeling and dealing to return the Yonkers schools back to the segregation days and therefore sacrifice the whole public school system in the process. The mayor’s office did not return the World’s phone call.

Yonkers is the home to almost 26,000 public school students - 42% Latino; 30% African American; 23% white and 5% Asian. Over 42 languages are spoken and over 50 cultures are represented in the student population.

The NAACP who is leading the campaign for funding and guarantee racial equality has clearly made the point the two issues go together. In its petition, the NAACP demands that both "Yonkers and the State of New York commit the resources necessary to enable all our children to meet state and national standards of academic achievement. Layoffs of school workers and teachers are unacceptable...Close this year’s $24 million school budget gap and comply with Court orders to close our children’s achievement gap."

Those who have demonstrated and have been arrested for "fighting the good fight" for quality, equal public education are showing the way. Two of the fourteen people arrested for civil disobediance have been convicted and sentenced to community service.

A growing number of people on the issue of public education are living the lesson said so well by Frederick Douglass. "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those of us who profess to favor freedom yet depreciate agitation are men who want the crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters... This struggle may be a moral one or a physical one, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people. These wrongs and injustices may be fought with words or with blows or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.