Voluntary Busing Plan Helps Some Schools Offset Talent Imbalance

SAN DIEGO â€”  The tiny neighborhoods around Point Loma High School are some of the city’s least-integrated residential areas, having remained heavily white for years.

But the school’s undefeated football team, which plays Morse Saturday night in the San Diego Section 3-A championship game, is one of the city’s most ethnically integrated.

How has the seaside school managed to put together powerful, well-integrated football and basketball teams over the past several years, particularly when the number of school-age students has declined within its boundaries?

Point Loma and other predominantly white-area schools have benefited strongly from the school district’s decade-old voluntary ethnic enrollment program (VEEP) and special academic programs. Under them, any student can choose to bus from the minority southeast San Diego area to a white area, or from a white area to southeast. Almost all of the busing, however, is one-way to white neighborhoods.

Nine of Point Loma’s 11 defensive starters attended the school instead of Morse or Lincoln, two perennially powerful southeast high schools that most bused students would have attended. Without several talented females who came through special programs, Point Loma’s four consecutive state titles in girls’ basketball would have been just a dream.

A number of blue-chip high school athletes have used the program to attend Point Loma, Madison, Clairemont and Patrick Henry high schools, where they have helped keep the schools competitive athletically despite a drop in overall enrollments.

Without VEEP, schools such as Point Loma probably would be left behind Morse and Lincoln in the city’s athletic leagues.

The ability of students to pick schools--and the particular success of Point Loma--has periodically caused some teachers and coaches to charge that receiving schools are recruiting.

“We’re in the spotlight now, because we’ve been successful,� said Bennie Edens, the longtime Point Loma coach.

Christina Baca, the district program’s coordinator, said, “Our (voluntary busing) program is for integration purposes. The reason students choose to come is up to them, so there may be some who choose to bus for integration reasons or who feel they will receive a better education or some who want to play sports.�

Wayne DeBate, secondary schools athletics manager for the San Diego Unified district, is instituting a new regulation next month to tighten a loophole coaches might otherwise use to move a student for athletic purposes, without regard to academics or integration. Any student leaving one school for another will now be required to sit out varsity sports for three months after starting at the new campus.

But DeBate said the new rule is based on only one case, which he called isolated.

“All the southeast schools think that schools in the white areas recruit under the program,� he said. “But I really believe that most recruiting is done by the students themselves. One kid who goes first tells the others that the sports program is great, that the coach is a great coach, and that the team is good and could be great if only his friends (bused) as well.�

Adds Eden: “I just don’t feel all the rumors of active recruiting are true. The great majority of (decision-making) is done by the kids themselves.�

John Shacklett, the Morse football coach, agreed, saying that many students are influenced by older brothers and sisters who also may have bused, as well as by parents who perceive schools in white areas to be safer and academically superior to those in home neighborhoods.

“Don’t get me wrong,� Shacklett said. “I certainly want to keep every kid here if possible, but I’m realistic enough to know that the opportunities (at schools like Point Loma) have opened up and are there.�

And because of the great number of students in southeast who want to participate in sports, Morse and Lincoln alone could not accommodate them all, he said.

Edens pointed out that many of his VEEP students previously bused to Correia Junior High School, which is the neighborhood feeder school into Point Loma. And a couple have been attending Point Loma area schools since elementary days.

Ticking off names of the players, Edens said, “Anthony Shelton and Mondala Wilkins, they both naturally progressed here through Correia. So did William Howard. Marcel Brown, he came from Silvergate Elementary and then through Correia.

“When I go down to Correia and tell (eighth-graders) about sports at Point Loma, I certainly expound on the virtues of Point Loma. I don’t say, ‘Hey, I think you should transfer back to Lincoln or Morse if you are in VEEP’ . . . but some of them, I never even meet until they’re here at Point Loma.�

Edens said he does not go to non-neighborhood junior highs, such as Roosevelt and Memorial, whose graduates can choose to bus to Point Loma.

But many students living in southeast, whether they participate in VEEP or not, have played Pop Warner football together and know of potential players for their high school teams.

Edens said, “If a kid is introduced to me by a player and tells me that he is going to be at Point Loma next year and is a good athlete and interested in our program, I certainly am interested. No coach would ever say, ‘Don’t come here.’ An eighth-grader recently came up to me and said he was thinking about Point Loma. He’s 6 feet and 200 pounds. I certainly am not going to kick him away, no way. Maybe we’ll take him along to see a couple of JV games.

“I certainly encourage such a kid to come . . . and I’ll check out to see whether he lives in (an area of southeast) that is paired with Point Loma.�

If a student lives outside the paired area, he or she can still attend Point Loma through application to the school’s naval reserve officer training program (NROTC) or its Spanish bilingual magnet education program.

Although the NROTC program is an option, Edens said that it is not always “real popular� with many students.

The VEEP players at Point Loma say Edens put no pressure on them to attend.

“I came here because I was following my (older) brother from that side of town (southeast),� said Israel Stanley, a senior linebacker. “I didn’t know anything about high school sports at the time. I just came out here, and I stayed because of sports. My brother was on the football team.�

Stanley said that Lincoln and Morse would be too dominant without VEEP, because it would have all the talent that now buses to other schools.

“(With VEEP), a lot of things balance out OK,� he said.

Sophomore Mondala Wilkins first came to Correia because of two cousins who went to Correia, then Point Loma. Neither played football.

“They have a good bilingual program (at Correia and Point Loma), and I like Spanish a lot,� Wilkins said. “They have the best program for Spanish here.�

While Wilkins likes Point Loma, he believes that he would do as well at Lincoln had he chosen to stay in southeast.

“I think the opportunities are anywhere as long as you hit the books,� he said. “It depends on the type of person you are. I would still be a good student at Lincoln.�

Anthony Shelton, who attended Correia, said he knew nothing about Point Loma football before the eighth grade.

“My mother wanted me to come to Point Loma,� he said. “I’d be at Lincoln otherwise, but here there is no gang-related stuff (at Point Loma) . . . and I want to go to college.�

William Howard said that Edens has “more than met us� halfway in understanding that he and other bused students come from different environments from the typical Point Loma neighborhood kids.

“His strongest points are his wisdom and patience,� Howard said.

VEEP coordinator Baca said surveys of busing students citywide has shown that those playing a sport integrate into campus life much easier than other VEEP students do. Baca said students attribute the easier integration to the teamwork in athletics, which spills over to other school activities.

“Once we get them in athletics, we get them to stay in school . . . They’ve got a coach on their case all the time,� Edens said.

Edens said he has changed his style of teaching as a result of Point Loma integration. He presses his students more closely on academics but has let up on some traditional rules and regulations.

“Today, I tell all teachers that if a student is having any problems at all, to let me know, and that I’ll let the students out of practice for a make-up, for tutoring, for discipline,� he said. “Some kids miss three or four practices in a row, but I always let them go. Ten or 20 years ago, I don’t think I would have been as amenable.

“I also can tell you that I have never asked a teacher to change a grade. But I know that sometimes there are real reasons why kids don’t perform, because of the environment they came from or other disadvantages (we don’t face) in Point Loma.�

Edens has learned to relax rules on things such as shoe colors, which he traditionally would have enforced. He recalled some coaches “who considered it a personal affront� to see players with white shoes. “And when players started to put stars on their white shoes, well, that was too much for those coaches,� he said.

Edens did say that community support in Point Loma has lessened somewhat--especially in years when a team is not winning big--because many players no longer come from the immediate area.

“There is some resentment, I suppose,� Edens said. “It’s different when the only kids who are competing are from the community. But if a kid from southeast comes over and is bigger and faster, then that kid is going to start.�

On the other hand, Morse basketball coach Ron Davis said that he would prefer that students from the southeast neighborhoods go to schools in their areas.

“It bothers me somewhat that top-grade athletes go elsewhere, because it hurts the community,� Davis said. “They are model kids who we would like to keep in the community as additional positive role models. Morse and other schools still have a certain (negative) stigma even though they are now as well-rounded academically as they are athletically.�