ARLINGTON SHIFTS PLAN ON BUSING

The busing pattern in effect since the early 1970s prompted some black parents to complain that only their children were being bused to achieve desegregation and protest the uprooting of the children from their neighborhoods to schools at the other end of the county.

A key provision of the new plan, approved on a 4-to-1 vote, will phase out by 1989 the busing of black children from the mostly black Nauck neighborhood in South Arlington to mostly white schools in North Arlington.

These children will be bused to other South Arlington schools closer to their homes.

The dissenting vote came from Frank K. Wilson, the board's only black member, who said later, "Black students are still the only ones bused involuntarily. We didn't address that."

Wilson also said some North Arlington schools will now be "almost totally white" as a result of the plan and that the multiracial makeup of the school system, which now has more than 30 percent Asian and Hispanic enrollment, was not addressed.

Some black parents also had asked that the Drew school in the Nauck area be made a neighborhood school so their children would not have to be bused.

The board, with members Wilson and Conchita S. Mitchell dissenting, voted to increase neighborhood enrollment at the school to 25 percent but let it remain a magnet school offering innovative programs designed to attract pupils from throughout the county.

Some parents had expressed concern that redirecting the children being bused now to North Arlington would increase crowding at South Arlington elementary schools.

In response, the board voted unanimously to ask for a report on ways to relieve crowding and whether the closed Claremont School in South Arlington should be reopened as a regular elementary school.

Gosling had proposed making Claremont a countywide magnet school emphasizing the arts, but the idea had little support and was not acted on by the board.

After the votes, School Board Chairman Dorothy H. Stambaugh said "the community has done a superb job on one issue that polarizes many other communities."

"We haven't all agreed on everything," she said. but the plan is a The first of the revisions will go into effect in the fall.

"reasonable approach that addresses pressing concerns."

She acknowledged that it is "troubling" that some North Arlington schools will be essentially white and said the school system needs to develop other means to ensure that all children have contact with members of other ethnic groups."