DESEGREGATION 50 YEARS LATER: Then and Now.(news)

BYLINE: LISA KIM BACH , REVIEW-JOURNAL

It took nearly two decades for the ripples of 1954's Brown v. Board of Education to wash over the Clark County School District. But when court-ordered desegregation finally arrived in 1971, bringing forced busing with it, the reaction from the black and white communities was far from welcoming.

Students boycotted Clark County schools by the thousands.

Absentee rates tripled in the spring of 1971. School Board meetings filled with protesters. And last-ditch attempts to avoid mandated integration during the 1971-72 school year were made in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

It was the beginning of one of the most tumultuous periods in the school district's history, said Gov. Kenny Guinn, who was then the superintendent.

The desegregation plan focused on elementary schools and bused black children in first through fifth grades out of their neighborhoods.

White students were then required to attend sixth grade at centers in the city's predominantly black neighborhoods.

The remedy, which remained in place until 1993, was proposed by the district as an attempt to avoid having a plan foisted on them arbitrarily by U.S. District Court, Guinn said.

"There was no good solution that would have pleased everyone," said Guinn, who led Clark County public schools from 1969 to 1978. "But the burden was certainly heaviest for black children and black families."

As the 50th anniversary of the seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision refocuses attention on integration and the legacy of the Brown decision, the Clark County School District is a much-changed place.

In the 1990s, the district moved away from forced busing and adopted a plan of voluntary integration, which features magnet schools open to families throughout the county.

The black student population has been eclipsed by the fast-growing enrollment of Hispanic students, who are now the largest minority group.

And according to a 2004 report from the Civil Rights Project of Harvard University, Nevada schools are now among the most highly integrated for black students in the nation.

But even though physical segregation is no longer a legal barrier between the races, academic parity has never been attained.

While the fiscal discrimination that saw more public money going to white…