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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 18, 1988)
' • * * % • 1 bly a viable response in some schools,” Corzine says about ex pulsions. Wilson and Smith say they support Clark’s ideas. ‘‘Why be up in there causing problems when you don’t have to be there,” Smith says. “I’d kick them out, too.” Wilson says students who attend school for reasons other than learning should be expelled. She was academically strong at Muir, but admits that she might have been expelled if Muir had stricter rules. But Wilson says her fighting problems were correctable. Stu dents who come to school only to skip class, fight and take drugs, she says, are the ones who need to go. “If you have one problem,” Wilson says, “they should try to correct that problem ...” Christie says Americans shouldn’t hold students respon sible for inner-city school prob lems. They should blame the sys tem, he says. “As a kid, I didn’t choose to go to that kind of school,” Christie says. “Why blame me?” The U.S. tax structure allows the rich to get richer, Christie says, and the poor to get poorer. It should share part of the blame, he says. Corzine believes anew tax structure must be devel oped for inner-city schools to improve. He says white flight—the migration of whites to the suburbs during this century — left the inner-cities such as St. Louis with a large percentage of minorities. “As a result,” Corzine says, “what you find in the St. Louis metropolitan area is that suburban schools spend a lot more per pupil than city schools.” The poor, inner-city schools usually employ the worst teachers, he says, and occasionally don’t . have enough books for students. When Corzine was doing re search at McKinley, the school could afford only one book for an i _ i mmw algebra class. As a result, home work was not assigned and the amount of material covered was limited, he says. A metropolitan-wide distribu tion of tax revenue would solve the funding problem, but it’s unlikely, Corzine says. City governments have no jurisdiction in the suburbs within a metropolitan area. Thus, they have no power to tax, he says. A state tax increase also is un likely, Corzine says. Senators not representing areas with poor schools resist increases, he says. “Political reality suggests that there’s not going to be a lot of state funds channeled into these particu lar types of schools,’’ Corzine says. The financial problems of many inner-city schools will continue to grow, Corzine says, unless such changes are made. But he fears that the drug and violence problems equated with these schools and the sur rounding neighborhoods have gotten out of hand. Fryar and Smith found a way out of the ghetto. Even when they attended high school, they could separate themselves from the drugs and the violence. Smith, who w'as part of King’s state-champion basketball team in 1986, said students respected him because he was a basketball player and gangs left him alone. “If they find out you’re serious about basketball and you’re win ning for that school, they’re not going to bother you,” he says. Fryar, who participated in foot ball, basketball and track, said students kept drugs away from him because they knew he was an ath lete. Wilson said track helped her grades because she wanted to stay eligible to run. Eventually, athletics provided a ticket to college for them, a final way oat of the ghettos and the violence. But for other inner-city high school students, there may be no way out. —Ryan Steeves Christie
