Connor Presson sits in the front of Betty Ables’ third-grade class while, from left, Alton Brown, Lauren Pratt and Sidne Lewis work on their assignments at Bowmar.(Jon Giffin The Vicksburg Post)

[1/27/04]Fifteen years after Bowmar Elementary was made a magnet school to racially balance the school in a predominantly black area, the need continues, Superintendent James Price said.

“Bowmar is a magnet school in name and in programs,” Price said. Normally, magnet schools are created to serve gifted and specially talented students. When Bowmar Magnet was created at the founding of the Vicksburg Warren School District, it served the additional purpose of attracting white students.

Price said Bowmar will remain a magnet elementary if a proposal to return to community schools wins approval from faculty, the community and the board of trustees. That means it would have no district lines and students could continue applying from anywhere in Warren County.

Price is touring the district’s 13 schools to poll faculty on their opinions of returning to neighborhood-oriented districts for elementaries. Bowmar’s future under that plan has prompted many questions.

Teachers have told Price the setup at Bowmar is unfair to other schools and teachers.

“I’ve never thought it was fair,” said Janet McMaster, a physical education teacher at Beechwood Elementary. “We all need to be on equal ground, and it needs to be out there that everybody is going to get a quality education, no matter where they go to school.”

And Debbie Tate, a kindergarten teacher at Warrenton, said she supports the community school concept, but said academic balance is important.

“We would like to have the same facilities and the same full-time teachers,” she said, adding that Warrenton employs only a part-time art teacher while Bowmar’s is fulltime. Regarding building issues, Tate said it isn’t fair that Warrenton has only one window in each classroom.

Registration for Bowmar is usually a month earlier than at other elementaries, and parents have camped out for places in line. Also, Bowmar offers no remedial-type special education programs.

Price said those differences will have to stay intact to maintain the racial balance required by the U.S. Justice Department.

“Here is the situation I’ve inherited,” Price said. “There’s a reason Bowmar has evolved to where it is. They’ve had to have some methods of attracting white students into the facility, and that’s what the magnet school concept was set up to do, and that’s what it’s done.”

“In order to change the current system at Bowmar, you’d have to be assured that you had the ability to racially balance the population.”

Bowmar principal Barbara Burns said the success of the school comes from involvement of the faculty and parents.

“The PTA tries to have activities that promote fellowship,” she said. “We try to make it fun for the parents as well as the students.”

And in the face of the comments about unfairness, she said, “I’m for this district. We are willing to share our ideas. The children of this district are all of our kids and we do whatever we can to help them.”

Another way to maintain the racial balance, Price has said, is to build another school in the city.

He is considering four spots for a city school inside, but has not named those locations. Statistically, the area where a school might be built now has 1,687 K-6 students. Of the total, 1,558 are black, 59 are white and 70 are other.

That means any new school would also be set up as a magnet to attract white students into a primarily black area.