Are schools being "re-segregated"?

Sanders and Gillibrand Open to New Federally Mandated Busing Policies

No, though they are becoming less racially diverse, partly because of changing patterns of population residency and partly because the white share of school-age kids is in rather steep decline.

It is an oft-spoken conviction of the left that a relatively uniform mix of races in all schools is necessary to properly encourage learning among non-white students.

And they are only just less oft-spoken convictions of the left that good budgets and good teachers follow the white kids, and that anything like equal educational opportunity requires equally good teachers and equally good budgets.

Add the unswerving commitments of the left to the fantasies of equal opportunity for all individuals and at least equal opportunity for persons of all races - or otherwise defined identities - with white males, and none of this will surprise you.

[W]hat, if anything, would a future Democratic president do about busing?

When asked after the debate if he supported reinstating busing policies that Biden opposed in the 1970s, Bernie Sanders told National Review: “I am really concerned about the growing segregation — once again — the resegregation of communities all over this country. 

"We’re seeing more and more schools which are being segregated. And that is something we have to deal with.” 

Would he use busing to deal with it? 

“Busing is one tool,” Sanders replied. 

Kirsten Gillibrand also told reporters after the debate that she would impose new federally mandated busing policies on local schools if necessary. 

“I think every child should be able to go to a good public school. And as president I will assure that. If it needs busing, it needs busing,” Gillibrand told reporters.

And what about Kamala Harris? 

Would she implement new busing policies if elected president? 

“We haven’t put a plan out on that or anything, but she supports desegregation,” Harris communications director Ian Sams told National Review.

But as Harris herself said during her exchange with Biden on race and busing: “On this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly.”

. . . .

In Biden’s home state of Delaware in the 1970s, the busing order imposed “racial quotas, sweeping pupil reassignments, school closings and reconfigurations, and bus rides up to an hour each way,” according to one account. 

“Widespread loss of confidence in the public schools and resistance to busing in the 1980s gave rise to a reversal of the busing order and sparked the charter school movement in the 1990s, and finally led to a legislative reaffirmation of neighborhood schools in 2000.”

“The real problem with busing,” Biden said in the 1970s, was that “you take people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school . . . and you’re going to fill them with hatred.”