Racial Tensions Could Be Eased In Hub Schools

For most people, Mrs. Louise Day Hicks and the Boston School Committee are synonymous. But the newly-elected Committee, which took office this week, is beginning to act as if it didn't know it.

The Committee ended its first meeting Monday by electing a chairman whom Mrs. Hicks had bitterly opposed. Mrs. Hicks who is reportedly planning to enter Boston's mayoralty race this year -- had chosen not to succeed herself and supported Committeeman Joseph Lee for chairman. But Lee lost, 3-2, to 29-year-old Thomas S. Eisenstadt.

However, Eisenstadt had been as closely linked as the other members of the Committee with Mrs. Hicks' refusal to attack the problem of de facto. Last August, for example, it was his motion that prevented the transfer of more than 500 Negro children from overcrowded Roxbury schools.

But he insists that his approach as chairman will be an independent one. "I will use the influence of my position to reconcile conflicting forces within the community," he said Monday. "But I will not allow myself to be pushed on unreasonable demands merely because they are presented in the name of civil rights."

Some observers feel that the Committee, under Eisenstadt, may be more moderate than in the past. A majority of the Committee, they argue, is at least ready to listen to proposals for correcting the schools' racial imbalance.

They point to a current proposal for sending hundreds of Boston students to suburban schools -- and say there is a 50-50 chance the School Committee may accept it.

But many civil rights leaders feel that the School Committee, and Eisenstadt in particular, will continue to oppose effective plans to end racial imbalance. The plan that Boston Superintendent of Schools William H. Ohrenberger two weeks ago to meet the state's Racial Imbalance Law is the best clue to the Committee's attitude, they argue. Ohrenberger proposed free subway fare for students who want to go to schools far from their homes -- a plan which elementary school students obviously would not be able to take advantage of.

Under the plan, Ohrenberger said, "some schools located in the center of the non-white population of Boston will remain largely racially imbalanced."

For this reason, civil rights leaders feel the only real solution to the schools' problems will come from the Massachusetts' Board of Education. Its commissioner, under the Racial Imbalance Act, can with hold aid from a school system whose plan for correcting de facto segregation is unsatisfactory. The board is now studying Ohrenberger's report.