Boston's Imbalance

Boston Mayor John Collins, rather than worry about integrating the city's school system, has decided to try to blunt the cutting edge of the Commonwealth's racial imbalance law. He is asking the General Court for permission to borrow $6.3 million to cover funds withheld by the state last year, when Boston failed to submit a satisfactory plan for integration; that permission should be refused.

The historic racial imbalance law has but one sanction against a thoroughly intractable school committee like Boston's: the cancellation of state aid. For the legislature to allow Boston to duck the only penalty that can be invoked under the act would be, in effect, to abolish it altogether.

Collins is worried that the deficit caused by withholding last year's school aid will mean a $4.40 increase (about 4 per cent) in the city's tax rate. But the State Board of Education has gone out of its way to see that Boston will not needlessly suffer a loss of the badly needed state aid. The Commissioner of Education has clearly indicated that he will not give Boston's money to other districts (though the law strongly implies that he should); instead, the money is ready and waiting--if the School Committee will just act.

The mayor is ill-advised to accept responsibility for the increased tax rate that will follow from the School Committee's continued intransigence. He would do better to spend less time looking for special favors from the General Court, and to bring more pressure on the School Committee to integrate the schools.