Black inroads, white exodus in North County district

The principal pulled an unruly student into her office and sized him up.

Droopy trousers. Sideways baseball cap. Shiny "grill" clamped to his front teeth.

"You're no gangster," said Ingrid Clark-Jackson, principal of Hazelwood West High. "If I dropped you off at the projects where the real gangs are, you wouldn't last 10 minutes."

The Hazelwood School District doesn't have a gang problem, she said. "It has a race problem."

The problem is that whites are leaving the district in droves as blacks are moving into it. They are leaving despite schools that are meeting most state performance standards, despite that the blacks moving in are mostly middle- and upper-middle-class, and despite attempts by Clark-Jackson and other administrators to talk them into staying.

And historically in this region, when white flight has occurred, school districts have failed.

It happened in the St. Louis, Riverview Gardens and Wellston districts.

And Hazelwood School District residents like Kelly Sullivan are afraid it will happen to her community, too.

"My husband and I bought 20 acres a few years ago out in Jonesburg (Mo.) and were planning to build on that when we retired," said Sullivan, 44, a white parent of two children in the district. "But after the recent (rumored) gang threats and bomb threats, my husband said, 'Let's move now. Let's not wait. Let's put a trailer on the property and enroll our kids in Jonesburg schools.'"

Sullivan said she talked her husband into staying — at least until their daughter, a freshman, graduates.

"All this flight is ridiculous," she said. "There are going to be problems wherever you move."

In terms of race, Hazelwood is the fastest-changing district in the Metro area.

Since 2002, black enrollment has risen 32 percent, while white enrollment has dropped 32 percent.

In 1990, 70 percent of the district's students were white. Today, 65 percent of the district's 19,369 students are black.

The changes have brought tension to the district, which has the second-largest enrollment in St. Louis County and covers the largest area.

CANCELED EVENT

A homecoming celebration was canceled after rumors of gang violence. A gun was seized at one high school. Outside another, two students fired shots into the air as a joke. And multiple bomb threats, fueled by news media coverage, led to recent evacuations and canceled classes.

School district Superintendent Chris Wright worries that the negative reports will hasten white flight.

"I know that some people are leaving because they are threatened by an increase in the African-American population," said Wright, 56. "But what they don't understand is that, while an increase in the African-American population is a fact, the socioeconomic level of that population is in some cases higher than some of the folks that are leaving. And the houses they're buying here are some of the most expensive being built in St. Louis County."

That's a lot different than past demographic shifts in this region.

Decades ago, blue-collar white families vacated north St. Louis and municipalities in North County, such as Wellston, Berkeley and Moline Acres. They left behind mostly old-stock block houses, with small yards and no garages.

The blacks who replaced them were primarily poor or lower-middle class.

But Hazelwood is experiencing a boom in housing construction — about 2,000 new homes since 2000 and more on the drawing boards. And these houses are on spacious lots with two- or three-car garages.

Homes in the Portland Grove subdivision, off Old Halls Ferry Road in unincorporated St. Louis County, fetch from $300,000 to $500,000 and up.

Thallis Malone, a retired engineer with McDonnell Douglas Corp., lives in a Portland Grove house on a half-acre lot. His backyard is as smooth and green as a golf fairway.

Malone estimated that about 70 percent of the subdivision's residents are, like him, African-American. They include the physician next door. Nearby live airline pilots, office managers, utility company employees and insurance agents, aerospace workers and retired St. Louis Police Department brass.

Malone said many of them, himself included, were raised in north St. Louis and came to North County in search of security and better schools.

"I've heard people call this the 'Black Chesterfield,'" he said.

GANG RUMORS

Malone said he was shocked when he heard recent news reports of gang trouble at nearby Hazelwood Central and West high schools.

"I don't believe it," he said. "There aren't any gangs around here."

But it was Clark-Jackson, the Hazelwood West principal who dismisses the notion of a gang problem in the district, who raised the alarm that led to the cancellation of her school's homecoming bonfire and pep rally. The event had been scheduled for Oct. 19 in front of the high school, just off Howdershell Road, less than a mile north of Interstate 270.

Clark-Jackson, 49, who is black, said she called police after a tip from students that area gangs planned to convene at the bonfire to stake out their turf.

"I thought it best that we play it safe and call it off," Clark-Jackson said. "But I don't see gangs here. If they're here, they're dormant."

A senior at Hazelwood Central agreed.

The term gangster, she said, is misapplied at her school.

"They aren't real gangsters. It's all about the music you like and the clothes," said Aris Williams, 17, who also lives in the Portland Grove neighborhood. "All it takes are three or four kids to decide to give themselves a name, and to some people, that's a gang. But it's really just about social status. It doesn't mean they're thugs."

Hazelwood police have said they do not believe gangs are a problem in district schools.

ADDRESSING ISSUES

That rumor was one of a string of flare-ups in the district.

At recent School Board meetings, students and parents have complained that administrators mismanaged this fall's shuffling of school attendance boundaries, causing problems with security, transportation, scheduling and textbook distribution.

Population changes in the district, along with the opening this fall of four new middle schools, led to large-scale shifts of students and materials to different schools.

At the most recent board meeting, the district said most of the problems had been ironed out. Advisory groups that included members of the public were working to fix others, the board reported.

At the meeting, the district touted an academic turnaround. This year, Hazelwood met 11 of 14 standards on the state's Annual Performance Report, which examines test scores, graduation and attendance rates, and placement of graduates in college and careers. On the report, Hazelwood met every academic standard except for math in grades 9-11. (It also fell short on college entrance exam scores and graduation rate.)

The district met only six standards last year.

Even the district's participation level in the free and reduced-price lunch program, which increased by 70 percent in the past five years, may not be the harbinger of poverty that it generally is considered to be.

Diane Livingston, a Hazelwood Central algebra teacher and longtime district resident, said multigenerational housing arrangements in the district soften the blow of unemployment.

She said she knows of some children who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches who, with their parents, "happen to be living in a very nice home with grandma and grandpa that they (the grandparents) own."

Livingston, 55, who is white, said many of her white friends and former neighbors have left the district in recent years, most of them for St. Charles County.

"Except for one — who said she was moving because she wanted a bigger house — every one of them told me that the reason they were moving out was because blacks are moving in.

"It shouldn't be that. We're talking about blacks moving here who are hardworking. A lot of them have college degrees. These are parents who care about their kids and are very involved with the district. These are the kind of people you want to have move into your area."

'NOTHING PERSONAL'

In a recent interview, a group of Hazelwood West juniors and seniors talked about their school, and its future.

They praised their teachers, teams and neighborhoods. They were grateful for friends of multiethnic backgrounds.

And they missed former classmates who had moved away.

Leon Henderson, 17, a junior, said goodbye to one of his best friends this summer.

The friend is white. Henderson is the son of a white father and black mother.

The parents of the white friend took Henderson aside before the move.

"They told me, 'This is nothing personal against you, Leon. You know as well as we do that we love you. But things are just getting too rowdy around here.'"

Henderson said, "I know that what they were really saying was that Hazelwood was getting too black."

EMBRACING DIVERSITY

Alana Flowers, 17, a black senior, said she took it personally that whites were leaving.

"I take it as an insult," she said. "It makes me feel like Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X died for nothing."

Ryan Blankenship, 18, is a white senior at Hazelwood West.

He said having black friends will give him a leg up in life.

"I might be a manager at a company, and when I interview a black job candidate, I won't be worried about anything but their qualifications," he said.

As for kids raised in racially isolated areas, Blankenship said: "I feel sorry for them. They're in for a big shock when they go out in the real world."

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