On a mild August morning in 1972, children living in Amarillo's North Heights neighborhood began a regular commute that to this day can take up to two hours round-trip.

- The only kids in Amarillo that are bused are kids that live in the North Heights neighborhood.

The one place that we don't have a neighborhood school per se, is the North Heights.

And that's directly related to the desegregation.

The OCR ruling back in 1972.

- The OCR, or Office for Civil Rights is the federal government agency that works to ensure equal access to public education.

It approved Amarillo Independent School District's plan to desegregate North Heights schools in the seventies and oversees all modifications.

- In 1972 that neighborhood was about 98% African-American, about 1% Anglo and less than a half a percent of Hispanic.

Today it's about.

That neighborhood is about 68% African-American, about 20% Hispanic and then Anglo making up the rest of that population.

And so, what we've seen since 1972 is the ethnicity breakdown in Amarillo, when you break it up in quadrants.

We really do have a proportionate number of all races living in all portions of the city.

We no longer see just one area that is only, or predominantly one race.

- [Narrator] The demographic changes figure prominently into a new district proposal that will give all elementary school children in North Heights the opportunity to attend the magnet schools that are now located in their neighborhood.

But that wasn't an option when desegregation occurred.

- We were at the mercy of the school board of how they desegregated schools.

A lot of cities, that meant two-way busing.

If you're busing Black kids here, you need to bus some white kids here.

Not in Amarillo.

They just closed all the schools that were the Negro school.

They just closed 'em and sent kids all over the city.

- [Narrator] The district discontinued high school classes at the all-Black Carver Junior-Senior High School in 1967.

Soon, the junior high classes followed as did the closing of elementary schools that served only Black students.

The district divided students living in North Heights among its growing number of campuses.

- So that is a divide-and-conquer move.

- Explain.

- Divide and conquer, to me, it reminds me (Mildred clears throat) of the... Back in the Indian days when you would divide the villages.

And if you divide something it's easier to conquer, but you can't take it on full force.

If they are together it's harder to do, but if you divide, you can conquer.

- [Interviewer] Do you think that was the intent?

- Most definitely.

- [Narrator] North Heights families began to move to neighborhoods that offered schools.

- Because when you close the schools the neighborhoods sorta went down because you had some families that could afford to move out.

They did.

But then you had others where the kids had to be bused.

And I was one of those.

I had to be bused from the North Heights area all the way to Amarillo High School.

To the new Amarillo High on Bell Street, so.

- I lived on the line, so people right across the street from me went to Palo Duro, but I had to be bused to Amarillo High.

And so that experience was extremely different.

- [Interviewer] So you were able to graduate from Carver?

- From Carver, yes.

- [Interviewer] But then it was desegregated?

- It was devastating.

It was devastating because by the time they actually closed the school and started the busing, I had a school-aged son.

And it didn't really hit me until one morning I was taking him to the bus stop and he asked me, he said, "Mom, am I going to night school?"

- [Interviewer] It was that early?

- It was that early.

And we're talking a second-grader.

It's not safe and it's still not safe today, but they're still on the bus stop.

- [Narrator] Students in North Heights continue to be split apart despite the 1989 reopening of the Carver campus as a magnet school.

Ten years later the former Hilltop Elementary became Carver Early Childhood Academy, another magnet program.

- We had... Really about half of the school was neighborhood kids, the other half, were kids from all over the city.

- People thought it was for the neighborhood kids, but then it became a point of kids from all over Amarillo go, and people who live across the street don't get accepted to go to Carver.

They have to sit on a bus stop and drive past the school to get education.

And that's just inherently unfair.

- You kind of, I don't know why, I'm about to get emotional.

I went... (Isaac chuckles) I started off going to South Lawn Elementary, growing up on 1601 North Jefferson.

How far away was on the South side, South Lawn Elementary.

Carver was right up the street.

I could not even go to Carver in my neighborhood because it was a magnet school.

And so many people from other neighborhoods had the privilege of bringing their children to this community.

And so I had to be bused to South Lawn.

There were six Black children in the entire school.

I'm only 32 years old.

So when they say about the slavery and that oppression stuff and that racist stuff is so long ago, but this is not that long ago.

Six Black kids in the entire school.

Can you imagine that?

Bused during the winter times.

I'm having to wait outside.

and that's still happening today.

- I don't agree with busing.

I think every school should have the opportunity to succeed and every resource should be put into that school to make it successful, no matter what neighborhood it is.

I think busing, it takes away from the education of the child because he's putting more into getting to school and coming from the school that can be put more into just spending time in your community.

- It was a result of efforts for civil rights.

Do you think it kind of went astray?

- I think it was good in its intent.

Sometimes when people have good intentions it can either be good or bad and it's just not applicable now, you know.

Sometimes, what we've done in the sixties, or seventies, it just needs to be reevaluated in 2020.

- As I was coming in as superintendent, community members, and rightly so, were looking at me saying, "Our neighborhood, it just continues to deteriorate.

"And we believe," and I agree with them, "Is we don't have a school."

Schools are the center of neighborhoods.

On Friday night, people are at the football games.

On, you know, Monday morning people are at schools, people are volunteering in schools.

That's the center where we have Boy Scouts and the North Heights neighborhood just, you know, has not had that opportunity.

They don't have a true neighborhood school.

- [Narrator] After four community meetings in the Carver Attendance Zone, a committee, appointed by the District, helped draft the plan sent to the Office for Civil Rights.

All elementary school children living in North Heights would attend the Carver campuses.

- It would be the neighborhood school that all kids would feed to.

And then we'd still have the magnet component bringing in another two, or 300 kids from across the city.

There's probably only about 500, 600 kids in that total neighborhood, K through 12.

And so to keep two schools open.

We wanna be able to keep two schools open.

- [Narrator] Elementary school children who prefer their current campus, would have the option to still ride the bus.

Children who live in North Heights and are enrolling in Amarillo schools for the first time would be assigned to the Carver campuses.

Students will get a choice of middle and high school campus pathways.

- By not having a community school, there are lasting negative effects to that.

By having a community school, that means that the community has a cohesion from their youth.

So we all go to school together.

We play football together, play basketball together, go to the prom together, go to college together, go into the military together.

When Carver left, then everybody just scattered.

The school is the heartbeat of a community.

And I've realized that very quickly being at Bivins.

My school also serves lots of the shelters around town, specifically one being the Catholic Family Services shelter that's directly across the street from Carver.

And those students aren't even allowed to just go across the street to school.

There are kids that live across that street, their families have lived across the street from that school for generation, who've never gone to that school.

That building across the street is foreign to them.

It means nothing because "that's not my school."

But if that was a part of our community -- and we're moving in that direction, eventually I hope -- the community would be supported in a better way.

The school could have and host family nights.

We could build an ideal educational environment for kids in North Amarillo that live right there with this great school, with all these great programs and just say, "Hey, now you guys can come too," because we've got to move in that direction and have those conversations.

So people can understand why neighborhood schools are so important, but specifically why that neighborhood school needs to be a priority.

- [Narrator] Amarillo ISD submitted the proposal to the Office for Civil Rights in February 2019.

Late that year, the OCR responded.

- We finally had a response from them, said, "We're working on this.

"This is a priority.

"Right after the first of the year, January, February, "we'll be back in touch."

And so January came, silence, February came, silence and then COVID hit.

- I'm naturally an eternal optimist, but this situation stresses that beyond its limits.

I really don't think they hear us.

(haunting music) You know, we need someone.

We need leadership that's going to listen.

It doesn't matter if it's Republican or Democrat, we need leadership that will listen.