Briar Patch
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The four new board members—Oser, the Reverend D. Leon Everett II, Dr. Leonard Robbins and Mrs. James Tinsley—were plunged immediately into a flurry of activity, reorganization and crisis, punctuated by the trenchant opposition of the three holdover school board members. They drew up desegregation plans; decentralized the school district; brought in three new educators to fill the top three positions; established new management systems; actively sought federal funds; expanded vocational and special education programs; set up magnet schools; began a community college.
In the process the new board had to deal with a large administrative staff and 10,000 teachers as well as a community which at times lagged behind them. They soon learned that deciding something at the board table did not mean that out in the schools it would actually happen. It was all reminiscent of President Eisenhower's first years in office, when he would give an order or make a decision and expect that, like in the military, it would be carried out.
"We probably were better prepared than most new school board members when we took office, at least so far as knowing facts go," Oser says. "We learned from experience that what is needed is a lot more than knowing facts and laying our new plans on top of old ones. To change an institution like a school system, you have to change the mood, attitude and direction of the people involved. Our job now is to develop the esprit de corps and direction of our staff; or, better yet, to support its own welling up."
Oser himself is not the domineering, willful type. He seems more comfortable in the background, giving other people credit, smiling shyly like a proud father whose son just won the grand prize at the Science Fair. Some people take this easygoing attitude for softness, forgetting that Oser has been at it for over five years, through the sort of personal and political setbacks and sacrifices that would have long ago driven out a softer, less determined man. Even when he mumbles, he is generally saying something of importance; when he speaks clearly he usually has the facts in hand to carry the day.
"People have to be able to step aside. Otherwise movements are caught up in them and can only be as successful as they are. You either have to have lots of star performers or no star at all." When Oser spoke at the CGS anniversary he could look out and see the results of his own philosophy. Oser was introduced by Mrs. Robbie Hayes, a young, articulate and determined black woman who is the current president of CGS. The board of directors of CGS has a majority of blacks and chicanos.
Such changes have not set well with all of the old-time CGS members. Some of them bitterly fought both the endorsement of chicano activist David Lopez for the School Board in 1971, on the grounds that he would drag the whole ticket down to defeat (Lopez got more votes in the city-wide election than either the white or black candidate on the slate, both of whom also won), and the election of Mrs. Hayes and the majority black and chicano CGS board in March, 1972.
Their opposition was based largely on an unwillingness to give up control to blacks and chicanos, who as groups compose a majority of the school district's student population. When enough white CGS board members joined the blacks and chicanos then on the CGS board and voted to make the board conform to the student population's ethnic makeup, CGS became the first multiracial political organization we know of anywhere to be controlled by minority groups. In practice, such control has not meant all that much change.
What change there is has come when the leaders of the organization had to race the fairly heady situation of not being outsiders trying to get in, but of controlling every seat on the School Board.
The choice was simple: either remain an organization designed simply to win elections or develop a justification for a permanent, year-round existence. The first choice would have been fine if CGS was a straight, garden variety political organization with loose civic goals like so many other, roughly similar organizations around the state involved in both city and school board politics. Such a choice, however, would have left CGS members feeling unsatisfied and, one suspects, a little unclean.
"Some people feel CGS should do nothing but campaign," Mrs. Hayes says. "I don't. We offered our candidates to the public and told them they were the best to lead our schools. We owe it to the community to make sure they are the best and that they remain aware of what the community thinks. We owe it to the community to stay on the school board members and the school district. Being a watchdog in a constructive sense is the position CGS has to take."
CGS is not adverse to calling school board members and administrators on the carpet. A critical, skeptical attitude built up through years in opposition is hard to break. The 47-member CGS board meets once a month; its members are generally not shy, retiring types or simple yes-people. They are as diverse and potentially as volatile as the city itself.
Mrs. Hayes, who presides over it all, has the seriousness that seems common to many CGS and school board members. Perhaps such seriousness is the result of the involvement of people in active politics because of their children. When we talked to her on the phone her children were loudly preparing dinner in the background; when we visited Oser, his children crawled over us on the couch. Oser and the other board members are not the typical sort of limousine liberal common in the East, who preach high principal for the masses and send their children to private schools. Both Oser and Dr. Robbins have children who transferred voluntarily from predominantly white schools to predominantly black ones. Such people have the flexibility that comes from overriding purpose.
Mrs. Hayes can be radical or conciliatory with equal charm and aplomb; Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, presiding official of the Democratic National Convention, has nothing on her so far as practical politics goes. "The main thing is that CGS stay alive. I've talked to people in similar organizations all over the United States who have failed because they only got together for elections," she told us. "CGS is going to function in between."
Part of that function seems to involve sniping at the very school board members it helped elect. Some take it well, others reflect the sort of exasperation that most elected officials or administrators seem to take when criticized by outsiders who, well, just don't know how difficult it all is, just aren't aware how many things have to be, well, balanced just to keep going. CGS members don't buy that. At the same time events are putting pressure on CGS. Integration and busing strain a coalition of blacks, chicanos and whites; pressures for community control and separatism are at work to divide up the school district; the white student population continues to decline.
The school board elections this fall will show just how well CGS can hold together and how well Houston has accepted the CGS-controlled school district. It is possible that a new coalition will sweep CGS out as dramatically as it swept in four years ago. New coalitions like CGS bring forth new opponents and the school board has had to make hard decisions that have alienated some supporters. To continue to win they must capture literally all of the black vote plus between 30 and 40 per cent of the white. Less than that among blacks must be offset by gains among whites; less than that among whites, who form the majority of voters if not of students, would mean defeat, since there are no more black votes to be had.
Looking back on his term, Oser told us, "When you get right down to it, I don't believe we really had a philosophical position. We just attempted to bring fairness and reasonableness to the solution of the problems we faced."
Fairness. Reasonableness. Novel ideas in the highly charged world of politics today, and Houston school politics has been as highly charged and bitterly fought as any. Whether the voters of Houston or CGS itself want fairness and reasonableness remains to be seen. We certainly approve of both, wherever they may crop up.
HOW TO GO TO THE RODEO
NOW THAT THE SCHOOL BOARD Meetings are tamer, the Livestock Show is the best entertainment Houston has to offer. In 1972 visitors took a look at over 17,000 animals, each one cleaner than a baby at baptism. Brought into the 16-acre, air-conditioned Exposition Building are sheep in London Fog raincoats, bulls the size of street-sweeping machines, pink hogs, chickens straight out of Greek mythology, turkeys that gobble in unison as if on signal, goats, horses, and rabbits. It is the finest selection of livestock in the world, brought here to be judged and sold in an arena built for just that purpose near the center of the Exposition Building.
Here are some tips on how to see the show:
—Go Western. The reason cowboys wear boots becomes immediately apparent. In lieu of boots, wear washable tennis shoes.
Look for the action, there's plenty. Sheep are sheared, shampooed, fluffed and combed; steers are bathed in the shower rooms, dried with hair dryers and back-combed endlessly. Squealing swine are shaved under the chin; cows are milked.
Plan to see the horses in the judging areas since horse-lovers under six feet tall will have trouble seeing into the high wooden stalls. The cutting horse contests, by the way, make the best show.
Also be sure to see the Future Farmers of America Children's Barnyard, an exhibit of mother animals with their nursing young. A view of the sow and her squealing piglets has been known to send the squeamish straight to Planned Parenthood.
For the slightly less squeamish, it is a short walk from the Exposition Building to a seat in the Astrodome for the rodeo. The Houston Rodeo is BIG. Originally held in the now defunct Democratic Convention Hall, the rodeo drew a total of 2000 people in 1932. Most of them had front row seats. Now in the Astrodome, the rodeo draws 700,000 people and has become a three-hour, action-crammed spectacle that includes a concert by country and western singers.
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