I personally know TONS of democrats that HATE absolutely HATE bussing! In fact it was bussing that made many of them vote for Reagan to begin with !
I had a buddy who moved to the suburbs rather than put up with that crap. His kids lunches were stolen by the new kids. Another time there was an incident involving kids in Auburn, Ca. My nephew was sitting in a car with his dad and thanked him for not raising him there.
Everyone hated busing; blacks and whites alike. Blacks hated being driven miles away from their homes to schools where they didn't know anybody. It hurt their ability to participate in extracurricular activities and also hurt parental involvement; particularly single moms who had to work all day and couldn't drive across town for parent teacher conferences. And it really sucked if a kid forgot his lunch or got sick and needed to come home.
Whites, of course, fled the cities for the suburbs. Many argue this left the cities to decay when the taxpayers vanished. It was a disaster all the way around.
There is no constituency calling for a return to busing. Nobody.
The original busing made a lot of people mad. Your kid is driven an hour each way to school, so they can’t do extracurriculars.
It is a top down approach that doesn’t necessarily improve the local schools. It takes money away from things that may actually help long term like hire more, quality teachers.
It is rather bigoted, too, to assume white kids civilize a bad school and black kids need “influence” ... that liberals then say it is oppressive to try to change minority cultures undermines every argument FOR busing.
The “white flight” and “upper class flight” from the big cities mean that busing by definition will have to bring people in from the suburbs to the school. You won’t just bus kids across Chicago or Dallas but from one to two hours out just to get enough whites and Asians to be “mixed”.
That alone will hurt kids, because you aren’t driven to a school 20 miles away but 40. No extracurriculars, ever. An hour plus trip by parents if you’re sick to come get you. No support from parents to bring an inhaler or lunch. You’re at the mercy of the violent local kids because no one KNOWS or cares about you. No accountability, because you’re easily shuffled off to another school.
If Democrats do this, expect home schooling and private schools to surge.