Reported by Donna Wilson, STATEWIDE Correspondent

[Michaela] "In the wintertime, it's hard. There's ice and stuff. Last year my friend, she slipped."
It's a cold December morning and Michaela is one of the first children on the bus. It will take Michaela and her schoolmates 45 minutes in a dozen miles of rush hour interstate traffic to get to school.
[Students on bus]"Well, it's fast....And it's bumpy."
Finally at school, the bus riders' day began more than an hour ago.
[Concerned Parent]"What about us?"
Parents and community leaders are talking about whether Omaha school kids should be on the bus at all?
[Concerned Parent]"Riding the bus is not the answer to any of this."
The O.P.S. Desegregation Study Task Force has met every other week since the fall of 1997.
[Concerned Parent]"And I say this because I'm really being -- getting concerned here that we're starting to talk about a bunch of junk, that's the best way I can say it. I don't care anything about how long you ride the bus. That is of no concern to me. What I'm really concerned about is the quality of education that my child gets when he or she gets to school and back home."
It costs $15 million annually to bus Omaha public school students. 20 years after court-imposed desegregation busing began, students are no longer bused solely to integrate schools.
[Dr. John Mackiel, O.P.S. Superintendent] "We have transportation available for special education students, English as a Second Language students, magnet school students, and the transportation price tag for the desegregation purposes is approximately $5.5 to 6 million of that 15."
Less explosive than some areas of the country, Omaha's implementation of forced busing was strained but went off with few hitches.
[old film footage-narrator] "During this time while the busing program was just getting underway, the Omaha school board decided to appeal the circuit court's busing order. But the decision to fight forced busing was by no means a unanimous mouse one."
But the impetus for busing was heated. It manifested in a court battle. In 1973 African-American parents filed a lawsuit against Omaha Public Schools. Their claim? Institutional racism. That O.P.S. schools were illegally segregated. Dave Pedersen is an attorney for O.P.S. He has been involved with the busing case for 23 years.
[Dave Pedersen] "You see the premise for the courts ordering schools to mandatorily reassign kids was that you intentionally violated someone's constitutional rights, and the school district felt that it had not intentionally violated anyone's constitutional rights and that essentially the racial separation that we had in the schools was because of people's residential housing choices and that all we were doing was running essentially a neighborhood school."
In the late 1960's and early 1970's, discriminatory housing practices and high concentrations of African-Americans in the inner city made predominantly black schools more common. Black parents said their schools were being neglected. When busing first began, white children were bused two years while black children were bused five. From the beginning, parents questioned the fairness of the plan. At the time black children were only 20% of the O.P.S. population. The court looked at the numbers saying more busing for black students was the only resolution. Today white kids are bused either in 2nd or 3rd grade while black kids are bused in 4th through 6th. And like white kids possibly 7th and 8th if there's no school in their neighborhood.
It's another typical cold Nebraska day when most parents would rather not send their kids to stand outside and wait for a bus.
[Robert Bauldwin]"Many children become isolated."
Robert Bauldwin is one such parent. Bauldwin attended Omaha Public Schools later to drop out partly he says because even with integrated schools, racism ran rampant. Now he has five children who attend O.P.S. He believes desegregation busing is inherently racist, that busing black children out of their neighborhoods sends a clearly negative message.
[Robert Bauldwin] "Busing is billion dollar industry. Trick black people into making them think you can get a better education by your child sitting next to a white child and what this does is make the black child still feel inferior. He has to leave his community to go somewhere else to feel he can get an education."
One of Bauldwin's children is Roberta. She is a student at King Science Center. This year she rides the bus. It's only a 15-minute ride but she's ridden longer. Her father is very involved with her education.
[Roberta] "The reason I get good grades is because I love myself and I'm able to love other people and that gives me the strength and it's all because I love myself."
But when Roberta was bused further away, it was more difficult for Bauldwin to interact with teachers, and Roberta found it more difficult to interact with kids who lived near her but didn't go to the same school.
[Bauldwin] "What integration did, it deteriorated the very fibers of our community. I never get to know the child across the street because for six and a half hours of the day he is out of the community. The school system must integrate the curriculum. If the new superintendent really wants to be nice to black people and he truly likes black people and he truly wants to do the right thing for black people, integrate the curriculum."
In the mid-1980's, magnet schools like King Science Center opened and the courts said the desegregation plan had "worked well." Tell that to the parents who are part of the deseg task force. The segregation may have been eliminated but other issues would pop up. A young teacher then, John McKeel, remembers when busing began. He recalls the bumper stickers which read "let's make it work."
[John MCKeel]"Very candidly the issue is we're growing weary of placing our babies on the corners when the windchill is 30 below and wondering if, in fact, a bus will be there within a 10-minute window, within a 30-minute window, will, in fact, that bus show up at all."
[Wilson]"You're the person that gets the complaint from the parent."
[Bus Driver]"I get a lot of them."
[Wilson]"What sort do you get?"
[Bus Driver]"Well, obviously the normal, the bus is late, the bus missed my child, they did not drop the child off at the right stop."
Those are just the logistics. With changing demographics, the greater issue is whether desegregation busing is still relevant.
[Dawn Buchanan] "There are more Hispanics and Asian-Americans. I just think we need to look at all of the different cultures we have in Omaha."
Members of the busing task force have three choices -- end it, change it, or leave it alone. Most don't want to leave it alone. Dawn Buchanan lives in west Omaha. She has two kids who have been bused. She says it was a good experience for them.
[Buchanan] "The fact that kids are bused three more years than my kids had been bused out west, I had concerns about that, too, but, you know, once they explained that, you know, 20 years ago the numbers of African-Americans and Whites, since it is that kind of issue, was so much different, it made sense to me that you would have to bus that way."
Tony Rabiola has three school age children. He says he spent half a year taking the kids to school himself. He was in high school when deseg busing first began.
[Tony Rabiola] "I didn't think it was that awful of an experience but I was older when I went through it, too. I wasn't in the 2nd grade like my kids were and had to be bused for the entire year. So for the younger kids, I just don't think it's a great way to run things. Currently, there is a voluntary system in place for the high schools. And I don't see why something similar to that couldn't be worked out for the middle schools and elementary where every child would have either their neighborhood school or a choice of schools, magnet schools to go to. "
Ivan Gilreath has one son who has been bused and a daughter who will be for the first time next year. He lives in an integrated neighborhood and says forced busing may be forcing out students.
[Ivan Gilreath] "I think they've gone to Millard, I think they've gone to private schools. I think it's because they just don't want to have their kids bused. I think that's something that needs to be addressed as well, because I think we're losing, you know, some quality individuals from our school district because of the existing busing plan."
[Presenter]"That is the challenge because there is still a concentration. They are not mixed all over town. And that has been the dilemma."
If there are people moving from school to school or from neighborhood to neighborhood, the majority are not black students. Most black students remain concentrated in particular areas of Omaha. O.P.S. has 30% black students, 10% Hispanic, and about 2% Asian. With all of the new diversity, why concentrate on black students? Well, because the initial plan was based on a lawsuit by black parents. At the time far fewer ethnicities attended O.P.S. But other litigation is pending by parents who believe diversity is no excuse.
[Pedersen] "Most of the lawsuits, though, currently are being brought by people that are claiming school districts that are unitary school districts like Omaha is who still use race as a criterion for student assignment although for remedial purposes are violating their constitutional rights since the only basis -- this is what these people are claiming -- the only basis on which you can use race for student assignments is to remedy your past discriminatory action. You can't use it for such purposes as promoting diversity in student assignments."
[Presenter]"If you would have four glasses and three glasses had blue marbles in them and one glass had green marbles and your chore was to move and mix those blue and green marbles equitably so that each glass had the same amount of blue and green marbles, you would find you would be moving the green marbles three times more frequently than the blue. I think just mathematically that happens."
Some parents believe the current busing plan is right on target. Others believe O.P.S. lost its marbles a long time ago.
[Parent ]"Are those guidelines written down, ma'am?"
Several public hearings have come and gone. There has been low turnout, but one mantra which has come up time and again, parents are demanding choice and involvement in their children's education. Who cares about systems and buses, they say. They want good educations for their kids. It's a debate which started a long time ago.
[Bauldwin] "My main thing is to end it, end busing. Our black children are bused four times more than white children. Out of a four-year period, our children spend one year on the bus. Now all these white people like black people so much and want us to be a part of an A-1 system, why don't they think everything equal then?"
Task force members know there is a long road ahead.