busing

American  

[buhs-ing] / ˈbʌs ɪŋ /

Or bussing

noun

1. the transporting of students by bus to schools outside their neighborhoods, especially as a means of achieving socioeconomic or racial diversity among students in a public school.

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busing Cultural  

1. The movement of students from one neighborhood to a school in another neighborhood, usually by bus and usually to break down de facto segregation of public schools.

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A Supreme Court decision in 1971 ruling that busing was an appropriate means of achieving integrated schools (see integration) was received with widespread, sometimes violent, resistance, particularly among whites into whose neighborhoods and schools black children were to be bused. In 1991, the Court ruled that school districts could end busing if they had done everything “practicable” to eliminate the traces of past discrimination.

Etymology

Origin of busing

1885–90; bus ¹ (v.) + -ing ¹, spelled irregular with single s, perhaps to avoid association with buss

Example Sentences

Robert Docter, an L.A. school board member in the 1970s who successfully pushed to end corporal punishment and who sacrificed his political career trying to integrate campuses through busing, has died at 97.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 5, 2025

Working long hours doing a bit of everything—right down to busing tables—Meyer ate one at the end of almost every lunch shift.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 31, 2025

Daryl, 42, a self-described conservative, lived in several Southern communities as a child, including Charlotte, North Carolina, in the mid-1980s as the city wrestled with its court-ordered school busing program.

From Salon • Aug. 18, 2025

From inside the restaurant, the guys would clamber up to the roof, wait for the “all clear” and then get right back to busing tables, washing dishes and cooking.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 22, 2024

Whitney Young was named for a civil rights activist and had been opened in 1975 as a positive-minded alternative to busing.

From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama