The Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Corporation (VICC) has been responsible for busing students living in St. Louis City to West County to be a part of Rockwood and other county school districts, and also gives students living in the county the ability to attend St. Louis City magnet schools.
VICC was recently exteded for five more years by the VICC Board. This is after a previous five year extension from 2007.
The origin of the program comes from a 1972 St. Louis desegregation case that was approved by the Federal Court in 1983.
Junior Principal Carl Hudson, talked about VICC.
“It is a great program that allows students to get equal access to education,” Hudson said.
Albert Cloudy lives next to University City and has been bussed into Rockwood since the first grade.
“It was a big ride, but better than going to a city school,” Cloudy said. “At the city school, they didn’t care about the work, they just passed you.”
Cloudy enjoys Rockwood and MHS, considering it to be positive for academic and social reasons.
“I’ve liked Rockwood through my beginning years; everybody I know goes here too.” Cloudy said.
Cloudy has to wake up at 5:00 a.m. after getting about six hours of sleep to catch the bus. He gets to school at about 8:01 a.m.
Cloudy said VICC hasn’t done that well integrating students.
“The school is not integrated at all,” Cloudy said. “If you walk around you see city kids with city kids and county kids with county kids. The only exception is with sports teams.”
Hudson disagreed.
“I think the VICC Program does a good job,” Hudson said. “I think the school has a lot to do with integrating though.”
Cloudy said the VICC program is still a positive part of Rockwood, because it keeps the city kids from overpopulating the city schools.
Alec Beyers, junior, said that the VICC Program is beneficial to the school.
“I think it’s a great thing, you can’t walk to school,” Beyers said.
Beyers said VICC’s attempt to integrate students from the city with students from the county has been successful.
“If the VICC Program didn’t bring other kids into our community we wouldn’t have diversity,” Beyers said. “I agree with the program to continue to get funding because nowadays everybody is all about diversity and if it wasn’t state-funded it wouldn’t get paid for.”