Meeting on the same page

In fact, nine parents are missing. Maybe they didn't get the e-mail, some speculate. Or maybe they couldn't find a baby sitter. Or maybe they were just too tired.

But no one is here to judge. After all, they're not out to change the world, and they understand what it means to be busy.

Everybody shrugs, and brings the circle of chairs, only 12-strong, closer together.

Formally, the book group is called Community connections: understanding race and racism to impact school and community culture, and it comprises 10 parents in Needham, Mass., and 10 parents of METCO students in Boston. They meet every several weeks, alternating between the two communities.

A grant helps pay for 25 copies of each of the five books the group is reading. When the parents are finished reading their books, they return them to Charlotte Sidell, the group's founder, and the copies then become available to the community.

The group is reading the following:

The Other Boston Busing Story by Susan Eaton (Yale University Press) A history of METCO through the eyes of 65 adults who were bused to schools in Boston suburbs over the past few decades.

The Accidental Asian by Eric Liu (Random House) A former speech-writer for President Clinton recounts the shifting frames of ethnic identity as he grew up as a second-generation Chinese-American.

Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball (Random House) A white journalist tells the legacy of his family and its ties to slavery.

The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman (Vintage Books) In the only fiction on the list, a 12-year-old girl tries to enter a community that would have excluded her had it known her true identity as a Jew.

Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas (Vintage Books) A Puerto Rican struggles both to survive in Spanish Harlem and to come to terms with his own identity.

METCO is often called Boston's "other" busing system - "other" because it is voluntary, unlike the forced desegregation busing of the 1970s that placed students from black, poor, and working class areas into schools in white, poor, and working class areas (and vice versa).

And unlike the violence that erupted in the '70s, only a smattering of controversy has touched METCO, which has existed for nearly four decades.

The program began in 1965 as "Operation Exodus." Founded by inner-city parents and activists, it was seen as a temporary but immediate means of providing Boston's children - who were attending infamously poor and segregated schools - access to quality education. Sometimes, children had to bus two hours to get it.

In the program's first year, 220 students traveled from their Boston homes to one of seven suburban towns. The commutes were long, the homework difficult, the cultural differences often uncomfortable. But many parents and children saw real benefits and applauded the program.

In 1966, Operation Exodus was renamed the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity.

It was three years after Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in a doorway and defiantly declared the presence of black students an "unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted, and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama."

Today, about 3,100 METCO students travel to 32 communities. More than 4,000 have graduated from high school in the program's 36-year history.

By some estimates, the METCO waiting list has reached 13,000. Many parents sign up before their child is born.

But, according to Gary Orfield, director of the Harvard Project on School Desegregation, Boston is one of only five cities in the country with a voluntary busing system - the others are in St. Louis; Milwaukee; Rochester, N.Y.; and Hartford, Conn. The book club that brings together parents in Boston and Needham is the only one of its kind in the country.

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