Isn't it peculiar how often yesterday's reforms become today's problems? Take busing for example. Thirty years ago it was imposed on the city as a way of integrating the schools and strengthening education. Today about $60 million is spent annually to move students around the city to mostly minority schools and the quality of education has failed to improve.

City officials are now looking at those transportation funds as a resource that could be better spent directly on education. How sensible is it to lay off teachers and cutback on education programs while the buses continue to roll?

Busing was a failed policy formulated by well-intentioned social scientists who did not understand the passions that erupt when children become the instrument for achieving what they viewed as a desirable result. It probably would have been cheaper and less destructive to subsidize the movement of minority families, who wished to relocate to the suburbs.

Having spent hundreds of millions over the years on this misguided attempt at social engineering, just what has been achieved? The schools are not racially balanced and they have been deprived of substantial funds that could have been used to enhance educational opportunities. Other than the bus companies, who benefited?

I was a young judge in Dorchester in 1974 and witnessed firsthand the effects of busing on race relations and the white flight that followed. It took years for the city to recover from the emotional toll taken on residents, black and white. The anger was a reflection of the fear many parents experienced as their children were bused cross-town.

There was an eruption of racially motivated assaults that obviously were the result of antagonisms brought on by busing. Race relations in the city suffered a setback as scared kids were transported to unfamiliar neighborhoods. Those friendly yellow buses became symbols of unwarranted government intrusion into family life.

How could you stay after for extra help when the bus was waiting outside to take you home? How much waiting and riding time could have been spent more productively doing something else?

Even failed public policy has a momentum all its own. Once it has started, it's difficult to stop. Today's fiscal crisis presents an opportunity to critically assess the value of existing programs. It becomes necessary to ask: "Is it worth the cost; can the money be better spent elsewhere?" Too many reputations were at stake for such questions to be fairly answered previously.

Finally, we have reached the end of a misguided experiment. Busing will pass into the "reform junkyard" where government's mistakes are quietly discarded when we can no longer afford them. One good teacher has a more positive impact on education then all the busses criss-crossing the city each day.

A few years ago we went back to community policing - remember the old cop on the beat. We also will soon return to neighborhood schools because parents correctly viewed them as a safe and sensible way of educating their kids. Busing advocates never understood that nothing evokes more passion than when you mess with people's kids.

Unlike the southwest desert where old military hardware is mothballed, the reform graveyard can be found in the back shelves of libraries, hidden within the pages of old law books waiting to be resurrected by future generations.

I am wary of the term "reform" because it strongly suggests improvement. Most people hear the word and assume it must be good. Often, instead of fixing what's broken, we delude ourselves into thinking reform is the answer. There have been many legitimate reforms but before using the word one should have to prove that the change being advocated is a good one. Labeling it "reform" does not make it so.

A sad chapter in the city's history will end as officials dismantle busing. It is now acceptable to ask what possible education benefit was achieved. The money saved will lessen the impact of a fiscal crisis that now threatens to undermine efforts to strengthen the city's schools.

Busing is best seen through time's rear-view mirror. It took many years and a fiscal crisis to finally disable vehicles that did little more than shuffle kids. How many new schools could have been built, learning programs implemented and teachers hired with the money that was wasted?

(James W. Dolan is a retired Dorchester District Court judge who now practices law at Dolan, Connly & Flaherty, 50 Redfield St., Dorchester, jdolan@dolanconnly.com)