The Supreme Court's ruling on race and public schools was no surprise, but it was a tragedy, nonetheless.

In turning its back on Brown v. Board of Education, the court put an official stamp of approval on racial segregation.

Many liberals abandoned their commitment to integration decades ago, forgetting its purpose. And today it's nearly impossible to find anyone who thinks it's a cause worth fighting for.

It was absolutely dismaying to read Juan Williams' June 29 commentary in the New York Times, treating that crucial Supreme Court decision as a dusty relic.

Brown, wrote Williams, is "now out of step with American political and social realities." The decision was every bit of that, of course, when it was handed down in 1954. Now, though, the country is to abandon justice for "political and social realities."

In Brown, the court ruled that minority children attending segregated schools could not get a good education: that "separate" is inherently "unequal."

But that's a thing of the past. Now, our schools can be as segregated as we like. And when the children in those segregated schools don't do well, we can shout at the teachers or the principals, the superintendent, the school board.

Here are the plain facts: many of the nation's poorest children are African American and Hispanic. Many of their parents are poorly educated. Many of those children start school well behind middle-income children, educationally. Many of them have poor language skills. When they're not in school, they're surrounded by poverty, unemployment, and, increasingly, violence.

Magnify all that, and keep it concentrated over the years, and it overwhelms the efforts of teachers.

Sadly, the burying of Brown will have no effect in Rochester. It would be impossible to integrate more than a handful of the city's schools, racially or economically. Sixty-six percent of the district's students are African-American, 20 percent are Hispanic, and 12 percent are white. Seventy-four percent are poor. And many schools are almost exclusively black and poor.

Some years back, a group of Rochesterians tried to get the courts to do what school districts and legislatures have refused to do: break up the concentration of poverty in which Rochester students attend school. The courts responded with a big yawn. The judges agreed that Rochester students weren't getting a good education. They agreed that the state has a constitutional responsibility to give them a good education and that the state isn't doing it.

But, said the judges, it's not a court's responsibility to fix it. It's the state legislature's.

Ah, yes.

It was encouraging to read op-ed pieces in the Democrat and Chronicle on July 5, mourning the demise of Brown and urging that the community find a way to give Rochester's children a solid education. Particularly encouraging was that the articles were written by educators at local colleges: Jim Wood, associate professor of education at St. John Fisher, and Nazareth College President Daan Braveman.

These are people who could spearhead a movement that could make a difference. But that movement must be more substantive than the last one, the 2005 "Call to Arms" issued by a committee headed by former RIT President Al Simone. That effort, which got the usual self-satisfied plaudits by community leaders, was the quintessential Greater Rochester way of doing things. It consisted of such things as pledging to line up 10,000 tutors.

This was a plan based on do-gooder sentiment, with not the slightest bit of evidence that it would improve the education of city children. It is no surprise that nothing came of it.

But frankly, even if everything in that plan had come to pass, little would have changed in the education of Rochester children. The plan made sure that Rochester's children would be kept in their place. In overwhelmingly poor, overwhelmingly black and Hispanic schools.

In their place.

Out of sight.

The inadequate education we're providing to Rochester children is inexcusable. The lack of community commitment to change it is inexcusable.

It is way past time to fix this. And the fix must address the concentration of poverty. Nothing else will have a significant impact.

So perhaps Nazareth's Daan Braveman and Fisher's Jim Wood will follow up on their op-ed pieces. Perhaps they'll convene a meeting, inviting the president of every college and university in Monroe County. The topic: how these institutions, acting together, can help the community deal with its concentration of poverty.

A start, as I've suggested before, would be campus schools: exceptional public schools operating on college campuses with integrated student bodies, drawn from the city and the suburbs. That would give the city children who attended the schools a fighting chance at a good education. And it could demonstrate what studies have shown: that poor, minority children do better in school and do better after they graduate when they attend integrated schools.

Perhaps then, community leaders would agree that Brown v. Board of Education was right. And that we have a responsibility to fulfill its promise.