Shawnak Shivakumar

In nearly 40 years, the Tinsley program has bused more than 5,000 children out of East Palo Alto (EPA) to attend schools across the highway. In the same period, it has brought two students in. The Tinsley Voluntary Transfer Program, the country’s first inter-district desegregation plan, was supposed to run both ways. It never has.

In nearly 40 years, the Tinsley program has bused more than 5,000 children out of East Palo Alto (EPA) to attend schools across the highway. In the same period, it has brought two students in. The Tinsley Voluntary Transfer Program, the country’s first inter-district desegregation plan, was supposed to run both ways. It never has.

From I-280, the Dish is just a shape on a hill. The thousands of people who hike in the Stanford foothills each year often walk right past the almost 150 feet of faded blue aluminum that mark the skyline. Few of them know that it still carries out federal government contracts, that it weighs 70 tons, or that it once helped the U.S. figure out whether its radar technologies could track Soviet nuclear missiles.