Interesting comment, Mark.
My grammar school was (literally) about a 3 minute walk from me, and I don't recall that there was ANY busing in Fair Lawn at all. Too small a town - no one lived far enough away from their school to be bussed!
There was no forced "desegregation", either... in a town of 32,000, there were about 64 blacks (as we called them then). I didn't think anything of it, there were a couple of black kids in my junior high... and in fact when I went to a private high school and my mother asked me if there were any blacks in my class, I had to picture each kid in the class to think if there were or not!! I may have been sheltered, but I sure didn't learn any prejudice... there wasn't anything to prejudiced about!
But the school was definitely a centerpiece of the community. We played on the school grounds after school and on weekends, and the school had plays, bake sales, was the local polling place, etc. My sixth grade teacher was a Rabbi in one of the local temples, IIRC... and my brother and sister had some of my teachers before me. (no, it wasn't Mayberry... but no one got shot, either.)