There was not a great deal of evidence received at the trial on the question whether the defendants intended that the examination schools be segregated; but most of what was introduced tended to support the validity of the presumption discussed in the Keyes case. Since then federal funds in the above-listed amounts, and more, have been withheld from the public schools of Boston pursuant to 42 U.S.C.
Indirect evidence of segregative intent would include the absence of valid educational, fiscal, administrative or other governmental justifications for decisions having clearly foreseeable segregative consequences. §§ 241c(a)(b), 241e(c) Moreover, nearly all of the 57 first and second grade black pupils might have been assigned, with no greater inconvenience, to vacant seats in predominantly white schools in the Sumner and Longfellow districts. Apparently no housing project which has fallen below 80% White has stabilized at that point, but has shown a steady and rapid progression toward 100% Non-white. Between 1969 and 1971 the board compiled 39 rated lists of candidates for promotion. A small donation would help us keep this accessible to all.
This table is consistent with the previous one; it also suggests that the system may channel teachers into progressively whiter schools as their seniority increases until they arrive and remain at schools less than 30% Black.
Who is going to fill it is a decision that is going to be made later. Note that schools above 80% black enrollment had an average of more than four provisional teachers per school; and that schools under 20% Black enrollment had an average of less than one provisional teacher per school. On at least one occasion the committee redistricted with a view to perpetuating racial segregation. Safety considerations thus did not explain the school committee’s actions. (Truant Officer), Teachers Assigned to Home Plaintiffs have shown racial segregation in the examination and vocational schools and programs, thereby establishing ‘a prima facie case of unlawful segregative design on the part of school authorities’ with respect to such schools. In September 1965 a private group of black parents raised funds for private transportation of black pupils transferring under open enrollment to predominantly white schools. The city defendants further assert that not only have they not promoted segregation but they have tried to effect a better racial balance in the Boston public schools in accordance with the Racial Imbalance Act, Mass.G.L. It is further Ordered that, pending further order or unless specific leave of this court is obtained, said defendants be preliminarily enjoined from:
The report concluded that racial imbalance was educationally harmful and should be eliminated. 55.5 4.2 40.3. Portables were used to alleviate overcrowding when available nonsegregative methods, such as changing district lines and reassigning students, could have achieved the same result. However, it came only after a single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court had nullified a 3-2 vote of the school committee awarding the facility to another high school, Girls Latin, and the events leading up to it bear on the issue of defendants’ [FN14] intent. FN13. Specifically the court found that open enrollment had been operated in a discriminatory manner so as to hinder and in many cases exclude black and other minority students from transferring to schools that had empty seats. MEMBER #1: And they are underenrolled in comparision to the others? B. 1543, 287 N.E.2d 438, and Springfield II, supra. The fourth was Thompson, theretofore a K-8 school, whose overlapping district was shown on the first of the maps, ante, and which was included in the first table, ante, since its graduates were given seat preferences at two junior highs by feeder patterns promulgated for the 1967-68 school year. The transfer system’s exclusive reliance on seniority thus effectively locks many black teachers in the schools to which they are initially assigned, usually majority black, and allows white teachers with seniority to transfer from these same schools to others. This is not to say, of course, that there can never be a case in which the geographical structure of, or the natural boundaries within, a school district may have the effect of dividing the district into separate, identifiable and unrelated units. To membership on the Citizens’ Advisory Committee it appointed persons known to be vehemently opposed to redistricting and encouraged them to stalemate discussions with members who had been selected by the board. 2686, 37 L.Ed.2d 548, furnishes a blue-print for decision of the liability issues in this case, as follows: (a) whether racial segregation exists in parts of the Boston public school system; (b) if so, whether such segregation was intentionally caused and maintained by the defendants; (c) whether any parts shown by plaintiffs to have been intentionally segregated constitute a substantial portion of the school system, i.e., whether defendants’ intentionally segregative conduct affected a substantial portion of the students, schools, teachers and facilities within the school system. The basis of the defendants’ resistance to curtailment of open enrollment was crystal clear: it would deprive white students of their ‘right to escape’ from schools with substantial percentages of black students. The defendants never made any systematic inquiry concerning whether assigning black teachers to black schools inspires the confidence, or coincides with the wishes of, the black community.
The three district high schools with grades 9-12 are East Boston, South Boston and Burke for girls, whose percentages of white students in September 1967 were, respectively, 99%, 100% And 25%. 1972– $8,817,298 [FN7].
The defendants have argued that the reason for transporting the Bradford-Walcott students to the Weld school was to keep existing friendships intact. The court denied a motion of the city defendants to join numerous cities and towns around Boston as defendants, partly on the ground that the proposed defendant cities and towns had not been charged by the plaintiffs with contributing to the violation of their constitutional rights. The plaintiffs’ case against the state defendants, generally speaking, is that they have not exercised their powers to prevent various segregative acts by the city defendants. The combination of a disproportionate number of provisional teachers at black schools and the right of permanent teachers to transfer after serving at a school for two years visited another inequality upon black students, viz., a rate of teacher turnover higher than at predominantly white schools, referred to sometimes as staff instability.
Prince 50.6 11.4 38.0 Taft Jr. 77.6 4.2 18.2 By the middle of the 1970s, many school boards — Boston’s among them — had rejected every other method of desegregation. Keyes v. School District No. However, the major thrust of the defendants’ first point would be that if the school district boundary predated a segregated housing pattern within that district, there is no constitutional violation. The gesture regarding McCormack has been discussed, ante. [FN*] 6.7 8.5 8.1 8.3 10.8 13.7. By 1971-72 the number had tapered off to 171, probably due to the opening of new schools in black neighborhoods and transfers to suburban schools under the METCO program. At a committee meeting on June 13, the chairman moved that the open enrollment policy be amended as follows: no pupil may be permitted to attend a school out of district if his attendance in that school will either cause said school to become racially imbalanced or aggravate an already existing condition of racial imbalance in such school. Persons qualifying for promotion were placed on a ‘rated list’ compiled for each type on position, e.g., headmaster, assistant principal, etc. teachers of limited experience to ‘black’ schools while assigning few, if any, such teachers to ‘white’ schools.’. In early 1966 the board engaged the services of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of Harvard and MIT, which prepared several alternative redistricting proposals, eight for elementary schools and three for intermediate schools. ‘We have no occasion to consider in this case whether a ‘neighborhood school policy’ of itself will justify racial or ethnic concentrations in the absence of a finding that school authorities have committed acts constituting de jure segregation . This was done for elementary schools in 1970-71, with the following results: % Black Average Years in The issue is now again before the Supreme Court. SUPERINTENDENT: Therefore, the large city schools are becoming smaller and smaller and becoming black. The elementary schools generally cannot be fairly characterized as neighborhood schools.
2. They also assert that the state defendants, the state board of education and commissioner of education, failed to reduce segregation by use of their specific statutory powers with respect to school construction, transportation aid, vocational programs and educational standards for professional personnel. Evidently the defendants preferred not to have to respond to that type of inquiry. The pattern of faculty transfer from black to white schools in Boston was mentioned in the study report of the federal Civil Rights Commission filed in 1966; and the subject was discussed at several school committee meetings. ..’ The committee’s first plan failed to include any provisions for redistricting and was rejected by the board voted to hold in escrow state other reasons.
Vacant seats at Girls between 1967 and 1972 averaged in excess of 500; at Burke there were 142 vacant seats in 1969-70, 185 in 1970-71 and 141 in 1971-72; English became underutilized, with 223 vacant seats in the main building in 1971-72. A provisional teacher may become a so-called permanent provisional by serving for three consecutive years, after which he acquires tenure under Mass.G.L. The effect of the cut-off [FN36] is to eliminate relatively more black applicants than white, and of the ranking by NTE score, to reduce the number of blacks employed as permanent teachers. The obvious difficulties of ascertaining the intent of the administrators of a municipal school system like Boston’s were mentioned in all four opinions in the Keyes case. 1961, 294 F.2d 36, 38. This proffered theory is pure rationalization and completely unsupported by contemporaneous evidence of the reasons for the committee’s action.
It is based upon legal principles discussed comprehensively in Castro v. Beecher, 1 Cir. [FN19] In the rhetoric of the committee, redistricting became synonymous with abolition of the neighborhood school, anathema to most parents and to be resisted at all costs. The building at Codman Square, which incidentally is almost as antiquated as the old English building, is located on the border of a heavily black neighborhood. Guidance, Counseling and Testing, Title V-A, NDEA, 20 U.S.C. FN10.
Keyes v. School District No. In addition to defendants’ contentions discussed ante, defendants have raised two major defenses which pertain to a number of plaintiffs’ claims. These departments include school operations, educational planning in which there is an educational planning center, personnel, staff training and development, special services, curriculum and inspection, and the business department. Several practices of the defendants were antithetical to a neighborhood school system: extensive busing, open enrollment, multi-school districts, magnet schools, citywide schools and feeder patterns. The feasibility of a Lewenberg to Rogers or Irving switch is corroborated by the school committee’s ad hoc decision in 1972 which allowed several white elementary school graduates who lived in the Lewenberg district to attend the predominantly white Irving or Rogers junior highs rather than the predominantly black Lewenberg. (a) failing to comply in any respect with the Racial Imbalance Act plan ordered by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to be implemented on or before the opening day of school in September, 1974; 2 30- 50% 5 FN41. It’s the American way. 1971, 339 F.Supp. As in the case of the examination schools, little evidence was offered on the issue whether the racial segregation of vocational students was purposeful; and the presumption of unlawfulness described in the Keyes decision was not rebutted.