Generally, courts have been very reluctant to interfere with school boards' discretion in adopting busing plans to promote desegregation. Given the fact that traditional efforts at busing to promote desegregation have failed or have reached only minuscule goals, it is obvious that something else needs to be done to promote racial integration. Various techniques have been utilized by the states to meet the burden of desegregation. Four alternatives and their respective strengths and weaknesses will be addressed in this Article. These include single metropolitan school districts, magnet and charter schools, and voucher systems.
State law establishes the borders of school districts to coincide with town boundaries.
Such laws usually require all children to attend the public school within the district in which they reside. One of the most overlooked options to achieve racial integration is metropolitan school integration. The advantages include that it counters the trend toward multiple school districts within a given metropolitan area deeply separated by race, class, and politics. A metropolitan school district constitutes a single unit school governance that provides all education for all sectors of the community. The children and schools of the least powerful and most powerful sectors of the community depend on the same large institution.