Opinion ID: 324656
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Dealing with Growth of the Student Population

Text: 17 One of the present facts of life in the Boston school system is that where there is overcrowding, it generally occurs in white-majority schools while underutilization, where it exists, is found only in black-majority schools. 10 Defendants, in meeting the problem of overcrowded schools, have utilized three principal techniques. These are reassignment to other schools, use of portable classrooms located adjacent to the main school building, and the building of new school buildings or additions. 11 18 The district court found students in 91 percent white Cleveland Junior High School were reassigned to 99 percent white South Boston High which ultimately suffered from overcrowding, although the racial balance of other closer schools, with vacant seats, would have been improved by receiving such students. The court also found that students from overcrowded schools were sometimes transferred to alleviate overcrowding, but only where racial balance was not affected. 12 The explicit reason given by top school officials for not assigning whites to black-majority schools was that this would 'create a problem' on the part of white parents. This, we observe, is an endemic problem, but public clamor has long been deemed beyond the pale as justification for racial segregation. E.g., Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 15--16, 78 S.Ct. 1401, 3 L.Ed.2d 5, 19 (1958). 19 The same policy was apparent in the use of portable classrooms. 13 Of 46 such classrooms in use in 1972--1973, 37 were used at schools with white majority of 70 percent or more, five at schools with a white majority of 50 to 70 percent, and only four at black-majority schools. The School Committee turned a deaf ear to proposals of both the Kiernan Report in 1965 and a state task force report in 1966 that portables be used to reduce segregation, on the ground that portables were 'educationally undesirable'; but during each of those years it used portables to perpetuate the racial mix that existed. 20 In its jousts with the state Board of Education, the School Committee held out hopes of new facilities as an adequate means of advancing racial balance. Its performance was not spectacular. Of twenty new openings between 1967 and 1972, nine buildings opened with a 60 percent or more black majority; seven opened with an 87 percent or more white majority; four opened with an enrollment ranging from 40 percent black to 40 percent white. The district court analyzed in some detail the circumstances surrounding the opening of four schools: Weld, which opened largely black, despite the fact that it was in a white neighborhood and there was the possibility of taking more whites and moving black children to white schools; Hennigan, also largely black on opening through ineffectual efforts to recruit white volunteers, the efforts known to be ineffectual far in advance of opening; Lee, its opening on a balanced basis foreseeably doomed by publicized options to whites to attend overcrowded Fifield and O'Hearn, the option belatedly and secretively revoked shortly before opening, the result being chaos when 200 blacks illegally registered on opening day; and new English High, first intended for the enrollment of students of old English (largely black), then switched by the Committee at a later date for the Girls Latin student body (largely white), then forced by a Massachusetts court decision to revoke its 'unilateral' decision. 14 21 Appellants object to being held responsible for these contributions to imbalance, saying that they do not control the building process, that the population profile of the areas served by the new schools changed radically between the time of planning and the time of opening, and that much of the result was brought about by student pressure. The district court observed, however, that the Superintendent of Schools had a veto power over site selection, that appellants had the benefit of demographic predictions which proved remarkably accurate, and that the student pressure, where it existed, was a crisis of the Committee's own making. 22 We conclude that this pattern of selective action and refusal to act can be seen as consistent only when considered against the foreseeable racial impact of such decisions. Moreover, this pattern has been accompanied by statements of express intention not to counter anti-integration sentiment. We think the district court was clearly correct in this finding of affirmative action. The actions of the Boston authorities are not distinguishable from what the Supreme Court has termed the 'classic pattern of building schools specifically intended for Negro or white students.' Swann, supra, 402 U.S. at 21, 91 S.Ct. at 1278, 28 L.Ed.2d 554. 23