Opinion ID: 201118
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Historical background: inclusion of diversity as a goal of the New Plan

Text: 50 Plaintiffs also argue that the New Plan was adopted for racially discriminatory reasons and should be subject to strict scrutiny because Superintendent Payzant and the Boston School Committee identified diversity as one of the several goals of the student assignment system. Plaintiffs equate this commitment to racial diversity with an illegitimate commitment to racial balancing. See Wessmann, 160 F.3d at 800 (noting the Constitution's general prohibition against racial balancing). To prove their point, plaintiffs cite the testimony of Superintendent Payzant elicited on cross-examination during this litigation: 51 Q. So this 50% walk-to plan actually preserved the racial balance gained by the Old Plan; isn't that correct? 52 A. Right, which is precisely why I didn't want to keep 100% walk-zone preference in the New Plan after racial guidelines were withdrawn. 53 In addition, plaintiffs cite communications from defendants trying to convince the Racial Imbalance Advisory Council (RIAC) 15 and the Board of Education that after the adoption of the New Plan, BPS should still qualify for funds under the Racial Imbalance Law, M.G.L. c. 71, § 37C, et seq. (RIL). 16 Essentially, Superintendent Payzant argued that (1) BPS qualified for funds under the Old Plan, (2) the New Plan maintained approximately the same racial balance within the schools as the Old Plan, so (3) BPS should still qualify for RIL funds, even though the New Plan lacked the explicit racial guidelines of the Old Plan. 54 Plaintiffs' reliance on selected excerpts ignores the totality of the evidence. As already noted, BPS's statistical analyses showed that, even with the elimination of the racial guidelines and a 100% walk zone preference in place, there was only a very, very small racial result. Superintendent Payzant testified at trial that BPS compared the results of a 100% walk zone preference applied both with and without the use of the racial guidelines called for in the Old Plan 55 to let the data speak for themselves and show to the Commissioner, and ultimately the State Board of Education, that the impact of the change in the student assignment plan by removing racial guidelines but keeping the other elements of the controlled choice would enable us to come very close to the same circumstances that we had that qualified us for ... meeting the standards of the Racial Imbalance Law before the policy was changed. 56 The data are indeed telling. According to Superintendent Payzant's testimony to the Board of Education, when BPS simulated the first-round transition grade assignments for the 1999-2000 year using actual parent choices but eliminating only the use of the racial guidelines, it found that just three additional schools would have one or more transitional grades falling outside the racial guidelines. Using the parental choice data to analyze the effect on individual student placements without the use of the racial guidelines revealed that only 938 out of 13,057 (or seven percent) of students would have been assigned to different schools. About fifty-three percent of those 938 individual changed assignments would have resulted in the student being assigned to a school which she had ranked higher, and, correspondingly, forty-seven percent would have been assigned to a school which she had ranked lower. Whites, Asians, and Hispanics fared slightly better as groups, while blacks and Native Americans fared slightly worse. 57 In sum, BPS's analyses showed that, even after removing the racial guidelines of the Old Plan, the BPS school assignment system did not need further modification to maintain the racial balance required to be eligible for RIL funds. Although defendants were pressured by RIAC to continue explicit racial balancing, they refused to comply, despite the substantial RIL funds at stake. 58 However, the Superintendent and the School Committee were also concerned about equity of choice and access across the system, particularly for students who lived in neighborhoods with inadequate capacity or underperforming schools. In his July 14, 1999 memo to the School Committee, Superintendent Payzant commented that it is important to note that this is not an issue of returning to neighborhood schools. That can happen in an equitable way only when new quality schools are built in neighborhoods that now have an insufficient number of schools to serve resident school age children.... This concern is further reflected in the summary description of the New Plan provided to the Commissioner of Education as part of BPS's RIL compliance presentation. That document stated that the Superintendent and the School Committee 59 are confident that the [New Plan] continues to ensure both choice and access beyond a student's particular neighborhood in order to preserve racial and ethnic diversity and reduce the likelihood of racial isolation within its schools. In addition, the [New Plan] retains all of the educational benefits of the original Controlled Choice Student Assignment Plan, including the promotion of school improvement, continuity and stability of placement, and equitable distribution of resources and educational opportunity district-wide. 60 The defendants' public confidence that the New Plan preserved racial diversity while advancing the other values that they identified was not an admission that the New Plan was a suspect device to achieve the numerically precise racial balancing of the Old Plan. 61 Contrary to plaintiffs' arguments, the mere invocation of racial diversity as a goal is insufficient to subject the New Plan to strict scrutiny. In those cases where the Supreme Court inquired whether diversity is a compelling state interest and whether the program at issue could survive strict scrutiny, the programs were all subjected to strict scrutiny because they used explicit racial classifications to achieve the goal of diversity. 17 None of these cases, nor any other case to which our attention has been drawn, has subjected a governmental program to strict scrutiny simply because the state mentioned diversity as a goal. As the district court succinctly put it: Motive, in other words, is not always suspect. Means, however, may be. BCF IV, 260 F.Supp.2d at 330. The Supreme Court has explained that the motive of increasing minority participation and access is not suspect. See, e.g., City of Richmond v. JA Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 507, 109 S.Ct. 706, 102 L.Ed.2d 854 (1989) (approving the use of race-neutral means to increase minority participation in governmental programs). 62 We said as much in Raso v. Lago, 135 F.3d 11 (1998), where we considered an equal protection and § 1983 challenge to a facially race-neutral policy change regarding the award of housing units that, at the end of the day, resulted in fewer white residents receiving a preference for the units to which they would have otherwise been entitled because of their prior residency. After acknowledging that the change in policy was motivated by a desire to ensure that all races had equal access to the new housing, we stated that plaintiffs are mistaken in treating `racial motive' as a synonym for a constitutional violation. Raso, 135 F.3d at 16. 63 Employing de novo review and placing Superintendent Payzant's cited testimony in the context of the entire record, we find that the plaintiffs have not shown that the defendants' use of the word diversity was simply a subterfuge for racial balancing. While defendants frankly acknowledged that they valued the degree of integration BPS had attained since it came under federal court order thirty years ago, their analyses using actual parental choice patterns showed that removing the racial guidelines of the Old Plan and the maintenance of a 100% walk-zone preference would not significantly erode those integration gains. BPS then resisted pressure to adhere to strict racial balancing, even with RIL funds potentially on the table, and adopted the race-neutral New Plan. To increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome on diversity and to promote school improvement, continuity and stability of placement, and equitable distribution of resources and educational opportunity district-wide, as well as the system's ongoing goals of excellence, equity and diversity, the defendants opted for the 50% walk-zone preference. 64 As the district court put it, Superintendent Payzant's reference to diversity simply restated his more convincing point that the revised assignment plan is intended to address issues of equity by giving parents in under-served neighborhoods fairer access to the school system's resources. BCF IV, 260 F.Supp.2d at 332. To the extent that the School Committee's adoption of the New Plan promoted choice and equitable access to BPS resources for all students in the BPS system, as well as diversity, there is nothing in that mix of goals or the means of achieving them that triggers strict scrutiny under our own precedents or those of the Supreme Court. 65