Opinion ID: 324656
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: administration of examination and trade schools, and vocational programs

Text: 45 The Boston school system operates three high schools, Boston Latin, Girls Latin and Boston Technical, which serve as college preparatory schools, and which admit students on the basis of competitive examinations. The enrollment at these schools, the district court found, was overwhelmingly white. 18 The city operates two vocational schools, Boston Trade and Girls Trade. These the court found predominantly and increasingly black. 19 There are also a variety of mostly white vocational programs located in regular high schools. 46 The Supreme Court established in Keyes two principles for use when analyzing school segregation in localities with no history of statutorily based separate education. The first is that 47 'common sense dictates the conclusion that racially inspired school board actions have an impact beyond the particular schools that are the subjects of those actions. 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. Such a determination is essentially a question of fact to be resolved by the trial court in the first instance, but such cases must be rare. In the absence of such a determination, proof of state-imposed segregation in a substantial portion of the district will suffice to support a finding by the trial court of the existence of a dual system. Of course, where that finding is made, as in cases involving statutory dual systems, the school authorities have an affirmative duty 'to effectuate a transition to a racially nondiscriminatory school system.' Brown II, supra, 349 U.S. 294, at 301 (75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083).' 413 U.S. at 203, 93 S.Ct. at 2695. (Emphasis supplied.) 48 In short, absent a showing by school authorities that a particular school is geographically isolated, or that the effect of proven deliberately segregative acts was confined to a discrete and discernible portion of the system, every school in a system shown to have been illegally segregated in some respects must be subject to the district court's scrutiny in devising a remedy to eliminate segregation. 49 The second principle established by the Court in Keyes is that, even if there is a determination that part of a district is 'separate, identifiable and unrelated': 50 '(A) finding of intentionally segregative school board actions in a meaningful portion of a school system . . . creates a presumption that other segregated schooling within the system is not adventitious. It establishes, in other words, a prima facie case of unlawful segregative design on the part of school authorities, and shifts to those authorities the burden of proving that other segregated schools within the system are not also the result of intentionally segregative actions.' 413 U.S. at 208, 93 S.Ct. at 2697.'(I)t is not enough, of course, that the school authorities rely upon some allegedly logical, racially neutral explanation for their actions. Their burden is to adduce proof sufficient to support a finding that segregative intent was not among the factors that motivated their actions.' Id. at 210, 93 S.Ct. at 2698. 51 This presumption, once operative, applies to any segregated school, isolated or not, subject to the control of defendant school authorities. They would have the burden of proving the absence of segregative intent. 52 The district court found no part of the Boston school system to be geographically isolated. Since defendants' policies with regard to new facilities, portable classrooms, overcrowding, districting and redistricting, feeder patterns, open enrollment and controlled transfers, and faculty and staff were all marked by segregative intent, the existence of a dual system was established. The effects of that system, in any school, including the examination and trade schools and the vocational programs, must be eliminated. 20 53 Even if the evidence of a dual system were not so conclusive, the second principle established by Keyes would require, in light of the evidence of intentional segregation elsewhere in the school system, that we presume the segregation in the examination and trade schools and the vocational programs to be intentional. Defendants argue that students were admitted to the examination schools on the basis of an objective standard 'having nothing to do' with pupil assignment policies found intentionally segregative elsewhere in the system. Such an 'allegedly logical, racially neutral explanation' is not enough. Defendants offer no proof that 'segregative intent was not among the factors that motivated their actions'. 21 Quite the contrary, there is strong evidence to indicate that the segregation of the examination and trade schools and the vocational programs was intentional. 54 As we have noted, students in the vocational programs were recruited primarily at white junior high schools. The advanced elementary school classes, whose members usually continued to the examination schools, were over 80 percent white. Further, defendants were aware at least as early as 1966 that whites were much more successful than blacks on the entrance examinations, yet they made no effort to reconsider the appropriateness of the examinations, or to take other steps to encourage minority representation until racial discrimination charges were filed with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. 379 F.Supp. at 467--468. 22 55 The predominantly black trade schools, on the other hand, were described by the man later selected to head a proposed unified Boston trade and girls trade school as 'a philosophy that has failed in Boston'. Defendants point to the absence of any finding that the vocational programs were better than the trade schools. That one program was not found to be superior to the other, i.e., that it might be 'equal' although 'separate', does nothing to refute the evidence that blacks were directed toward the trade schools, whites toward the vocational programs. Here again, disparate bits of evidence have but one unifying theme, the intent to maintain a segregated school system. 56