Opinion ID: 500653
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Board's Decisions as to School Closings, Openings, and Attendance Zone Changes

Text: 112 During the decades on which this litigation focused, the Board made many decisions with regard to opening and closing schools and realigning their attendance zones. Plaintiffs sought to show that many of these decisions evinced an intent to create or maintain segregation in the Yonkers public schools.
113 Among the attendance zone changes were several affecting Schools 16 and 25, elementary schools located in Northwest Yonkers, less than one mile apart. Between 1953 and 1968, the Board redrew the boundary between these two schools four times. In 1953, School 25 had a minority student population of 4%; that of School 16 was 0%. The 1953 boundary change resulted in the reassignment of 35 white students, and no minority students, from School 25 to School 16. Ten years later, the minority population of School 25 had risen to 14%; School 16 still had no minority students. A 1963 boundary change resulted in the reassignment of nine white students, and no minority students, from School 25 to School 16. In the following year, a boundary change resulted in the reassignment from School 25 of 23 white students and nine minority students, thereby bringing the minority population of School 16 to 2%. By 1968, Yonkers's system-wide percentage of minority students was about 15%, and School 25 had a minority population of 42%. A boundary change in that year resulted in the reassignment of six of its white students, and no minority students, to School 16. School 16's minority population was 1%. 114 The Board argued that these changes had been designed to avoid having the reassigned children traverse a steep hill between their homes and school. Board reassignments in other sections of the City, however, had been made though they forced the reassigned students to cope with similar topographical conditions, and in fact two of the boundary changes between School 25 and School 16 made the trip to school harder, not easier, for the students who were reassigned. No other explanation was offered by the Board. 115 A 1963 attendance zone change between Southwest Yonkers Schools 9 (15% minority) and 12 (42% minority) was similarly unexplained by race-neutral criteria. The attendance zone for School 9 was directly north of that for School 12. In 1963, the Board moved the boundary line farther north. While this change slightly lowered the minority percentage enrolled in School 12, it substantially lowered School 9's 15% minority percentage as it reassigned some 40% of School 9's minority students to School 12; even prior to the reassignment, School 12 had had the second-highest minority concentration in Yonkers. This boundary change was contraindicated by the relative student-capacities of the two schools. According to the Board's figures, prior to the change, only 77% of the capacity of School 9 was utilized; School 12 was 96% full. The boundary change caused School 12 to be overcrowded. 116
117 The Longfellow Middle School, located in Southwest Yonkers, has long been the Yonkers middle school with the highest percentage of minority students. In 1950, though only 12% of its students were minorities, these students constituted 41% of the City's entire minority middle school population. Housed in a relatively small facility with no outdoor recreational space, by 1969 the school had become underutilized as Burroughs Middle School was opened one mile away and the attendance zone for Longfellow shrank. The drawing of the attendance zone line between Longfellow and Burroughs decreased the number of white students attending Longfellow, and the increasing minority population of Southwest Yonkers led to increasing numbers of minority students. In 1967, Longfellow's student population was 38% minority; after the opening of Burroughs in 1969, Longfellow became 50% minority. By 1973, Longfellow had become 79% minority. 118 The combination of its disproportionately high minority student population, its inferior physical facilities, and its underutilization caused many education officials and community leaders to urge repeatedly, beginning at least as early as 1967, that Longfellow be closed. The Board rejected all proposals either to close Longfellow and transfer its students to other schools that were less heavily minority, or to expand Longfellow's attendance zone so as to achieve a desegregative influx of nonminority students. For example, in 1977, when the Board planned to close the nearby Burroughs as a middle school, the Longfellow PTA urged the Board to return to Longfellow the predominantly white area that had been rezoned from Longfellow to Burroughs in 1969; such a realignment would have made use of Longfellow's excess capacity and had a desegregative effect. The Board rejected this suggestion, deciding instead to reassign the Burroughs students--even those who lived within one mile of Longfellow--to Emerson Middle School, two miles away near the northwest corner of the City, or to Whitman Middle School, four miles away near the northeast corner of the City. Though the Board initially reached this decision while an overall school reorganization plan recommending the closing of Longfellow was under consideration, it adhered to the decision after the reorganization plan had been rejected, stating that Longfellow might still be closed. 119 Other proposals recommended closing Longfellow and reassigning its students to Mark Twain Middle School, located in the southeast corner of East Yonkers, some three miles from the site of Longfellow. The proposal had both fiscal and desegregative merit, for Twain was operating at less than its stated capacity, and it had only a 2% minority population. The Board refused, however, stating that the distance the students would have to travel to reach Twain would be too great and that Longfellow students' parents would not have the ability to carpool their children or pay for the necessary transportation. In fact, however, many students already within the Twain attendance zone were required to travel some 2 1/2 miles to school, and a one-way distance of some four miles had not deterred the Board from reassigning some Burroughs students to Whitman. Further, though the Board had arranged transportation several times in other circumstances, it made no effort to explore this possibility with respect to the proposed reassignment of Longfellow students to Twain. Finally, the net cost of providing transportation for reassigned Longfellow students would have been relatively low, both because the Board could have saved some $500,000 per year in operating and faculty costs by closing Longfellow, and because under New York law the state would have provided 90% reimbursement for transportation expenses incurred for purposes of school desegregation. 120 In sum, from the late 1960's, the Board rejected proposal after proposal for the reassignment of more white students to Longfellow or of Longfellow minority students to schools with lower percentages of minorities. It declined to desegregate Longfellow on the ground that the school might be closed; but Longfellow was not closed, even in 1976 when the City's well publicized fiscal crisis required the Board to close several schools. At the time this suit was commenced, Longfellow remained in inferior physical facilities, operated at 31-40% of its capacity, and had a minority population of 94%.
121 In 1973, in conjunction with the closing of the High School of Commerce, located in Southwest Yonkers a few blocks from the downtown area, the Board opened a new Commerce Middle School (Commerce Middle). Its student body consisted of junior high school students who theretofore had attended Gorton, a combined junior and senior high school located in the southern part of Northwest Yonkers. The initial enrollment in Commerce Middle was 53% minority. 122 Prior to deciding on Commerce Middle's attendance zone, the Board had been presented with a number of proposals that would have avoided this creation of yet another predominantly minority school in Southwest Yonkers. These proposals principally involved Emerson, a combined elementary and middle school in Northwest Yonkers located about 1 1/2 miles north of Gorton. Emerson then had a middle school minority population of 8%. One proposal was to assign to Commerce Middle the middle school students from Emerson who lived in the southernmost part of the Emerson attendance zone. There was strong opposition from white residents, however, to any relocation of white students to form an integrated Commerce Middle, opposition that the Board perceived as grounded principally in racial concerns. The Board was also well aware that transferring Gorton students to the proposed new Commerce Middle without reassigning students from any other school would have a distinctly segregative effect: memoranda assessing this alternative noted, Commerce may become an all-black school; Commerce could be all black; Commerce becoming basically a black school; Racial Distribution--all black. It decided to assign to Commerce Middle no students other than those from Gorton. 123 It also rejected proposals to reassign the Gorton junior high school students--41% minority--to Emerson instead of to Commerce Middle, a course that apparently was both feasible in terms of Emerson's capacity and consistent with repeated proposals from school officials and community members to convert Emerson from a combined elementary and middle school to an exclusively middle school. The Board declined to reassign Gorton students to Emerson, on the ground that tensions would be created, apparently a reference to racial concerns, for in 1973, one-third of the Emerson's middle school minority students were transferred to Burroughs 124 in response to race-related concerns of the Emerson community regarding the presence of minority students at the school. According to [school administration officials], this transfer was effectuated for the purpose of insuring the safety of minority students who had been enrolled at the school in light of altercations which had occurred between students at the school and the Emerson community's opposition to the attendance of minority students at Emerson. 125 624 F.Supp. at 1481. 126 After opening Commerce Middle as a 53% minority school in 1973, instead of expanding Commerce Middle's attendance zone northward to draw in any predominantly white neighborhoods, the Board redrew the zone boundary farther south, thereby reassigning to Commerce Middle students from Longfellow and another predominantly minority school. Commerce Middle's minority population thus increased to 70% in 1974 and to 77% in 1975. In 1976, the school was closed as part of the Board's response to the City's fiscal crisis.
127 Other Board decisions challenged by plaintiffs included the early rezoning and 1954 closing of School 1 in Runyon Heights, the 1969 opening of the Martin Luther King, Jr., School in Southwest Yonkers, and the fiscal-crisis-related closings of several schools in 1976. 128 School 1 was located in Runyon Heights, the predominantly black community in East Yonkers. For a time in the 1930's it was attended by students from the Homefield section immediately to the north as well as by students from other largely white neighboring areas; white students then made up one-half to two-thirds of its student population. In 1938, however, the Board redrew the School 1 zone to correspond more precisely with the boundaries of Runyon Heights. Students from Homefield were reassigned to School 22, increasing the distance of their trip but sending them to a virtually all-white school; students south of Runyon Heights were sent to the then-virtually all-white School 5. By 1950, School 1 was 91% minority; at the time of its closing in 1954, it was 99% minority. 129 As a result of the 1938 rezoning, described by the court as deliberate, racially motivated gerrymandering, done in a manner which carefully incorporated privately created residential segregation, 624 F.Supp. at 1411, the School 1 zone was the smallest in the City, and the school operated at less than 42% of its capacity. Meanwhile, two nearby virtually all-white schools, Schools 8 and 22, became overcrowded. Runyon Heights community members sought to have the Board expand the School 1 boundaries in order to draw in students from the surrounding areas, thereby decreasing its underutilization, relieving the surrounding schools' overcrowding, and having a desegregative effect on School 1. Instead, in 1954 the Board decided to close School 1 and send its students to Schools 5 and 24, which had a desegregative effect on those schools. None of the Runyon Heights students were sent to School 22, which remained virtually 100% white, thereby preserv[ing] an all-white school experience for Homefield students, consistent with the Board's deliberately segregative attendance zone boundary changes of prior years. 624 F.Supp. at 1413. 130 With respect to the Martin Luther King, Jr., School (King), the court found that the initial hope of the Board was, unlike its segregative intent in rezoning School 1, that the opening of King would serve as a significant step toward correcting racial imbalance in the schools of Southwest Yonkers. King was opened in 1969 for grades 4-6 with students reassigned from Schools 6 and 12, both of which were overcrowded and predominantly minority. The population of King at this point was 57% minority. The following year, in accordance with the Board's original plan, students from the predominantly white School 9 were added, thereby decreasing the minority population of King to 49%. 131 The assignment of children who had attended School 9 prompted a December 1970 petition signed by 434 of their parents to have the Board restore the prior attendance zones. The Board held fast for a year and then relented. In the interim, white students from the School 9 area began to withdraw from King, apparently either relocating or entering private schools, reducing the number of white students at King from 392 in 1970-71 to 224 in 1971-72. 132 In 1972, School 9 was eliminated as a King feeder school, and third-graders who would otherwise have gone on to King for fourth grade remained at School 9. Some 60% of this group were white. In 1973, King was converted from a grade 4-6 school to a K-5 school; its students came from the predominantly minority areas previously served by Schools 6 and 12, but not the predominantly white areas of School 9. King's minority enrollment rose from 49% in 1970, to 70% in 1971, to 78% in 1972, to 87% in 1973. By the time of this lawsuit, it had a minority student population of 98%. 133 Although the district court viewed the consequences of some of the Board's decisions with regard to King as foreseeably segregative, 624 F.Supp. at 1402, it was unpersuaded, in light of the surrounding circumstances and the Board's initial desegregative intent, that the later decisions of themselves bespoke a segregative intent. 134 The court explored Board decisions with respect to opening and closing other schools, including those closed in 1976 in response to the City's fiscal crisis. Most of these decisions had some segregative and some desegregative effects and the court was unpersuaded that the decisions themselves demonstrated a Board intent to preserve segregation. Rather, the court concluded that a major indicator of segregative intent was the Board's failure to adopt any proposal or plan to alleviate the segregated patterns its prior actions had achieved. 135