Opinion ID: 354094
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Highland Park Independent School District

Text: 12 After the prior panel remanded this case to the district court, the plaintiffs joined seven independent suburban school districts in the Dallas area as defendants. 16 The plaintiffs alleged that these school districts retained vestiges of dual school systems and that they joined with the DISD in utilizing a student transfer procedure that aided the DISD in maintaining segregated schools. On the basis of this allegedly unlawful procedure, the plaintiffs sought to have the suburban school districts included in the DISD desegregation plan. 13 The plaintiffs moved for the voluntary dismissal of all but one of the suburban school districts, and the district court dismissed them without prejudice. The remaining school district, Highland Park Independent School District, was dismissed with prejudice by the district court after an evidentiary hearing. Tasby v. Estes, 412 F.Supp. 1185 (N.D.Tex.1975). 14 The Highland Park Independent School District was created in 1914. It generally serves as the school district for the cities of Highland Park and University Park, although its boundaries are not coterminous with those of the cities. At the time of its inception, the Highland Park school system was outside the city limits of Dallas; now, the city of Dallas completely surrounds Highland Park and University Park. The school system is comprised of six schools, 17 and the current enrollment has stabilized at approximately 4,600 students, all of whom are Anglo. The DISD has approximately thirty times more students than the Highland Park system. 15 Prior to 1958, the Highland Park System conformed with Texas law and segregated school children by race. 18 In order to accomplish this, the few black school children residing within the school district were transported to the DISD, with their tuition being paid by the Highland Park school system. 19 Some Anglo students were allowed to transfer into the Highland Park system until 1971, primarily because either they resided in the cities of Highland Park or University Park or they had moved out of the school district and were being allowed to continue their education in the system. 412 F.Supp. at 1190-91. 16 The district court found that the Highland Park Independent School District has not maintained a policy of school segregation since 1958. This finding is supported by the record and, as it is not clearly erroneous, is accepted by this court. Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a). Given this twenty year history of nondiscrimination and the negligible effect that the system's prior policy of segregation had on the DISD or its own system, we find that the district court did not err in refusing to include the Highland Park Independent School District in the student assignment plan for the DISD. See Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 433 U.S. 406, 97 S.Ct. 2766, 2775-76, 53 L.Ed.2d 851 (1977); Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069 (1974). 17