Opinion ID: 427620
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Court's Plan

Text: 35 Presented with an inadequate plan by the Board, the district court was responsible to use its broad and flexible equitable powers to implement a remedy that, while sensitive to the burdens that can result from a decree and the practical limitations involved, promises 'realistically to work now.'  United States v. DeSoto Parish School Board, 574 F.2d 804, 811 (5th Cir.1978) (quoting Green, 391 U.S. at 439, 88 S.Ct. at 1694)). Its remedy must restore the victims of discriminatory conduct to the position they would have enjoyed ... in a school system free from pervasive de jure segregation. Milliken II, 433 U.S. at 282, 97 S.Ct. at 2758. This the court did admirably. 36 The Board's major challenge to the remedy originally imposed by the district court is that its own plan was not accepted. Having rejected that argument, we find the Board's remaining objections rooted primarily in its fear that implementation of the court's more thorough plan would drive white students from the system. That fear may be well-founded; counsel for the Board informed us at oral argument that the system has lost some 7,000 students--mostly elementary students--in the two years since the court's plan has been in effect. The latest information available to the court, submitted in October 1983, indicates that the system's student population is now roughly 50% white and 50% black. 37 As we have noted, fear that white students will flee the system is no justification for shrinking from the constitutional duty to desegregate the parish schools. Scotland Neck, 407 U.S. at 491, 92 S.Ct. at 2218; Ross, 699 F.2d at 226; Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, 465 F.2d 369 (5th Cir.1972). Our courts have long held that the process begun by Brown I will not be delayed to accommodate those who oppose the dismantling of dual school systems. See Morgan v. Kerrigan, 530 F.2d 401, 420 (1st Cir.1976), cert. denied, 426 U.S. 935, 96 S.Ct. 2648, 49 L.Ed.2d 386 (1977). The Board has submitted no adequate time-and-distance studies to show that the student transfers contemplated by the court's plan are unduly burdensome, see Ross, 699 F.2d at 226; Tasby v. Estes, 572 F.2d 1010, 1014 (5th Cir.1978) (Tasby II ), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 437, 100 S.Ct. 716, 62 L.Ed.2d 626 (1980) (such studies crucial in assessing feasibility of Swann techniques for further desegregation), nor has it even come forward with facts demonstrating a correlation between the distance a student must travel under the plan and the likelihood that the student will transfer from that system. Indeed, counsel for the Board conceded at oral argument that the primary reason for students leaving the system is not the distance they are assigned to travel but where they're going to wind up and where they're having to leave from. To accommodate their concern by delaying desegregation would be to ignore our responsibility under Brown I, Green, and Swann. Further use of special programs designed to make the desegregated schools more attractive to students and parents and thereby minimize white flight is entirely appropriate, as long as the cause of desegregation is not frustrated. See Stout v. Jefferson County Board of Education, 537 F.2d 800 (5th Cir.1976) (court may chose among permissible plans the one likely to minimize white flight). So too are methods of oversight, such as this district court's 1982 effort to determine the extent to which EBRP students had transferred inappropriately to schools in neighboring parishes. White flight must be met with creativity, not with a delay in desegregation. 38 The Board also challenges what it perceives as the district court's inappropriate effort to achieve in each parish school a racial balance roughly approximating that in the system as a whole. The remedial power of the federal courts may be exercised only on the basis of a constitutional violation and is defined by the nature and scope of the condition that offends the Constitution. Swann, 402 U.S. at 15-16, 91 S.Ct. at 1276; Milliken I, 418 U.S. at 737-38, 94 S.Ct. at 3123-24. The district court found, and we agree, that the substantial racial segregation prevailing in EBRP's public schools even as late as 1980 was a vestige of the statutory dual system maintained over the decades since Brown I by the Board's classic pattern of building schools specifically intended for Negro or white students. Swann, 402 U.S. at 20, 91 S.Ct. at 1278. The Board having failed to show that any of the one-race schools were not the result of present or past discrimination, id. at 26, 91 S.Ct. at 1281, the district court was obliged to apply its broad remedial powers to expunge from the public schools all vestiges of unlawful segregation. Valley v. Rapides Parish School Board, 702 F.2d 1221, 1225 (5th Cir.1983) (Valley II ). 39 The resulting desegregation plan was not designed to achieve in every school the precise racial mix prevailing throughout the system. The district court recognized that it was bound to consider the system as a whole, and expressly rejected the proposition that it is necessary to define to the fractional percentage point an acceptable range of racial mix in any particular school. 514 F.Supp. at 873. The court understood that, if necessary, a few racially homogeneous schools may remain; indeed, finding no reasonable alternative, it felt constrained to allow eleven elementary schools and two secondary schools to remain entirely or substantially one-race. A review of the plan, particularly its anticipated results, id. at 883-84; R. 2323 (middle school modification), reveals that the use made of mathematical ratios was no more than a starting point in the process of shaping a remedy. Swann, 402 U.S. at 25, 91 S.Ct. at 1280. We surely cannot fault the lower court, in the absence of an adequate proposal by the Board, for considering the system's overall racial balance a useful starting point in shaping its remedy. Id.; North Carolina State Board of Education v. Swann, 402 U.S. 43, 46, 91 S.Ct. 1284, 1286, 28 L.Ed.2d 586 (1971). 40 Plaintiff-intervenors, particularly the NAACP, contend that the court's plan does not go far enough. 11 Their major complaint is that desegregation of the eleven elementary schools and two high schools that remain essentially one-race under the plan can be accomplished without transferring students unreasonably long distances or over unreasonably dangerous routes. They also argue that the plan places on black students the major burden of the desegregation effort. 41 Each time the district court determined that a particular school must remain one-race, it supported that decision with careful findings explaining the circumstances, typically the racial isolation of the school, that required the school's exclusion from the plan. See 514 F.Supp. at 877-82. It also carefully explained its decision each time it ordered a school closed. See id. at 876-77. Certain conclusions made by the district court seem odd from this distance; it chose to close Scotlandville High School, for example, while allowing nearby Scotlandville Middle School to remain open. But the record is far from adequate to base a determination that the lower court abused its broad equity powers in any of its decisions. See Milliken II, 433 U.S. at 288, 97 S.Ct. at 2761; Tasby III, 713 F.2d at 97; Valley II, 702 F.2d at 1225. We also must reject the claim that the court's plan places the burden of desegregation disproportionately on black students. See Valley II, 702 F.2d at 1228. Although it does appear that the district court found it necessary to close more formerly all-black schools than formerly all-white schools, 514 F.Supp. at 875-76, 880, 881, we cannot on this record find the abuse of discretion necessary to reverse. 42 The procedure followed in the district court produced the court's plan full-grown, however, and the parties had little opportunity to test the facts on which certain of the court's discretionary decisions were based. The NAACP argues before us, for example, that neither Capital nor Scotlandville High School are in fact racially isolated. Our review of the record reveals a district judge entirely willing to reconsider aspects of the plan alleged and shown to be flawed. Indeed, when told by the Board that it found the single- and double-grade middle school centers educationally unsound, Judge Parker requested an alternative plan and, when one was presented that could be modified to achieve the same level of desegregation with multi-grade middle schools, scrapped the original version and embraced the alternative. We assume that the district court will be equally receptive to plaintiff-intervenor's contentions, consideration of which is within the continuing jurisdiction of that court.