Opinion ID: 500653
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Racial Composition of Each School's Student Population

Text: 75 As of the 1980-81 school year, Yonkers had 23 elementary schools for grades K-5 or K-6; four middle schools for grades 6-8 or 7-8; two combined elementary and middle schools; four general academic high schools; and one vocational high school. In a number of these schools, special education classes were conducted for students with learning disabilities or emotional disturbances.
76 In 1980, the student enrollment in Yonkers public schools was approximately 37% minority. The percentage of minority enrollment had approximately doubled from 1970 to 1980, due in part to an increase in minority enrollment and in greater part to a decline in white enrollment: Yonkers Public School Student Population 77 White % White Minority % Minority 1967 .... 28,875 85 4,421 15 1970 .... 25,049 82 5,583 18 1975 .... 21,514 72 8,195 28 1980 .... 13,840 63 8,023 37 78 In 1980, only two of Yonkers's schools, one an elementary school located in Southwest and the other a middle school in Northwest, had student populations whose racial compositions approximated that of the system as a whole. The next most balanced schools had student populations that were, respectively, 21%, 45%, and 47% minority. The great majority of the schools were either disproportionately white or disproportionately minority. 79 At the elementary level, although 61% of the students were white, in 19 of Yonkers's 25 elementary schools the student populations were either more than 80% white or more than 80% minority. Some 85% of Yonkers's minority elementary school students attended nine schools in Southwest Yonkers. In addition, one elementary school in Northwest Yonkers had an 88% minority population. These 10 schools enrolled 92% of all of Yonkers's minority elementary school students. More than 55% of Yonkers's minority elementary school students attended just five Southwest schools, whose minority populations were 75%, 81%, 90%, 98%, and 98%. 80 Sixteen elementary schools were located outside of Southwest Yonkers. Of these, 14 had student populations that were at least 90% white; more than 70% of Yonkers's white elementary school students attended these 90%-white schools. Of the 11 elementary schools in East Yonkers, only one had a minority student population of more than 7%. 81 In Yonkers's middle schools, 62% of the students were white. Two of the six middle schools were located in East Yonkers and together enrolled only 62 minority students, or 5% of Yonkers's total middle school minority population; these two schools were, respectively, 94% and 96% white. Three middle schools were located in Southwest Yonkers and had minority student populations of 62%, 69%, and 94%. Nearly 80% of Yonkers's middle school minority students attended the three Southwest schools. Another 15% attended a middle school in Northwest. 82 About 70% of the students attending Yonkers public high schools, including the vocational high school (see Part A.II.A.3. below), were white. Of the four academic high schools, two were located in East Yonkers, one in Southwest, and one in Northwest. The two located in East Yonkers had student populations that were 91% and 98% white. The high school in Southwest had a student body that was 62% minority; it enrolled nearly two-thirds of all Yonkers minority students attending academic high schools.
83 The Yonkers special education program provided special classes for students with mental or physical handicaps, including those with learning disabilities or emotional disturbances. Beginning in the 1960's, there was a growing and disproportionate number of minority students in special education classes. These classes, especially those for the emotionally disturbed, were viewed by many teachers, school officials, and community members as a dumping ground for black children. In general, white children would be placed in a special class only after having been referred first to a school psychologist for an evaluation, then to the principal for review of that evaluation, then to the school district's special education screening committee on the handicapped for a final decision as to what type, if any, special program was appropriate. A black child whose teacher considered him or her disruptive, however, would often (for the sake of discipline) be consigned immediately by the teacher and the principal to a class for the emotionally disturbed, without prior reference to a psychologist and with no effort to determine whether other options might meet the child's needs. 84 As a result, in 1961, when regular classes in Yonkers elementary schools had a system-wide minority population of 10%, minorities made up 22% of the special education classes. By the 1971-72 school year, when the system-wide minority population was 20%, the minority children made up 40% of all special education classes and more than 70% of the classes for those with emotional disturbances. 85 Location of the special education classes did not follow the Board's usual neighborhood-school policy; rather, these classes were placed in schools that had space available to accommodate them. Since most of the schools with high minority populations tended to be more crowded, most of the available space was found in schools having virtually all-white student populations. The principals of many of the latter schools resisted the placement of special education classes in their schools for reasons that, in the opinion of a former director of the program, were race-related. Nonetheless, most of the special education classes were placed in schools having few other minority students. In 1972, for example, classes for some 78% of the children classified as emotionally disturbed were conducted in schools whose regular student populations were at least 97% white. Three-quarters of the students in these special classes were minorities. 86 In most of the schools, there was no mainstreaming of the special education classes into the general school population. Because special education assignments were made without regard to residence, the students were often bused long distances, often well over an hour's trip, and sometimes up to two hours, in each direction. Thus they arrived at school later than the regular students and departed earlier. In some instances they entered the school through separate entrances and were kept in classrooms located in secluded areas of the school. In one school, for example, they had to file down two flights below ground and pass through a boiler room to reach their classroom in the subbasement. Special education students also generally took their lunch, gym classes, and recesses separately from the regular students. To the extent that school officials allowed contact between the two groups, the interaction was often purposely negative. One witness who had been a regular student at a 98%-white elementary school in the late 1960's recalled her perception that all special education students were black and that they were held up to the regular students as examples of poor, bad behavior. Thus the special education students were perceived as different and bad. Another witness, a parent and PTA president, testified that her children had thought the words retard and nigger were interchangeable because the children's only knowledge of blacks was of special education students bused into their school. 87 Nor was the negative reaction to special education students limited to the school's other students. One of the special education teachers and coordinators testified that parents and community members had thrown rocks at her car and shouted Take your niggers and get out. 88 In 1972, the Board hired Dr. Gary Carman, a special education expert, to direct the program. At trial, he testified that Yonkers, by busing its special education students long distances and physically segregating them from the regular student population, had the most inhumane program for handicapped children [he] had ever seen anywhere. Dr. Carman knew of no causes, medical causes, social causes, biological causes that could possibly account for the disproportionate number of minorities placed in the classes for the emotionally disturbed. The disproportionate referral of minority students to special education classes eventually prompted an investigation by state and federal education officials. The conclusion of the United States Department of Education was that the Yonkers special education program subjected minority students to discrimination and violated their civil rights. 89 From 1972 to 1975, Dr. Carman attempted to improve the special education program by reducing the amount of busing, returning some special education students to regular classes, to an extent mainstreaming the special education students into the general school population, and reducing the incidence of virtually all-minority special classes in virtually all-white schools. After Dr. Carman left in 1975, however, these efforts lapsed and the system reverted to one of long-distance busing and placement of blocs of minority special education students in virtually all-white schools. Dr. Carman testified that where the total experience of white children with blacks was their exposure to those in special education classes, the white children would view the special education children as less worthy and could well generalize that to all blacks.
90 Prior to 1974, Yonkers had two specialized vocational high schools, Saunders Trade and Technical High School (Saunders), and the High School of Commerce (Commerce). Saunders offered technical courses such as auto mechanics, carpentry, and electricity; Commerce, which was closed in 1974, offered courses such as stenography, bookkeeping, cosmetology, food trades, and dressmaking. Both schools were located in Southwest Yonkers. Neither was subject to the Board's neighborhood policy and each accepted students from anywhere in the City. 91 Although precise statistics with regard to vocational school enrollment by race are not available for years prior to 1967, the trial testimony indicated that, prior to 1958, Saunders had a large minority enrollment. From the 1930's until approximately 1958, it had a reputation as a school for problem kids or for academically retarded pupils, or as a dumping ground for minority students. Many black students from Runyon Heights attended Saunders or Commerce instead of Roosevelt, the school nearest their homes, often encouraged by their guidance counselor to do so even if they wanted an academic program. Similar steering usually did not occur with respect to academically undistinguished white students. 92 In 1958, the Board decided to establish entrance requirements for Saunders and Commerce based on grades, achievement and aptitude test scores, recommendations, and discipline records. The criteria for admission were not precise, however, and final decisions lay within the discretion of the respective principals. Apparently these entrance requirements had the effect of changing the community's perception of the schools as inferior, and by the early 1970's, Saunders, whose capacity was roughly one-half that of the smallest academic high school, was receiving nearly twice as many applications as it could accept. 93 At the same time, Saunders's minority enrollment was decreasing substantially, due in part to the heightened entrance requirements, the acknowledged inferiority of the educational programs available in Southwest Yonkers schools, the subjectivity of the school officials' evaluation of the applicants' credentials, and the absence of any effort on the part of the Board to see that minority students, most of whom attended schools in Southwest Yonkers, had an equal opportunity to get into Saunders. Robert Alioto, the school system's superintendent from 1971 to 1975, and other school district officials believed that Saunders's selection process  'appeared to systematically exclude minority youngsters.'  624 F.Supp. at 1450. The Board, though aware of the systematic exclusion of minorities which resulted from the Saunders admissions process, did relatively little until the late 1970's to eliminate the discriminatory impact of the methods by which students were chosen. Id. at 1452. 94