Opinion ID: 427620
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Later Appeals

Text: 43 The Board also raises several points in the two later appeals concerning details of implementation and administration of the court's plan. First, we find no abuse of the lower court's discretion in its decision to desegregate all-black Scotlandville Middle School by ordering transfers of white students from Baker and Northwestern Middle Schools. The district court acceded to the Board's request to return to multi-grade middle schools; it rejected the Board's proposed language magnet program for Scotlandville, however, choosing instead to desegregate Scotlandville by mandatory student transfers. 12 The fact that these transfers led to an unbalance in the racial percentages among Scotlandville, Baker, and Northwestern is of little importance in light of the need to desegregate all three schools effectively. 44 The Board also urges us to reverse the lower court's imposition of racial quotas at Scotlandville Middle School and Baton Rouge High Magnet School (BRHMS). The district court almost immediately amended its order imposing the 60%-40% quota at Scotlandville to apply only during the 1982-1983 school year. It is therefore now moot. Other aspects of the court's method of desegregating Scotlandville, such as the requirement that the Board continue to monitor the racial balance at the school and propose corrective measures should it become skewed, were entirely within its discretion given the peculiar difficulty of desegregating the school. 45 The admission quotas at Baton Rouge High Magnet School present quite a different problem. 13 BRHMS has been a magnet school since 1972, and remained so under the district court's plan. Shortly after that plan was announced, the Board responded to a court order and submitted in writing its policy governing admissions to magnet schools. Under the policy, the Board would select applicants, both to its magnet middle and its magnet high schools, from two separate lists: one of white students and one of black students. The Board would fill seats from the separate lists to allow a racial balance at each school of 60% white students and 40% black students. If by April 1 of each year, however, the seats at a magnet school reserved for a particular race had not been filled, they would be opened to students of the other race. The district court approved this admission policy. Several months later, the Board sought clarification of its policy; all spaces at BRHMS allotted to white applicants had been filled, and it asked permission to admit other gifted and talented applicants, presumably white, to the school. The court denied the request, noting among other things that almost all students who are certified as 'gifted and talented' are white and that the number of gifted and talented certifications had inexplicably doubled for the 1981-1982 school year. A year later, the court responded to confusion over the attendance zones of the two magnet high schools--another had been created at Scotlandville High--by modifying the Board's magnet school admissions policy to eliminate that portion of the policy which permits white student applicants to be admitted in any proportion greater than 60% of the total enrollment. The Board now challenges the policy, as modified. 46 Swann disapproves the use of fixed mathematical racial balance[s], for the Constitution does not guarantee that every school will reflect the racial composition of the system as a whole. 402 U.S. at 23-24, 91 S.Ct. at 1280. But the application of a minority quota to EBRP's magnet schools is not designed to achieve a racial balance in every school. Instead, it is designed to assure to the greatest extent possible that these voluntary attendance schools not work to undermine the progress of desegregation in the parish. In this way, the Board's valued use of magnet schools is preserved. The First Circuit has specifically approved application of a racial quota in admissions to magnet schools to ensure that they would not serve as a haven for those seeking to attend a school predominantly composed of those of their own race. Morgan v. Kerrigan, 530 F.2d 401, 423 (1st Cir.1976). We agree. 47 The remaining issues raised by the Board in the later appeals call for no detailed treatment. For the most part, they either represent mere squabbles, such as fixing the blame for white flight, or raise matters not properly before us, such as the Government's new Rossell Plan. 14 As an appellate court, we must decline to become enmeshed in the many administrative details necessarily encountered in the continuing process of reevaluating and implementing a desegregation plan as thorough as that imposed in this case. From the beginning, appellate courts considering school-desegregation cases have relied heavily on their counterparts at the district level who enjoy far greater familiarity with local conditions and needs. Milliken II, 433 U.S. at 287 n. 18, 97 S.Ct. at 2760 n. 18; Brown II, 349 U.S. at 299-301, 75 S.Ct. at 756. The district judge in this case is now intimately and quite appropriately involved in the desegregation of the East Baton Rouge Parish public schools. Proposals for specific or far-reaching changes will no doubt find a willing ear and be ably considered if addressed to the district court. We can only encourage the parties to cooperate with each other and with the court toward the goal that all know must eventually be achieved--a unitary school system in the parish.