Opinion ID: 1186887
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Community Involvement

Text: (9) We next consider whether the Board allowed sufficient opportunity for informed community involvement in the process of determining the existence of segregation within the District and in selecting a desegregation strategy. Crawford plainly recognized the need for community participation: In the absence of an easy, uniform solution to the desegregation problem, plans developed and implemented by local school boards, working with community leaders and affected citizens, hold the most promising hope for the attainment of integrated public schools in our state. ( Crawford, supra, at p. 286.) The BOE Regulations expressly require such participation: Governing boards shall involve parents, teachers, students and other community representatives in all stages of identifying the need for a plan under Section 93 and in the development and implementation of such plans under Section 94. (Cal. Admin. Code, tit. 5, § 96.) The Guidelines recommend techniques for achieving public input: The board should seriously consider the form in which community participation may most effectively be utilized. This should include the establishment of a special advisory committee at the district, area, or school site levels. When such committees are established, the board should take care to make certain that it is composed of parents, teachers, administrators, students, and other community representatives and is composed of a substantial percentage of minority group persons. (Guidelines, op. cit. supra, ch. 5, p. 7.)
At the April 30, 1979, meeting of the advisory committee, the District presented four staff-prepared desegregation proposals, none of which would have affected Camarillo High School. These four proposals suggested desegregation techniques ranging from compulsory busing to open enrollment to changes in boundary lines of student attendance zones. The committee voted to recommend proposal III, which called for boundary-line changes to decrease minority enrollment at Channel Islands and Oxnard High Schools. Minority enrollment at Hueneme and Rio Mesa High Schools was to be increased. When the committee presented its recommendation to the Board at its May 9th meeting, [t]here was extensive discussion on the boundary line changes as recommended by the Committee. (Official minutes of the May 9, 1979, meeting of the Oxnard Union High School District Board of Trustees.) The Board decided to schedule another advisory committee meeting to provide interested people ample time to develop alternative plans and discuss [them] with Committee Members. ( Ibid. ) On May 16, Mr. W. McKinney [ sic ] presented three new proposals [to the committee] ... Proposal 5 would return the high school district to status quo indicating that there is no imbalance; Proposal 6 involves busing equal numbers of freshmen between Camarillo and Channel Islands high schools; Proposal 7 involves [extensive reassignment and busing of students among Camarillo, Channel Islands, and Rio Mesa High Schools].... A half hour was devoted to input from the audience with a wide variety of ideas and opinions from the public addressing this matter. (Minutes of the May 16, 1979, Meeting of the Advisory Committee to Consider Racial & Ethnic Balance in the District.) The committee voted to reject the three alternative proposals and to reaffirm its selection of proposal III. The Board again considered the advisory committee's recommendations at its next meeting, on May 23. After extensive discussion of this matter by interested persons, staff, and the Board, the Board adopted proposal III. (Official minutes of the May 23, 1979, Meeting of the Oxnard Union High School Board of Trustees.) The Board reviewed and reaffirmed its decision at a public hearing on June 26. Despite this record, plaintiffs claim that the Board did not allow enough public involvement in the development of its desegregation plan. This contention is without merit. Although the District's staff prepared the four original proposals without input from the public, the citizens' advisory committee members had an opportunity to and actually did develop three alternative proposals. That none of those alternative proposals was ultimately adopted by the Board is of no moment. What is significant is that the advisory committee and the Board were presented with a fair range of proposals supported by accurate, objectively developed data. Because of the diverse composition of the advisory committee, a range of community views was expressed each time it met. Additionally, members of the public expressed their views directly to the committee and to the Board on numerous occasions. The facts therefore demonstrate ample community participation in the desegregation process.
(10) Before holding the public hearing of June 26, 1979, the District published a notice thereof in local newspapers and mailed a notice to the parents of all high school students in the District. Two of the plaintiffs are parents of children who were attending eighth grade at the time of the hearing, but were planning to attend District high schools the following fall. These parents assert that due process principles and the BOE Regulations require that notice of a hearing on a proposed desegregation plan be sent to all interested community members. Since they did not receive notice of the hearing, they argue, we must overturn the District's desegregation plan. With respect to the contention that plaintiffs possess a procedural due process right to notice by mail of such hearings, we note that a local school board's adoption of a desegregation plan is undeniably a quasi-legislative function. Because it affects the community within the District's boundaries in a generalized manner it is much like adoption of a general zoning ordinance, which we recently classified as a quasi-legislative action: [I]t is black letter constitutional law that due process requires `notice and hearing' only in quasi-judicial or adjudicatory settings and not with respect to the adoption of general legislation.... [T]he decisions applying the due process requirements of notice and hearing have all involved governmental decisionmaking in an adjudicative setting, in which the government's action affecting an individual was determined by facts peculiar to the individual case; the present matter, by contrast, involves the adoption of a broad, generally applicable, legislative rule. (Fn. omitted.) ( San Diego Bldg. Contractors Assn. v. City Council (1974) 13 Cal.3d 205, 211, 212 [118 Cal. Rptr. 146, 529 P.2d 570, 72 A.L.R.3d 973]; see generally Strumsky v. San Diego County Employees Retirement Assn. (1974) 11 Cal.3d 28, 35, fn. 2 [112 Cal. Rptr. 805, 520 P.2d 29].) In Horn v. County of Ventura (1979) supra, 24 Cal.3d 605, we classified approval of a tentative subdivision map as an adjudicatory function, noting however that only those governmental decisions which are adjudicative in nature are subject to procedural due process principles. Legislative action is not burdened by such requirements. [Citations.] ( Id. at p. 612.) Any requirement of notice on these facts, therefore, must derive exclusively from the BOE Regulations. Section 98, subdivision (a), of the Regulations provides: Each governing board shall conduct a public hearing ... at a time and place accessible to the community at which time parents and other interested persons may submit comments. The board shall at least 30 days in advance of the hearing publish a notice in a newspaper of general circulation in the district and shall, in addition, notify parents of all students enrolled in the district in the method commonly used to communicate with parents and in the primary language of the student. (Italics added.) Whether the Regulations require notice to parents of incoming ninth-graders turns on the interpretation of the word enrolled. Plaintiffs suggest that the purpose of the notice requirement is to assure that all interested students and their parents are informed of the public hearing. Therefore, they reason, incoming ninth-graders  most of whom had preregistered with District high schools at the time this suit was filed  should be deemed enrolled for purposes of section 98, subdivision (a). Certainly it would have been advisable for the Board to have notified parents of eighth grade students who would enter high school the following term. The Board now concedes in hindsight it should have done so. Our problem is whether this oversight must invalidate all of the Board proceedings when the good faith of the Board has been unquestioned. The class of students affected by proposal III includes, ultimately and in a broad sense, all kindergarten, elementary school, and junior high school students attending schools that feed into District high schools. It also includes the students attending District high schools at the time the plan is implemented; although they are not required to attend different schools, the plan  if successful  will alter their educational environment. It would be an onerous burden on school districts if we were to require that personal notice be sent to the parents of all these affected students. Moreover, as we have noted, the scope of notice required is not to be defined by reference to the rights of individual students and their parents, but rather by reference to the purpose of the notice requirement of section 98, subdivision (a). We believe that purpose to be to allow expression of a wide range of community views so that the Board will develop the most effective desegregation plan possible and so that the community, having had an opportunity to participate in the desegregation process, will understand and generally support the Board's choice of a remedial plan. Here, personal notice was sent to the parents of all students then attending District high schools. Notice was also published in local newspapers of general circulation. The desegregation process was discussed at numerous public meetings of the advisory committee and of the Board. Because it appears that the District notified an adequately broad range of interested community members so that the purposes of the notice requirement were likely to be achieved, we conclude that the District substantially complied with the requirements of section 98, subdivision (a).
(11) Plaintiffs next contend that the notice which the Board published and mailed to parents failed to adequately specify the criteria relied upon by the Board in making its segregation determinations. They argue that this deficiency in the content of the notice prevented the public from being able to discern the bases of the Board's decisions and that the community was consequently unable to intelligently review the Board's actions. This contention is based on section 98, subdivision (b)(1), which states: The published notice and the notice to parents shall include: (1) The names of the schools in which, in the preliminary judgment of the governing board, there exists racial or ethnic segregation of minority students, the criteria used by the board in making such determination, the names of the schools in which, in the preliminary judgment of the governing board, racial or ethnic segregation of minority students does not exist, and the criteria used by the board in making such determination.... The Board drafted a notice which summarized the desegregation policy of the BOE, described the function of the advisory committee and listed its recommendations, enumerated the five criteria which the Board and the advisory committee employed in deciding which schools were segregated, and summarized the terms of proposal III. By this notice, interested community members were sufficiently informed of the Board's decisions and the bases therefor so that they were able to meaningfully scrutinize the decisions. Community members had an opportunity to obtain further information and express their views at a public hearing held before the Board's decision became final; there is no indication that a more detailed notice would have materially increased the quality or quantity of public input. The content of the notice was therefore specific enough to satisfy the requirements of section 98, subdivision (b)(1). The judgment is affirmed.