Opinion ID: 500653
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the liability of the board and the city for segregation in the schools

Text: 260 Each of the defendants contends that the district court erred in holding it responsible for the segregated state of the Yonkers public schools. In essence, each seeks to place the responsibility on the other, the Board contending that it simply adhered to a neighborhood-school policy and cannot be held liable because any segregation in the schools is the result of segregated residential patterns for which it is not responsible, and the City contending that all responsibility for school configurations rests on the Board and that the court could not properly take into account the mayor's filling the Board with persons devoted to preserving the racial imbalance in the schools. Each defendant challenges the district court's findings that it took, or failed to take, certain actions with segregative intent. We conclude that the evidence supports each of the district court's findings, as well as its conclusion that both the Board and the City are liable for school segregation.
261 Preliminarily, the Board contends that the district court erred in defining minorities to include hispanics as well as blacks, and argues that if only blacks had been considered, the court would not have found that the Yonkers public schools were in fact segregated. This contention need not detain us long. 262 The census data for the earliest periods covered by this suit defined minorities to include blacks and dark-skinned hispanics, and for the latter decades defined minorities to include blacks and all hispanics. School records kept by the Board set forth statistics in terms of Black, Hispanic, and Other. The opposition of white citizens to the placement of low-income housing in their neighborhoods and to the busing of Southwest Yonkers school children into East Yonkers was directed toward both groups. Many protests specified opposition to blacks and hispanics in these precise terms, or in pairs of derogatory epithets, or in dual geographic terms. In all the circumstances, it would have been error for the district court to omit hispanics from the minority category in its analysis of whether the Yonkers public school system was segregated. See Keyes v. School District No. 1, 413 U.S. at 197-98, 93 S.Ct. at 2691-92; Hart v. Community School Board of Education, 512 F.2d 37, 45 n. 10 (2d Cir.1975). 263
264 As discussed in Part B.II.A.2. above, official intent to discriminate may be inferred from evidence of such facts as the segregative impact of the decision, historical background, specific sequences of events, departures from the normal procedural or substantive standards, contemporary statements by members of the decision-making body, and the totality of the circumstances. See Arlington Heights I, 429 U.S. at 266-68, 97 S.Ct. at 563-65. The foreseeability of a segregative effect, or [a]dherence to a particular policy or practice, 'with full knowledge of the predictable effects of such adherence upon racial imbalance,'  is a factor that may be taken into account in determining whether acts were undertaken with segregative intent. Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449, 465, 99 S.Ct. 2941, 2950, 61 L.Ed.2d 666 (1979) (quoting district court opinion therein, 429 F.Supp. 229, 255 (S.D.Ohio 1977)). 265 Applying these principles in the context of equal protection challenges to school segregation, the courts have found, for example, that a city's decision, from among several options, to create a school attendance zone that results in a school whose student population is very heavily minority is evidence from which an intent to segregate may be inferred. See, e.g., Arthur v. Nyquist, 573 F.2d 134, 144 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 860, 99 S.Ct. 179, 58 L.Ed.2d 169 (1978). Further, [i]ndependent of student assignment, where it is possible to identify a 'white school' or a 'Negro school' simply by reference to the racial composition of teachers and staff, the quality of school buildings and equipment, or the organization of sports activities, a prima facie case of violation of substantive constitutional rights under the Equal Protection Clause is shown. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 18, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 1277, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971); see also Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 435, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 1692, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968). Other factors from which an intent to create or perpetuate segregated schools may be inferred include adherence to discriminatory admission policies in the city's vocational schools, see, e.g., Arthur v. Nyquist, 573 F.2d at 144, the use of attendance zone policies that rigidly require attendance of minority students at minority schools while giving nonminority students options to attend schools that are predominantly white, e.g., Oliver v. Michigan State Board of Education, 508 F.2d 178, 183-84 (6th Cir.1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 963, 95 S.Ct. 1950, 44 L.Ed.2d 449 (1975), and the implementation of attendance zone changes having a foreeseeably segregative effect, together with an intentional failure to take any corrective action, see Hart v. Community School Board of Education, 512 F.2d at 46-48. 266 In the present case, the district court's finding of segregative intent on the part of the Board is supported by the evidence of (1) the segregative impact of its decisions and the foreseeability of that impact, (2) the discriminatory nature of certain of its affirmative acts, which included segregation-enhancing school zone realignments, race-based staff assignments, race-based placement of minorities in special classes and prejudice-enhancing treatment of those classes, race-based decisions on school openings and closings, and systematic exclusion of minorities from vocational programs, and (3) the Board's failure, in deliberate responsiveness to the race-based opposition of some segments of the community, to implement any step that would have been desegregative. 267 Little need be said to show the segregated condition of the Yonkers public schools. Among Yonkers's 25 elementary schools in 1980, in which 61% of all students were white, more than three-quarters of the schools were either more than 80% minority or more than 80% white; 92% of the minority students attended just 10 of the schools. Seventy percent of Yonkers's white elementary students attended 14 schools outside of Southwest Yonkers, whose student populations ranged from 90% to 99% white. The distribution of students by race at the middle and high school levels was not dissimilar. Ninety-five percent of the middle school minority students were concentrated in four of the six middle schools. In the City's academic high schools, 92% of the minority students were concentrated in two of the four schools. 268 At each level, all but one of the schools having very high percentages of minority students were located in Southwest Yonkers, which housed 81% of Yonkers's minority residents; the lone exception at each level was located in Northwest Yonkers, a small segment of which had a 29% minority population. In East Yonkers, which housed less than 6% of Yonkers's minority residents, no school at any level, other than one elementary school attended by students from Runyon Heights, had more than a 9% minority student enrollment; in the other elementary schools, the minority population ranged from 1% to 7%. The Board attributes the segregated school patterns to the City's segregated residential patterns, and, arguing that it merely adhered to a neighborhood-school policy, it contends that it was not responsible for school segregation that reflected housing patterns. This position is superficial and untenable, both because the Board's adherence to a neighborhood-school policy has helped to increase the concentrations of minority residents in certain neighborhoods and because adherence to that policy is hardly the only premise of the Board's liability. 269 It is, of course, plain that housing patterns have an impact upon school populations and that when a school board adopts a policy of requiring children to attend schools in their own neighborhoods, the racial makeup of a school's population will normally be reflective of the makeup of its neighborhood. The neighborhood-school policy itself, however, has an effect on residential patterns, for parents of school-age children are often influenced by the quality of the nearby public schools in deciding where to reside. Thus, the neighborhood-school policy may result in identifiably minority schools in neighborhoods having high concentrations of minority residents; such identifiability, especially if it is perceived that the quality of the education available in those schools is inferior, often dissuades nonminority persons from moving into the neighborhood or from remaining there; and the election of nonminorities to live elsewhere increases both the minority proportion of the neighborhood's population and the identifiability of its schools as minority schools. As the Supreme Court has put it, [p]eople gravitate toward school facilities, just as schools are located in response to the needs of people. The location of schools may thus influence the patterns of residential development of a metropolitan area and have important impact on composition of inner-city neighborhoods.... [C]hoices in this respect have been used as a potent weapon for creating or maintaining a state-segregated school system. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. at 20-21, 91 S.Ct. at 1278-79 (discussing selection of sites for school construction). Thus a neighborhood-school policy does more than simply influence the short-run composition of the student body of a new school. It may well promote segregated residential patterns which, when combined with 'neighborhood zoning,' further lock the school system into the mold of separation of the races. Id. at 21, 91 S.Ct. at 1278. 270 We think it clear that the district court correctly found that it was foreseeable to the Board that adherence to its neighborhood-school policy would further lock the Yonkers school system into its segregated patterns. Plainly the Board was aware over the years of the increasing percentages of minorities attending many of the schools in Southwest Yonkers; it was also aware of the declining attendance at those schools by white students. The changes in racial balance of the student populations contributed to the increasing identifiability of certain schools as minority schools, each thereby promoting and speeding the identifiability of its neighborhood as one that was predominantly or wholly minority. Thus, the district court was justified in finding that the very adherence by the Board to a neighborhood-school policy where the housing patterns were segregated had a spiral effect, serving to promote and enhance school segregation beyond the segregated levels existing when the policy was first adopted. Certainly where the City advocated adherence to a neighborhood-school policy in order to preserve the existing segregated residential patterns--as was explicitly stated by Martinelli in extolling the Board he had filled with carefully screened appointees who would adhere to that policy--the Board may not validly argue that that adherence exonerates it from liability for the segregation in the schools resulting from the segregation in housing that it has helped to preserve. 271 In the present case, of course, the intent of the Board to preserve segregated schools was inferrable not just from the foreseeably increasingly segregative effect of its neighborhood-school policy but also from the facts that (1) its adherence to that policy was selective, the consistent element being that deviations or manipulations tended to increase the racial imbalance in the schools, (2) it made other decisions and followed other practices that further increased the racial identifiability of certain schools or promoted racial discrimination, and (3) it consistently rejected, often stating reasons that were pretextual, any significantly desegregative alternative proposed to it. 272 Specific deviations or manipulations included the Board's redrawing of school attendance lines. For example, the attendance lines for School 1, theretofore one-half to two-thirds white, were altered at both the north and the south ends of the zone to exclude virtually all of the white students and reassign them to virtually all-white schools. This, at a time when minorities constituted less than 5% of Yonkers's total population, created a school whose student population was 99% black. The changes were not dictated by any race-neutral considerations: School 1 became woefully underutilized; two of the nearby white schools, including one to which white students were reassigned, were already overcrowded; and the distance to be traveled by some of the reassigned students was increased. Though the School 1 manipulations had no discernible lingering effect on school patterns by 1980, the school having been closed in 1954, the careful[ ] and deliberate, racially motivated gerrymandering, 624 F.Supp. at 1411, contributed to a historical background showing segregative intent on the part of the Board. 273 The Board also several times altered the attendance zone lines between School 16 and School 25, which did have a lasting segregative effect. On each occasion white students were reassigned to School 16, and usually only white students were reassigned. At all times, School 16, to which the white students were reassigned, had either no, or a minuscule percentage of, minority students. By the time of this suit, School 25, from which the white students were transferred, was 88% minority; School 16, less than a mile away, remained 90% white. 274 The Board's major system-wide deviations from the neighborhood-school policy applied to special education classes and vocational schools. The special education classes for emotionally disturbed children were viewed as a dumping ground for minority children; they were three-quarters filled with minorities, a proportion that was unexplainable on a race-neutral basis; these classes were generally staffed with minority teachers assigned because of their race; the classes were bused long distances to predominantly white schools where they were carefully separated from the regular school population for all phases of the school day activities. Pointed to by school officials as examples of bad behavior, these special education students were despised by the impressionable young white students and their parents. An expert formerly employed by the Board testified that white students of the regular school programs would likely generalize their contempt for black special education students to all blacks. He testified that the Yonkers program was the most inhumane program for handicapped children he had seen anywhere. During his tenure, some of the worst facets of the program were discontinued; upon his departure some were resumed. 275 In the area of vocational training, the Board's discriminatory practices went from one extreme to the other. Prior to the 1960's, Saunders too had a reputation as a dumping ground for minority students. Minority students were often encouraged to enroll in Saunders even when they preferred an academic program. In the early 1960's the community perception of the school changed due to the Board's introduction of entrance requirements; Saunders received a surfeit of applications and, applying some academic criteria that students from the inferior Southwest schools perhaps could not meet and some subjective criteria that they did not meet, Saunders officials began to admit a disproportionately small number of minority students. Board officials acknowledged that the new selection process appeared to systematically exclude minority youngsters. 276 In the academic schools, the Board's racially discriminatory staff assignment practices enhanced the racial identifiability of most schools. When the Board began to hire minority teachers in the late 1940's, it assigned most of them to the more than 91% minority school in Runyon Heights and the rest to other schools with substantial minority enrollments. In the decades that followed, the Board continued to assign most of its minority teachers and minority principals to schools that had high percentages of minority students. These discriminatory assignments, combined with the repeated exercise by nonminority teachers of their seniority rights to transfer from the predominantly minority schools in favor of the predominantly white schools, caused the predominantly minority schools to be staffed by less experienced teachers. This fact, plus others such as the lack of a system-wide standardization of teaching materials and the vastly more skimpy and crowded physical facilities of the predominantly minority schools (as the superintendent said, probably the worst facilities that one could imagine), contributed both to the fact that those schools were educationally inferior to East Yonkers's predominantly white schools and to the community recognition that this was so. 277 One concededly inferior and identifiably minority middle school was Longfellow, which community members repeatedly urged the Board to close or rezone. The school had long been disproportionately minority, enrolling 41% of all of Yonkers's middle school minority students as early as 1950. As early as 1967, the PTA urged that it be closed. Through the years, the Board kept it open, declining, even while closing other schools in response to the City's fiscal crisis, to close Longfellow (which would have saved some $500,000) and to send its predominantly minority students to an underutilized school that was virtually all white. When Burroughs was closed in 1978, Longfellow could have been made substantially less segregated by retransferring to Longfellow a predominantly white area taken from Longfellow's zone in 1969. Instead, the Board gave students from those areas the option of attending Emerson or Whitman, both predominantly white. In 1980, Longfellow remained open, an inferior and underutilized school whose minority population was 94%. 278 In opening Commerce Middle in 1973, though explicitly recognizing that reassigning students from Emerson, in addition to those from Gorton, to Commerce Middle was the only hope for the latter to avoid becoming an all minority school, the Board assigned Commerce Middle only Gorton students. Thereafter, it expanded the Commerce Middle attendance zone to incorporate additional predominantly minority areas. By the time Commerce Middle was closed in 1976, its minority population was 77%. 279 The district court permissibly inferred discriminatory intent on the part of the Board from the plainly and foreseeably segregative effects of these acts and practices and from the fact that many of its proffered rationales were pretextual. For example, though the Board claimed that the eastward flow of the experienced white teachers resulted from a collective bargaining agreement provision that gave them a transfer right, that agreement also gave the Board latitude to retransfer some teachers in the best interests of the school system; the Board never sought to invoke its right. Though the Board rationalized the redrawing of the attendance line between Schools 16 and 25 on the ground that it was intended to make the trip to school easier for the reassigned children, two of the four zone changes in fact made the trip more difficult. Similarly, though the Board rationalized its refusal to reassign Longfellow students to Twain partly on the ground that the trip for the reassigned students would be nearly three miles, some Twain students already had nearly that distance to travel, and the Board simultaneously allowed predominantly white Burroughs students to attend a predominantly white school that caused them an even longer trip. The Board also rationalized the refusal to send Longfellow students to Twain on the basis that transportation would be too costly; yet the state would have been required by law to subsidize 90% of that cost; even unsubsidized, the cost would have been a tiny fraction of the $500,000 per year that would have been saved by the closing of Longfellow. The Board's proffered rationale for rejecting the Phase II proposal for busing students to achieve desegregation was twice-belied. Though the Board stated that it disapproved of busing because it preferred such alternatives as the creation of magnet schools, (a) it never implemented any such alternatives, and (b) in fact it had earlier rejected a proposal for the limited use of magnet schools for vocational programs. Such a stream of pretextual rationales made a substantial contribution to the fund of evidence from which the Board's intention to preserve segregated schools was reasonably inferrable. 280 Finally, it is rather plain that in failing to adopt any desegregative measures the Board was, at least in part, bowing to the will of the City and of white community members who opposed desegregation. Cooperation with the views of the City was often evident. The Council, of course, had fiscal control of the Board's operations, with the power to approve or disapprove the school budget line by line. Both the mayor and the councilmen often publicly expressed their views of proposals under consideration by the Board; school officials generally refrained from pursuing courses that they thought would spark race-based opposition; and in submitting budgets to the Council even before the advent of Martinelli, the Board eschewed desegregative proposals that it thought would be politically infeasible in light of community and Council opposition. After Martinelli saturated the Board with members who would not vote for busing, the Board unanimously rejected each desegregative aspect of the Phase II proposals and implemented no desegregative alternatives, not even those they stated they preferred. 281 The Board argues here that the court was wrong to find an intent to preserve segregation, because the Board merely followed the wishes of the populace, and popular opposition to desegregative proposals was merely an opposition to busing, not to desegregation. Any suggestion that public opposition was not race-based or that the racial nature of the opposition was unknown to the Board is, on the record before us, entirely frivolous. Hostile white audiences from at least the early 1970's through Phase II told state and local school officials in haec verba that they did not want their children going to school with minority children. Thus, as early as 1971, the Board's superintendent abandoned even the gathering of information on the schools' racial imbalance on the ground that any kind of totally city-wide racially balanced program would be politically infeasible. The NYU pairing-and-sharing proposal for Saunders's vocational programs, which would have had a desegregative effect, was rejected by the superintendent and the Board because of opposition by councilmen who had openly declared themselves against the proposal and community opposition that school officials recognized as fear of racial encro[a]chments. When the Task Force was formed in 1975, the Board's announcement carefully refrained from mentioning the racial issues to be explored, in hopes of averting immediate community opposition. The opposition nonetheless was quickly forthcoming, raucous and strident, much of it in the form of letters and flyers expressing opposition explicitly on racial grounds. 282 To the extent that community opposition was not stated in explicitly racial terms but rather invoked race-neutral explanations, the evidence easily permitted the court's inference that these explanations often were pretextual. The stated opposition to the NYU-proposed exchanges of students between East Yonkers and Southwest Yonkers on the ground of a desire to preserve the superior achievement levels of the East Yonkers students had little applicability in the context of vocational programs, for there was no indicated disparity in achievement in those fields. And though East Yonkers parents stated that they opposed busing on the ground that it would usurp too much of their children's before-and-after-school time, that time cost could not explain their at least equally vehement opposition to the busing of Southwest Yonkers children into East Yonkers. The finding that the emphasis on busing was partially pretextual was further supported by the evidence that white-area residents opposing the placement of low-income housing nearby complained that having minority housing in their neighborhoods would result (obviously without any busing) in more minority students attending their schools. 283 As a doctrinal matter, even if a majority of the Board members had favored desegregative measures, which plainly some did prior to their replacement by appointees of Martinelli, the Board may not escape liability for perpetuating its segregated school system on the ground that its rejection of desegregative courses of action merely responded to the will of that segment of the populace that desired segregation. E.g., City of Birmingham, 538 F.Supp. at 826, 828 (obstruction of low-income housing project for white area because of race-based opposition of community violated Equal Protection Clause though six of seven members of the decision-making body favored the project). As we have discussed in Part B.II.B. above, public officials may not, directly or indirectly, give effect to the racial prejudices of their constituents. 284 In sum, there was ample evidence to support the district court's findings that the Yonkers school system was segregated, that affirmative segregative acts and system-wide racially discriminatory practices of the Board substantially contributed to that segregation, that the Board adhered to the neighborhood-school policy with the intent of preserving school segregation, and that the desire to perpetuate school segregation was a motivating factor in the Board's refusals to take any step that would have had a desegregative effect. Thus, the court correctly concluded that, even though a school board that had had no part in creating or enhancing school segregation might not be constitutionally required to take affirmative steps to desegregate that system, this Board through its discriminatory and segregative actions had brought upon itself an obligation under the Equal Protection Clause to take action to decrease the segregation in the Yonkers public schools. 285 Though we agree with the Board that it would have been permitted to fulfill its constitutional obligations without resort to busing, we reject its notions that no action whatever was required and that it must be exonerated because it preferred methods other than busing. The Board's effort to minimize the segregative-intent implication of its rejection of busing proposals by referring to the district court's observation that [v]irtually every Board member also expressed preferences for other, voluntary methods of desegregation, most notably, the use of magnet schools and open enrollment plans, 624 F.Supp. at 1492, and by arguing that  '[a] solution that tries to enlist the better nature of a community in a constructive manner is not a surrender to community prejudice'  (Board brief on appeal at 79 (quoting Hart v. Community School Board of Education, 512 F.2d at 53)), lands far from the mark. There is no dispute that the Board members expressed such preferences; the flaw in the Board's argument is that the district court permissibly found the expressions to be pretextual. The quote from Hart is entirely inapposite, for the Board had not in fact trie[d] any solution. It was not the Board's failure to adopt busing that violated the minority students' rights; rather the evil lay in the combination of the Board's promotion and enhancement, through deliberately discriminatory acts and practices, of a segregated school system and its purposely discriminatory refusal to take any significant desegregative action whatever. 286 C. The Sufficiency of the Causal Connection Between City Actions and Segregation in the Schools 287 The City's argument that its housing decisions had no effect on the racial balance of the Yonkers schools is based principally on the opinion testimony of its expert witness to the effect that if no subsidized low-income housing projects had been built and the sites had remained vacant, the racial imbalance in the Yonkers schools would have been substantially as it in fact was in 1980. This proposition, which is tantamount to an argument that plaintiffs failed to prove that the City's actions had any segregative effect on the schools, in untenable. The district court chose to reject the views of the City's expert and to credit instead the testimony of plaintiffs' expert, who described the way in which concentrating minority housing in an area helps to create schools that are identifiable as minority schools, and who gave his opinion that the City's decisions to build low-income housing in Southwest Yonkers and not in East Yonkers had contributed to the segregated state of the schools. We are hardly entitled to upset the district court's decision to find the testimony of one expert more credible than that of another, and certainly we may not do so where, as here, extrinsic evidence supported the view found more credible by the district court. 288 In 1967, the schools were already to a degree segregated, but significantly less so than they were by 1980. In 1967, only three of the City's 29 elementary schools, all in Southwest, had student populations that were predominantly minority; by 1980 there were eight predominantly minority schools, seven of them in Southwest. In 1967, 44% of the system's minority elementary school students attended the three predominantly minority schools; in 1980, 76% of the minority students attended predominantly minority schools. In 1967, there was no school whose minority enrollment was as high as 80%; by 1980, five schools--four of them in Southwest--had minority enrollments of more than 80%. At the middle school level, there was no predominantly minority school in 1967, but three out of six were predominantly minority in 1980, all of them in Southwest. 289 The increasing concentration of minority students in Southwest schools that theretofore had had a more balanced racial mix occurred during a period in which the City was building minority housing in Southwest Yonkers and not elsewhere, causing Southwest Yonkers to experience so-called white flight. For example, as discussed in Part B.II.A.1., in the period 1960 to 1970, the number of white residents declined by 12% (from 75,952 to 66,523) in Southwest Yonkers and increased by 13% (from 106,630 to 120,494) in East and Northwest Yonkers. From 1970 to 1980, the number of white residents in both segments of Yonkers declined, but in Southwest Yonkers the decline was far more precipitous, from 66,523 to 41,124, or 38%, as compared to the decline in East and Northwest Yonkers from 120,494 to 112,785, or 6%. 290 Given the confluence from 1960 to 1980 of the City's confinement of low-income housing to Southwest Yonkers, the prevailing perception that low-income housing would be occupied by minorities, the net decrease by some 35,000 of white residents in Southwest while there was a net increase of some 6,000 white residents in other parts of Yonkers, the faster decline of white student enrollment in Southwest Yonkers than in other parts of Yonkers, and the nearly quadruple increase in the number of identifiably minority schools in Southwest Yonkers, the court was plainly entitled to find that the City's segregative housing decisions were a contributing cause of the increasing segregation in the schools. 291 D. Sufficiency of the Evidence of City's Intent to Segregate Schools 292 There is no basis in the record for overturning the finding that the City intended to preserve or enhance segregation in the schools. Several types of evidence support this finding. 293 First, the City was well aware of the relationship between segregated neighborhoods and segregated schools. White residents opposing the construction of minority housing in their predominantly white neighborhoods mentioned the schools as one of their concerns. Nearly all of the councilmen from East Yonkers stated explicitly that their constituents opposed minority housing in their neighborhoods in part because they sought to keep minority children out of their schools. 294 In addition, there was evidence that on several occasions, City officials sought to have white areas moved into school attendance zones that had a greater predominance of white students. The effect, had the Board not rejected these requests, would have been to increase the degree of school segregation. The City has offered no other explanation for the requests, and the district court was free to infer from these attempts that the City desired that white students attend schools that were as predominantly white as it could arrange. 295 Further, illustrating the fact that segregated housing and segregated schools feed on and enhance one another in symbiotic fashion, Martinelli stated in his 1979 valedictory speech that his [d]iscussion of neighborhood stability would not be complete without attention to our public school system, and emphasized that keeping children in schools within their own neighborhoods was of critical importance to preserving the stability of the neighborhoods. The mayor's forthright packing of the Board with persons he believed would adhere to the neighborhood-school policy provided clear support for the finding that the City deliberately sought to preserve segregation in the schools, both for the sake of the schools and for the sake of the neighborhoods. 296 E. The Interrelationship Between the Board and the City 297 Finally, we reject the contentions of both the Board and the City that the district court erred in taking into account the actions and inactions of both defendants in assessing the responsibility of each. When two actors have cooperated in a given venture, each contributing to the outcome that each desires, it requires no stretch of legal doctrine to conclude that each actor is liable if the result deliberately attained is unlawful. Indeed, it would be an inadequate analysis if a trial court contented itself with a superficial examination of isolated acts, without any consideration of possible underlying relationships that are probative of intent. Parent Ass'n of Andrew Jackson High School v. Ambach, 598 F.2d 705, 713 (2d Cir.1979) (dictum). 298 Insofar as the Board's liability is concerned, the foreseeably spiraling effect of housing segregation and school segregation where a neighborhood-school policy is followed has been discussed in Parts B.III.B. and B.III.C. above. The district court did not err in finding that the Board's adherence to its neighborhood-school policy in light of the symbiosis bespoke a segregative intent on the part of the Board. Nor did the district court impose liability on the Board for segregation in housing or find the Board liable for school segregation solely because the City was liable for intentionally preserving segregation in housing. Rather the court found many indicia of segregative intent on the part of the Board independent of any goal or view attributable to the City, and found the City's intent relevant, in major part, to an assessment of the Board's motivation in repeatedly refusing to take any desegregative steps. Finally, the Board cannot escape liability simply because prior to the Martinelli regime its failure to take desegregative steps was perhaps due to the racial animus of persons other than Board members. To the extent that the Board was being responsive to the wishes of segments of the community and the Council, the imposition of liability on the Board was proper since the opposition to desegregative steps was racially motivated. See authorities cited in Part B.II.B. above. 299 As to the City, we have discussed in Parts B.II.A.1 and B.III.C. above the segregative effect of its housing decisions and the other evidence from which the district court permissibly inferred its intent to preserve and enhance segregation in the schools. As the Seventh Circuit has stated, 300 [u]ndoubtedly there are many contributing causes for racial segregation. But however complex the problem, it is clear that if residential segregation results from current or past segregative housing practices, there is a causal relation between those practices and the segregated schools. Therefore, if [a city] has participated in or contributed to these segregative housing practices either directly (e.g., selective location of public housing) or indirectly ..., it can be said that the [city] has caused, at least in part, the segregation in schools. 301 United States v. Board of School Commissioners, 573 F.2d 400, 408-09 (7th Cir.1978) (footnote omitted); accord Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 755, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 3132, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069 (1974) (Stewart, J., concurring). Certainly in the circumstances of this case, in which the City sought unabashedly to have the Board do its bidding by preserving neighborhood schools in part in order to preserve the segregated residential patterns, the City is properly held liable for segregation in the schools. 302 Finally, we reject the City's contention that it was improper for the district court to take into account the mayor's appointments to the Board of only persons who could be counted on to maintain segregation in the schools. While the discretionary nature of the mayor's power of appointment might defeat a suit requesting an injunction for or against particular appointments, see, e.g., Mayor of Philadelphia v. Educational Equality League, 415 U.S. 605, 615, 94 S.Ct. 1323, 1330, 39 L.Ed.2d 630 (1974), nothing forbids judicial recognition of the pattern in which municipal discretion is exercised in order to fathom the municipality's underlying intent. The ineluctable conclusion that Martinelli's appointments were made with segregative intent supports the district court's conclusion that the segregated state of the Yonkers public schools--resulting from the City's confinement of minority housing to already-minority neighborhoods and from the Board's adherence to a neighborhood-school policy, its discriminatory faculty assignment and special program policies, and its failure to take any steps to achieve school desegregation--was not simply coincidental. 303 In sum, we agree with the district court that the combination of the City's housing policies, the mayoral appointment of Board members and the subsequent inaction of the Board amounted to an interrelated governmental effort to preserve the integrity of 'neighborhood schools' whose racial segregation was governmentally sanctioned and steadfastly maintained. 624 F.Supp. at 1534. Where, between the municipality that has acted to preserve segregated residential patterns and the school board that has acted to preserve segregation in the schools, there is cooperation on a further course of action or inaction designed to maintain and enhance that school segregation, both the municipality and the school board may be held liable for school segregation. Given the facts discussed in the preceding sections, we conclude that there was ample evidence here to support the district court's findings of both cooperation and design.
304 Each of the defendants challenges various aspects of the district court's remedial orders. In assessing these challenges we are guided by several general principles. 305 The power of the federal courts to remedy constitutional violations is flexible but not unlimited. In general the power to restructure the operation of state and local entities should be exercised only where there has been a constitutional violation. Where such a violation has been found, the court should tailor the remedy to fit the nature and extent of the violation. See Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 433 U.S. 406, 419-20, 97 S.Ct. 2766, 2775-76, 53 L.Ed.2d 851 (1977); Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. at 738, 94 S.Ct. at 3124; Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. at 16, 91 S.Ct. at 1276. 306 Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has not required that the least restrictive means of implementation be adopted but has 307 ... recognized that the choice of remedies to redress racial discrimination is 'a balancing process left, within appropriate constitutional or statutory limits, to the sound discretion of the trial court.'  308 United States v. Paradise, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 1053, 1073, 94 L.Ed.2d 203 (1987) (quoting Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 508, 100 S.Ct. 2758, 2790, 65 L.Ed.2d 902 (1980) (Powell, J., concurring) (quoting Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U.S. 747, 794, 96 S.Ct. 1251, 1278, 47 L.Ed.2d 444 (1976) (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part))). The district court, which has first-hand experience with the parties and is best qualified to deal with the 'flinty, intractable realities of day-to-day implementation of constitutional commands,'  must be given a great deal of flexibility and discretion in choosing the remedy best suited to curing the violation, United States v. Paradise, 107 S.Ct. at 1074 (quoting Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. at 6, 91 S.Ct. at 1271). 309 In determining whether [an] order was narrowly tailored, we must acknowledge the respect owed a District Judge's judgment that specified relief is essential to cure a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. A district court has not merely the power but the duty to render a decree which will so far as possible eliminate the discriminatory effects of the past as well as bar like discrimination in the future. Louisiana v. United States, 380 U.S. 145, 154, 85 S.Ct. 817, 822, 13 L.Ed.2d 709 (1965). 310 Once a right and a violation have been shown, the scope of a district court's equitable powers to remedy past wrongs is broad, for breadth and flexibility are inherent in equitable remedies. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 15, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 1276, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971). 311 United States v. Paradise, 107 S.Ct. at 1073. 312 With these principles in mind, we conclude that the orders fashioned by the district court to remedy the housing and school segregation in Yonkers were well within the proper bounds of discretion.