Opinion ID: 435100
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Neighborhood School Policy.

Text: 20 The significance of the Board's adherence to a neighborhood school policy was central to the district court's analysis. This policy requires students to attend the schools nearest their homes. The Board has, with few exceptions, adhered to this policy rigidly and refused to allow voluntary transfers for any purpose, including voluntary desegregation. 2 Although a neighborhood school policy has been used by school districts to justify segregation, see Dayton, 443 U.S. at 533 n. 7, 99 S.Ct. at 2976 n. 7; Columbus, 443 U.S. at 461-62 & n. 8, 99 S.Ct. at 2948-49 & n. 8; Keyes, 413 U.S. at 206, 93 S.Ct. at 2696, adherence to such a policy is not by itself dispositive of segregative intent. We recognized in our previous opinion that the neighborhood school policy is merely relevant evidence to be taken into account in deciding whether the forbidden intent did or did not exist. Diaz II, 612 F.2d at 415. It does not have constitutional implications one way or the other without a penetrating examination of the complete context in which the neighborhood policy was initially applied and subsequently enforced. Id. 21 We must distinguish, however, between a policy requiring students to attend schools within neighborhood attendance areas, and the decision to draw those attendance areas in a manner that achieves or maintains ethnic imbalance. School buildings are large, immobile objects. For many school districts, the location of existing schools will more or less determine feasible attendance areas. Where neighborhoods are themselves racially or ethnically imbalanced, the enforcement of a neighborhood school policy may perpetuate de facto segregation. As we read the Supreme Court's pronouncements we cannot require a school district with no history of de jure segregation to abandon its neighborhood school policy merely because the infeasibility of relocating its schools has caused the entrenchment of segregation. See, e.g., Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 28, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 1282, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971). As we explained in our previous opinion, however, the location and construction of new schools and the closing of old schools are not merely decisions enforcing a neighborhood school policy. Rather, they are decisions that may determine whether the prescribed neighborhood attendance areas will be integrated or segregated. See Diaz II, 612 F.2d at 415. The Supreme Court has recognized that 22 [i]n the past, choices in this respect have been used as a potent weapon for creating or maintaining a state-segregated school system. In addition to the classic pattern of building schools specifically intended for Negro or white students, school authorities have sometimes, since Brown [v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) ], closed schools which appeared likely to become racially mixed through changes in neighborhood residential patterns. This was sometimes accompanied by building new schools in the areas of white suburban expansion farthest from Negro population centers in order to maintain the separation of the races with a minimum departure from the formal principles of neighborhood zoning. 23 Swann, 402 U.S. at 21, 91 S.Ct. at 1278. A school district may combine its neighborhood school policy with a segregative pattern of site selection. In such cases, the enforcement of a neighborhood school policy may be one of a series of segregative acts independently evincing segregative intent. Many of these same actions disapproved by the Supreme Court in Swann are also present in this case. 24 Furthermore, adherence to a neighborhood school policy may have a reciprocal effect by making neighborhoods more segregated. 25 The construction of new schools and the closing of old ones ... when combined with one technique or another of student assignment, will determine the racial composition of the student body in each school in the system. Over the long run, the consequences of the choices will be far reaching. People gravitate toward school facilities, just as schools are located in response to the needs of people. The location of schools may thus influence the pattern of residential development of a metropolitan area and have important impact on composition of inner-city neighborhoods. 26 Id. at 20-21, 91 S.Ct. at 1278. 27 In this case, a series of events unrelated to the ethnic imbalance of the District's schools required the Board to make a large number of choices relating to school siting, school construction, the use of portable classrooms and the definition or redefinition of neighborhood attendance areas. Each time, parents, interested organizations and the State of California presented alternative proposals to the Board that could have ameliorated the segregation in the district schools. Most of these opportunities presented no threat to the neighborhood school policy and could have been accomplished within its framework. The Board consistently selected the more segregative alternative. 28