Opinion ID: 305880
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Austin School System

Text: 10 The Austin Independent School District encompasses the City of Austin and certain outlying areas of Travis County, Texas. The district is 30 miles long from north to south and 25 miles wide from east to west. During the 1970-71 school year, the school system had a total of 74 schools-8 high schools, 11 junior high schools, and 55 elementary schools. A total of 54,974 children attend public school-14,684 in high school, 10,779 in junior high school, and 29,511 in elementary school. Of these, 35,496 or 65 percent are white; 11,194 or 20 percent are Mexican-American and 8,284 or 15 percent are black. Of the 2,768 teachers and professionals employed by the school system, 2,267 or 82 percent are white; 418 or 15 percent are black; and 83 or not quite 3 percent are Mexican-American. (Because of the importance of the facts, especially the ethnic composition of the schools, to which we must often refer, we attach to this opinion Appendix A containing a complete breakdown of the ethnic composition of the students and professional staff in each school in the AISD for the 1970-71 year.) 11 Most of the blacks and Mexican-Americans are concentrated in East Austin. East Austin is bordered on the west by an interstate highway and the downtown area of the city, on the north by Nineteenth Street and the airport, on the east by the school district line, and on the south by the Colorado River. The black population is concentrated in the northern section of East Austin, and the Mexican-American population in the southern section. Approximately 86 percent of the city's blacks and 64 percent of the city's Mexican-Americans live in East Austin. A comparison of the maps filed as exhibits shows that the school zoning is closely related to the demographic patterns; i. e., black school zones coincide with black residential areas; Mexican-American school zones coincide with Mexican-American residential areas. The correspondence of racial residential areas to school zones is too close to be a coincidence. The presence of old schools and the location of new ones, if combined with neighborhood zoning would, in the language of Swann, further lock the school system into a mold of separation of the races. 12 There are eighteen schools in East Austin with greater than 90 percent minority enrollment; that is, blacks and Mexican-Americans. Of these schools, eight are over 95 percent black, four are over 95 percent Mexican-American, and six are over 90 percent black and Mexican-American. Seventy-seven percent of the city's black students and 59 percent of the Mexican-American students attend these schools. See Appendix A. 13 Outside of East Austin the population is primarily white and schools are attended predominately by whites. There are, however, three schools with greater than seventy percent minority enrollment. A small black community in the north-central part of the city is served by St. Johns Elementary School which is 94 percent black. South of the Colorado River and west of the interstate highway is a Mexican-American community served by Becker Elementary School which is 68 percent Mexican-American and 7 percent black. Maplewood Elementary School has a 70 percent minority enrollment and serves a small minority community north of East Austin.