Opinion ID: 619919
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Staff

Text: Section L of Plan 2000 requires PCSSD to (1) recruit applicants for each available administrative position in a manner designed to develop a racially diverse pool of applicants, targeting applicants both external and internal to PCSSD, (2) recruit new teachers from a racially diverse pool of applicants and monitor the process to ensure that no policy, practice, or custom has the purpose or effect of limiting the proportion of black teachers, (3) implement programs, policies, and procedures to increase the number of black teachers in certain under-represented disciplines, including offering incentives to black teachers to obtain certification in those areas, and (4) allocate teachers and staff in a manner that avoids racially identifiable schools. The district court found that PCSSD failed to comply in good faith with any of the four requirements. On appeal, PCSSD continues its strategy of focusing on outcomes, noting that, as at NLRSD, the percentage of its administrators and staff who are black exceeds the percentage of the relevant labor market that is black. As discussed above, however, outcomes alone are insufficient; PCSSD must also show that it complied in good faith with the desegregation decree since it was entered. Freeman, 503 U.S. at 492, 112 S.Ct. 1430. The district court did not clearly err in finding that PCSSD has failed to comply with the express requirements of Section L. With regard to recruitment of black administrators, the head of PCSSD's human resources department conceded at the 2010 hearing that she was unaware of any policies or standards at PCSSD designed to implement the requirements of Plan 2000, despite reports from the Office of Desegregation Monitoring in both 2003 and 2006 decrying the lack of such compliance. The district court also credited the testimony of a monitor for the Joshua Intervenors that several of PCSSD's former superintendents lacked enthusiasm for the idea of increasing the number of black administrators and that the applicant pools she was allowed to review were not, in fact, racially diverse. The district court's credibility determination is virtually unreviewable on appeal. All Am. Life Ins. Co. v. Billingsley, 122 F.3d 643, 648 (8th Cir. 1997). Likewise, with regard to recruitment of black teachers, the head of PCSSD's human resources department conceded that she was unaware of any policies or standards at PCSSD designed to implement the express affirmative monitoring requirements for the recruitment and hiring of new teachers. PCSSD also did not even track the number of black teachers in some of the listed under-represented disciplines it was required to address in subsection L(3). PCSSD makes no showing of clear error in these bases for district court's finding of non-compliance. With regard to the allocation of teachers to avoid racially identifiable schools, PCSSD showed that the percentage of black staff at each school was within 15 percent of the district-wide average. The district court agreed that compliance with a 15-percent standard might be sufficient to meet the requirements of subsection L(4) had PCSSD expressly adopted such a standard at the outset of the plan, but found that PCSSD only adopted the 15-percent standard at the eleventh hour before the hearing as an ad hoc attempt to justify its outcomes, rendering it insufficient to prove a long-term good-faith commitment to the requirements of the plan. See Freeman, 503 U.S. at 491, 112 S.Ct. 1430. We do not disagree with the district court's application of the good-faith standard to these circumstances. Finally, PCSSD challenges the district court's brief statement at the end of its analysis that the percentage of black staff at PCSSD has remained at 21 percent since 1984, while the percentage of black students has increased from 23 to 44 percent. To the extent, if any, that the district court implied the percentage of black students should be a guideline for establishing the percentage of black staff, the district court erred. Cf. Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 308, 97 S.Ct. 2736, 53 L.Ed.2d 768 (1977) (There can be no doubt ... that the District Court's comparison of Hazelwood's teacher work force to its student population fundamentally misconceived the role of statistics in employment discrimination cases. The Court of Appeals was correct in the view that a proper comparison was between the racial composition of Hazelwood's teaching staff and the racial composition of the qualified public school teacher population in the relevant labor market.); see also Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Educ., 476 U.S. 267, 276, 106 S.Ct. 1842, 90 L.Ed.2d 260 (1986) (Carried to its logical extreme, the idea that black students are better off with black teachers could lead to the very system the Court rejected in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954)). Nevertheless, this error does not affect the bases discussed above for the district court's findings of an absence of good-faith compliance. As a result, we affirm the denial of unitary status for PCSSD in the area of staff.