Opinion ID: 500653
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Board's Rejection of All Proposals Involving Desegregation

Text: 136 The first significant official recognition of the need to address the racial imbalance of the Yonkers public schools occurred during the 1968-1970 superintendency of Paul Mitchell, who expressed his concern that the racial segregation of the schools prevented equality in educational opportunity. During his tenure came the opening of King and School 10 (see Part A.II.E.2. below) in Southwest Yonkers, both of which, though they quickly became minority schools, had been planned by the Board as racially integrated schools. The Board also conducted a series of human relations workshops and sought the assistance of state education officials in addressing the problem of racial imbalance. Mitchell's successor, Alioto, hired a special consultant to serve as a liaison between school officials and community members, with particular emphasis on communicating the concerns of the minority community to school officials and alleviating the tensions at the racially troubled Gorton School. 137 Nonetheless, while Alioto recognized the increasing racial imbalance in the schools and the inequality of educational opportunity within the system, particularly with respect to the inadequate facilities and inexperienced teachers that characterized many of the Southwest Yonkers disproportionately minority schools, he and other officials noted that there was strong community opposition to desegregation. For example, the education specialist sent to Yonkers by New York State described a very hostile audience at one PTA meeting in East Yonkers and testified that white parents had stated explicitly,  'We don't want desegregation, I don't want my children going to school with black children.'  Accordingly, Alioto, having instructed his special consultant to gather information on the extent of racial imbalance in the schools, instructed him to cease work in this area because Alioto believed it would be politically infeasible to proceed with desegregative efforts in the schools at that time. The state specialist testified that Alioto informed him that there was great community resistance and that it was unfeasible to try to develop a desegregation plan and then implement it. A former Board member testified, There is no question [Alioto] said it and he said it to many people. He said it could never be sold in the Yonkers community. Any kind of totally city-wide racially balanced program would be politically infeasible. 138
139 In October 1971, the Board commissioned a study of the Yonkers public school system by the New York University (NYU) School of Education's Center for Educational Research and Field Services. The study team was not asked to address the issue of racial imbalance. 140 The NYU Report, delivered in 1972, made several recommendations, some of which, though not addressing racial issues directly, had desegregative implications. In this category were recommendations to (1) reorganize all schools into a uniform K-5, 6-8, and 9-12 grade configuration, one facet of which would involve a potentially desegregating school attendance zone change for students from Homefield; and (2) decentralize the vocational education program by (a) closing the High School of Commerce and having a new set of courses offered at Saunders, (b) having two complete sets of the existing vocational courses taught in the academic high schools, one set divided between the two high schools located in the northern part of the City and the other set divided between the two high schools located in the southern part of the City, and (c) allowing a student to take any of the vocational courses taught either in his own school or in the paired school located to the east or west (the variable access plan). 141 The NYU Report prompted strong community opposition to any revision of the vocational program that would either cause the predominantly white students from East Yonkers to have to attend classes in the disproportionately minority high schools in the western half of the City or allow the minority students from the west to attend classes at the 94-97% white high schools in East Yonkers. School officials characterized these objections as reflecting a [f]ear of racial encro[a]chments.Two weeks after the last public hearing on the NYU Report, Alioto presented his 1973 Reorganization Plan to the Board. In general, substantially as a result of community opposition to the desegregative facets of the NYU recommendations, the plan included the most segregative proposals that had been made either in the NYU Report itself or in the ensuing alternative suggestions. Thus, the plan adopted the suggestion to decentralize the Saunders vocational programs, but only in part: It rejected the east-west pairing-and-sharing proposal of the NYU Report, and instead incorporated the significantly more expensive approach of duplicating certain of Saunders's vocational courses in each of the four academic high schools. The opening of Commerce Middle as a predominantly minority school, discussed in Part A.II.C.3. above, was also part of this proposed 1973 Reorganization Plan. The Board promptly adopted the plan as recommended by the superintendent. 142 The only potentially desegregating feature of the NYU recommendations that was adopted was that part of the suggestion to standardize the grade configurations which entailed reassigning students from the predominantly white Homefield neighborhood, then attending the over-crowded Roosevelt High School (then 6% minority) in East Yonkers, to the soon-to-be-underutilized Gorton (high school population 24% minority). This recommendation was adopted over opposition of Homefield parents that school officials inferred was partly race-related. However, the major desegregative effect of even this change was delayed, as in the first year thereafter the Board permitted nearly half of the 132 reassigned Homefield students to remain at Roosevelt; later some Homefield students began using false addresses to avoid having to attend Gorton. In all, 143 the evolving segregation of the district's schools remained substantially unaltered. No student movement between the district's regular high schools was effectuated despite the recognition that racial integration would be an advantageous result of the variable access plan. The Saunders facility remained intact despite the realization that the school's physical inadequacies and screening process [were] presently resulting in the inaccessibility of vocational and occupational education opportunities to many minority students. The racially balanced High School of Commerce was closed and was replaced by a predominantly minority middle school. No desegregative reorganizations were effectuated at the elementary school level, as would have occurred under some of the NYU Report proposals. 144 624 F.Supp. at 1475-76.
145 A serious official proposal for the desegregation of the Yonkers public schools was made in 1977 by then-superintendent Joseph Robitaille. In late 1975, in response to concerns expressed by the Yonkers NAACP over the increasing racial imbalance in the schools, the Board had established a Task Force for Quality Education (Task Force) to explore the system's problems, including declining enrollment, underutilization of school facilities, and fiscal constraints. Announcement of the initial formation of the Task Force omitted any mention that the group would explore racial problems, an omission designed to avoid arousing community hostility. Nonetheless, public resistance quickly materialized, with East Yonkers residents expressing concern that transfer of western Yonkers students into their schools would lead to a decline in educational standards and student achievement and create disciplinary problems; they took the position that the Task Force should be more concerned with improving the schools' overall educational quality than with correcting racial imbalance. Nonetheless, the Task Force's final report, concluding that the Yonkers schools were racially and ethnically segregated ... due to segregated housing patterns, socio-economic deprivation, and systematic racism, made a number of remedial recommendations. 146 In August 1977, Robitaille issued his Phase II School Reorganization Plan, which recognized the interrelationship among the system's fiscal, enrollment, utilization, and racial problems, and incorporated some of the Task Force's recommendations. The principal changes proposed in the Phase II plan were (1) the reorganization of the below-high-school grade configuration to K-6 and 7-8; (2) the closing of three middle schools, Longfellow, Fermi, and Burroughs; (3) the relocation of Saunders to the to-be-vacated Burroughs facility; (4) the closing of Southwest Yonkers's School 6, then 98% minority, and reassignment of its students to underutilized elementary schools to the north, with a view to improving racial balance; and (5) the Yonkers Plan for school desegregation. The Yonkers Plan was essentially to limit the size of each elementary and each middle school, drawing its attendance zone accordingly, and to bus students residing outside the redrawn zone lines to other schools in a pattern that would improve the overall racial balance of the system. It was anticipated that no more than 20% of the students would have to be bused and that the greater efficiencies would result in savings to the City, over a 10-year period, of nearly $29 million. 147 Phase II in general, and the Yonkers Plan in particular, met with overwhelming community opposition. Many statements from residents of East Yonkers focused on the loss of neighborhood schools, the lack of any planned improvement in the quality of education, and the failure to present possible alternatives to busing, such as the use of magnet schools. Residents of Southwest Yonkers objected to the plan because of the loss of neighborhood schools and because the burdens of traveling to school by bus would be borne disproportionately by the minority students from that area. 148 Some statements from East Yonkers residents presented explicitly race-related opposition, including flyers protesting the busing of East Yonkers students and busing of the black children (3,000 in number) to our neighborhood schools; a letter from a community group that was unalterably opposed to compulsory (non-voluntary) busing for racial purposes as an end in itself; a letter expressing concern that busing  'blacks & hispanics' into our east side schools would be detrimental to the neighborhood, and suggesting that the Task Force be renamed  'Racist Force us' to take our children and go!; and a letter from a neighborhood association stating the residents' desire to preserve the nature of our neighborhoods and their opposition to mov[ing] children about for the sole purpose of ethnic and racial mixing (emphasis in original). 149 Similarly, at community meetings in East Yonkers, school officials were presented with comments expressing concern that the plan would result in Yonkers's becoming another Bronx, referring to the perceived community deterioration and slum-like conditions that speakers associated with the increase of minority population in that New York City borough. The audience punctuated these and similar statements by local residents with cheers and applause. In contrast, proponents of Phase II were booed and hissed upon introduction, upon mentioning such matters as the inferior books used in Southwest Yonkers schools, and throughout their presentations. One elderly black woman, upon mentioning the prospect of busing students from west to east and stating that children should learn from one another, was booed and shouted at to such an extent that a recess had to be called. 150 While no explicit racial epithets were used by persons making public statements at the hearings, several trial witnesses testified that community members made specific racial slurs both inside and outside the hearing room, such as, they are going to send blacks, and they are going to send niggers and they are going to send spicks out here, and we don't want those children. 151 Without ever taking a formal vote, the Board unanimously disapproved of all of the desegregative aspects of Phase II. The Yonkers Plan was rejected; School 6 was not closed; Longfellow was not closed; no students were bused. 152 The stated basis for the rejection of Phase II's desegregative components was the Board's preference for the use of magnet schools and open enrollment plans for achieving voluntary desegregation. Although it appears that all of the Board members acknowledged that at least some of the community opposition to Phase II was racially motivated, and some believed that racism was the principal basis of that opposition, there was no express discussion by Board members of the race-related community opposition to Phase II except by Quentin Hicks and Anne Bocik, members whose recent appointments to the Board had been extremely controversial, see Part A.II.E.3. below. Hicks, a black whose appointment had been protested by members of the black community because he did not represent their interests, stated that black parents were concerned about having their children transported out of their neighborhoods into a white jungle. Bocik, a former principal who had been forced to retire in part because of her use of racial slurs and other racially insensitive behavior toward minority students, 624 F.Supp. at 1507, stated that minority students and administrators from minority schools would like to be with their own. 153 Notwithstanding its stated preference for voluntary methods of desegregation, the Board took no steps to develop or implement any of the desegregative alternatives suggested by its own members or by members of the community. Thus, despite its professed enthusiasm for magnet schools or open enrollment, no magnet school, open enrollment, or other voluntary plan for desegregation was implemented at any time. 154 As a result, in 1980, the schools of East Yonkers, many of which were operating at less than 60% of their planned capacities, remained predominantly (overall 95%) white in student population, with superior and spacious physical plants, and experienced faculties. The schools of Southwest Yonkers remained predominantly (overall 67%) minority in student population, some overcrowded and some seriously underutilized, housed in inferior physical facilities, staffed with less-experienced staff members and more than half of the minority teachers employed by the school system, and providing their students with concededly inferior educational opportunities. 155