Moss v. Stamford Board of Education, Civ. No. B-586.

• Citation: 356 F. Supp. 675
• Decision Date: 26 March 1973
• Docket Number: Civ. No. B-586.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut
• Parties: Roy MOSS, Jr., By and Through his mother and next friend Linda D. Moss, et al. v. STAMFORD BOARD OF EDUCATION et al.

356 F. Supp. 675

Roy MOSS, Jr., By and Through his mother and next friend Linda D. Moss, et al. v. STAMFORD BOARD OF EDUCATION et al.

Civ. No. B-586.

United States District Court, D. Connecticut.

March 26, 1973.

Steven P. Hershey, Stamford, Conn., for plaintiffs.

Theodore I. Koskoff, Bridgeport, Conn., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

NEWMAN, District Judge.

This is a civil rights suit brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 challenging the elementary school integration¹ plan presently used by the Stamford, Connecticut, Board of Education, on the grounds that it places a disproportionate share of the burden of achieving racial balance on Black and Spanish-surnamed² children and therefore stigmatizes them on account of their race in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Plaintiffs are Black and Spanish-surnamed children attending Stamford elementary schools. Defendants are the Stamford Board of Education, its members, and the Superintendent of the Stamford public schools. Jurisdiction is conferred by 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3).

On November 14, 1972, this Court denied defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint, Moss v. Stamford Board of Education, 350 F.Supp. 879 (D.Conn. 1972). That decision held that plaintiffs' claims of discrimination resulting from the implementation of a plan to achieve racial balance stated a cause of action under § 1983. It also ordered a bifurcated trial to consider first the issue of whether there was a constitutionally significant discrimination, which, if established, would thereafter require consideration of whether such discrimination was justified. See Chance v. Board of Examiners, 458 F.2d 1167 (2d Cir. 1972). A hearing on the first issue was held November 30, 1972. Testimony and detailed documentary evidence, including maps and statistics on attendance and bussing, were presented.

I

The city of Stamford is roughly rectangular in shape, extending north from Long Island Sound approximately ten miles to the New York State border. The southern border of the city is about four miles long and the northern border, five miles. Census data indicate that virtually all Black residents of Stamford live in the urbanized, southernmost third of the city, with the heaviest concentrations in the western half of this zone. No figures have been presented as to the residential pattern of Spanish-surnamed individuals, but school attendance statistics suggest that their pattern is generally similar to that of Blacks.

In September, 1970, the Stamford Board of Education began a two-phased plan to improve the racial balance within the several elementary schools of its school system. The goal was a White to minority ratio of seventy to thirty per cent, plus or minus ten per cent in each school.³ In broad terms, the plan called for the closing, over a two-year period, of two schools (Rice and Stevens) and grades 4, 5, and 6 of another (Ryle). These were the schools most heavily enrolled with minority students and were located in census areas with the highest percentage of minority residents. During the same period, 1970-1972, three new schools were opened (Toquam, Davenport, and Stillmeadow), each located in virtually all-White residential areas. The school districts for Rice, Stevens, and Ryle (grades 4-6) were divided into a series of satellite attendance zones, each affiliated with a principal school district in the system, invariably in a predominantly White area. The satellite zones were entirely separated from their principal school districts. All students formerly attending the closed schools or grades were bussed to the school in the district with which their satellite district was affiliated. These students from the closed schools had to cross other school districts, and frequently to pass other schools, before arriving at the schools to which they were assigned. This cross-district bussing continues today and forms the substance of the burden alleged by plaintiffs.

The precise nature of the burden challenged by plaintiffs has been clarified from that alleged in the original complaint. Initially plaintiffs attacked both the school closings and defendants' bussing plan. However, the amended complaint abandoned the attack on school closings and focused entirely on a consequence of those closings—the bussing of the minority children who attended those schools to non-contiguous school districts. Plaintiffs have further refined their claim to focus only on cross-district bussing that results from the Board's integration plan, although since all of the cross-district bussing in Stamford is undertaken for the purpose of achieving racial balance, this last refinement is irrelevant.⁴ Plaintiffs' precise claim is that the bussing of elementary school children to non-contiguous districts as a result of the Board's integration plan is required of a disproportionately larger percentage of minority children than of White children.

Plaintiffs do not claim that the minority children travel a significantly longer distance or time than other children in the school system, nor that the bus rides impair the educational process. Nor are plaintiffs really complaining about the crossing of artificial lines on a map. Anyone familiar with political districting knows the artificiality of meeting a requirement of contiguity of districts. Plaintiffs would scarcely consider themselves less burdened if the defendants had connected each satellite zone to its principal zone with a narrow strip, thereby eliminating bussing to a noncontiguous district without shortening the trip at all.

What plaintiffs are really complaining about is the stigma imposed upon them by being regarded as "foreigners" by the "natives" attending the schools to which the bussed children are assigned. Brice v. Landis, 314 F.Supp. 974, 978 (N.D.Cal.1969). This stigma probably does not arise in every instance where a child is required to attend school in a non-contiguous district. But it may well arise in those instances where the bussing pattern removes the child from his own neighborhood and requires him to attend school in an entirely different neighborhood. The essence of plaintiffs' complaint is the social dislocation of assignment out of their home neighborhoods.

The difficulty in assessing plaintiffs' claim is that there is no ready definition of "neighborhood," so that bussing to a non-neighborhood school cannot always be identified. Plaintiffs' comparison of the percentages of minority children and White children bussed to non-contiguous districts is at best an approximation of the disparity between the groups with respect to neighborhood dislocation.

Defendants contend that the more pertinent comparison is among children bussed to schools other than the schools closest to their homes (hereafter "not-nearest school"), rather than among children bussed to non-contiguous districts. This comparison, they argue, more adequately identifies the dislocation of which plaintiffs complain and, at the same time, gives proper weight to the burden suffered by White students, few of whom attend schools in non-contiguous districts, but many of whom attend schools that are not closest to their homes. In addition, defendants prefer to compare pupil assignments for the entire school system, grades kindergarten through 12 (hereafter grades K-12).

Each of the comparisons urged by the parties is somewhat unsatisfactory. Bussing to non-contiguous districts and bussing to not-nearest schools are both, at best, approximations of the true extent of neighborhood dislocation suffered by the bussed students. Neither formulation expresses a burden that is inherently more onerous than the other. A bus trip to a non-contiguous district may be longer or shorter than a trip to a not-nearest school depending on the circumstances.⁵

More significant to analysis of the equal protection claim, each comparison is somewhat unfair to either the White students or the minority students. While the amount of cross-district bussing may fairly indicate the degree of dislocation of the minority children, since their cross-district trips take most, if not all, of them away from their neighborhoods, this measure does not indicate the dislocation of White students because, as a result of the Board's plan, many White children are bussed away from their neighborhoods (usually to not-nearest schools), even though few of them are bussed to non-contiguous districts. Thus comparison of the percentages of White and minority students bussed to non-contiguous districts skews the relative burden in favor of plaintiffs' claim. On the other hand, examination of bussing to not-nearest schools leads to a comparison of relative burden that is skewed in favor of defendants' position. Since Stamford's elementary schools are concentrated in White neighborhoods, many of the White students who attend not-nearest schools are still attending schools reasonably close to their homes, in effect, neighborhood schools. Yet probably all minority children who attend not-nearest schools are bussed to schools away from their neighborhoods.

The statistical expression of the relative bussing burden suffered by minority elementary school students compared to White students thus eludes precise formulation. It is fair to say, however, that the comparisons proposed by the parties bracket the range within which the comparative burden of actual neighborhood dislocation is to be found. Moreover, it may not be necessary to decide (1) whether comparison should be made between groups of children bussed to noncontiguous districts or to not-nearest schools, and (2) whether comparison should be made among only elementary school children or those attending grades K-12, for no matter which figures are used as approximations for the comparative neighborhood dislocation suffered by plaintiffs, the percentage of minority students affected is more than double the percentage of White students. If...