Balsbaugh v. Rowland

• Decision Date: 20 April 1972
• Citation: 290 A.2d 85,447 Pa. 423
• Parties: Walter BALSBAUGH et al., Appellants, v. James H. ROWLAND, Sr., et al.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 85

290 A.2d 85

447 Pa. 423

Walter BALSBAUGH et al., Appellants, v. James H. ROWLAND, Sr., et al.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

April 20, 1972.

William H. Naugle, Naugle & Sullivan, Harrisburg, for appellant

James W. Evans, Goldberg, Evans & Katzman, Harrisburg, for appellee.

Before JONES, C.J., and EAGEN, O'BRIEN, ROBERTS, POMEROY, NIX and MANDERINO, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

POMEROY, Justice.

This case comes to us on appeal from the order of the court below sustaining a demurrer to appellants' complaint in equity. Appellants, citizen taxpayers of the City of Harrisburg, brought this action on behalf of themselves and all other taxpayers in the Harrisburg City School District (the District), seeking declaratory relief and to enjoin the District's Board of School Directors (the Board) and its Superintendent of Schools from implementing 'A Plan for Quality Desegregated Education for the Harrisburg City School District' (the Plan), which would, among other things, correct a racial imbalance in the District.

We learn from the briefs that the challenged Plan was the culmination of a two year effort by the school board to devise an acceptable method of improving its educational program by balancing the racial composition of the District's schools. The effort apparently stemmed from a finding by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission that significant racial imbalance existed in the District's schools, and that steps should be taken to correct it.

In 1968 and again in 1969, plans were submitted by the Board to the Commission, but found to be unsatisfactory. Thereafter, the Board retained the services of a non-profit educational consulting service known as Research for Better Schools, Inc. of Philadelphia to 'prepare and present to the Board for its consideration a written plan for the systematic racial desegregation of the Harrisburg Public School System.' In April of 1970 the consulting firm presented a proposed plan to the Board, which duly adopted it. We are told that the Plan and its implementation was later approved by the Department of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth and by the Human Relations Commission.

Within a few weeks after the Plan was adopted by the Board, appellants filed their complaint in equity, naming as defendants the members of the school board and the superintendent of schools. After a hearing, appellants' application for a preliminary injunction was denied. Appellees then filed preliminary objections in the nature of a demurrer to the complaint, which were sustained by the court En banc, President Judge Kreider dissenting. This appeal followed. ¹

A demurrer, of course, in an assertion that the complaint does not set forth a cause of action upon which relief can be granted. It admits, for the purpose of testing the sufficiency of the complaint, all properly pleaded facts, but not conclusions of law. Engel v. Parkway Co., 439 Pa. 559, 266 A.2d 685 (1970); Robinson v. Philadelphia, 400 Pa. 80, 82, 161 A.2d 1 (1960); Fawcett v. Monongahela Ry. Co., 391 Pa. 134, 137 A.2d 768 (1958); Gardner v. Allegheny County, 382 Pa. 88, 114 A.2d 491 (1955); Narehood v. Pearson, 374 Pa. 299, 302, 96 A.2d 895 (1953).

The factual averments of the complaint before us may be summarized as follows. (1) The Board adopted the Plan of desegregation and reorganization on May 8, 1970, pursuant to a Board resolution of February 13, 1970. By this resolution the Board 'reaffirm(ed) its policy of developing integrated quality education in the District', and to that end 'adopt(ed) as a policy the reorganization of all elementary units for the school year beginning September 1970, so that the student enrollment in each school will reflect within ten percent (10%) the racial composition of the total public school population.' ² (2) By reason of the Plan the 1970--71 school year budget as tentatively adopted by the Board on May 22, 1970, contained proposed expenditures of $1 1/2 millon more than those for the preceding school year. (3) The Plan requires daily cross-city busing of approximately 28% Of the students enrolled in the District schools in order to establish racially balanced school attendance patterns. (4) The proposed budget for 1970--1971 placed the cost of busing, school bus monitors, and a school lunch program for transported children at more than $500,000 but made no provision for certain other unstated costs involved in the program, estimated at an additional $300,000 to $500,000. (5) The Plan resulted from the desegregation directive given to the Board by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. (6) No segregation has ever existed within the Harrisburg Public School system nor has the Board ever embarked on any 'Plan of Segregation'. (This averment is arguably a conclusion of law.)

Following the recitation of these facts, the complaint states the legal conclusion that the adoption of the Plan was 'unconstitutional and unreasonable'. Three reasons are given in support of this conclusion:

(1) equal protection of the laws is denied to the students, parents and taxpayers of Harrisburg;

(2) the plan was not the result of a prudent exercise of discretion by the appellee board members, but of an element of duress employed by the Human Relations Commission;

(3) the plan is not reasonable because (a) of 'undue emotional and physical hardships' imposed upon students and parents by the 'elimination of the existing neighborhood school structure', (b) of unresponsiveness to the will of the citizens and taxpayers of Harrisburg; and (c) it includes within its purview the junior and senior high schools. The complaint alleges, finally, that the expenditure of tax monies in pursuance of the Plan is 'needless, wasteful and arbitrary.'

We turn to a consideration of the Plan itself, for its terms and provisions constitute the basis of the complaint.

As the Plan itself states, it was designed to achieve a number of goals, including 'educational excellence, racial balance, equity, stability, and economy.' In its pursuit of such ends, the Plan establishes an early childhood education program designed to bring together pre-kindergarten through second grade age children in special 'early childhood' centers. The centers are intended to offer a wide variety of programs and facilities which smaller neighborhood schools could not economically provide. ³ Programs and groupings with similar purpose are included in the Plan's reorganization and consolidation of the District's schools into elementary (grades three to six), intermediate (grades seven and eight), and comprehensive high schools (grades nine through twelve).

The Plan declares interaction between students of different races, cultural groups, economic backgrounds, and levels of achievement to be an essential component of quality education. Thus, the Plan envisions random assignment (by computer) of each child not only on the basis of race, but also on the basis of sex, socio-economic status and academic achievement 'in order to achieve completely mixed schools and classrooms.' The Plan provides, moreover, that the same instructional programs be made available to every child.

As an aid in achieving such a heterogeneous school and classroom composition, the Plan calls for the busing of approximately 29 percent of the total number of students presently enrolled in the Harrisburg public school system. It is explained, however, that '(n)o racial group will have to transport more children than any other group; each group will be subject to transportation equally since the computer program will assign each child at random on the basis of race, socio-economic status and completely mixed schools and classrooms.' completely mixed schools and classrooms.'

Under the Plan, several criteria are to be considered in developing balanced assignment of students to schools and classes within schools: (1) Black and white pupils are to be distributed with a maximum variance of ten percent from the total percentage of such children enrolled in the District; (2) Students are to be evenly distributed throughout the schools on the basis of sex; (3) Children from impoverished families are to be distributed throughout the school system, with a maximum variance of ten percent from the total number of such children enrolled in the District; (4) For grades three through six, children evaluated to be on the extremes of an achievement scale are to be evenly distributed, '. . . so that all schools will have about the same percentage of children deficient in basic skills, as well as those most capable of pursuing independent study.'

The Plan also estimates that the reorganization of the District which it necessitates will prove more economical in the long run than the present set-up because it will eliminate duplication of services and programs heretofore necessary in the neighborhood school system.

In short, it is evident from a study of the Plan that it calls for a comprehensive restructuring of the school system, and this not only to achieve racial balance, as required by the Human Relations Commission, but to develop a new educational approach to the instruction of children enrolled in the District.

The thrust of appellant's complaint is in two directions: (1) the adoption of the Plan was not the result of properly exercised Board discretion, and (2) the Plan violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. As a result of either or both of these infirmities, the complaint charges, the expenditure of tax monies is illegal and enjoinable. Before considering whether a cause of action has been stated in these respects, it will be well to refer briefly to the powers of school boards and the degree of supervisory control which the courts have with respect to them.

The Public School Code of 1949, Act of March 10, 1949, P.L. 30, as amended, 24 P.S. § 1--101 et seq., vests broad powers in the boards of school...