Boston's Children First v. Boston School Committee
| Decision Date | 25 January 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-11330-RGS.,99-11330-RGS. |
| Citation | 183 F.Supp.2d 382 |
| Parties | BOSTON'S CHILDREN FIRST, et al. v. BOSTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE, et al. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts |
Chester Darling, Boston, MA, for Plaintiffs.
Frances S. Cohen, Diane diIanni, Hill & Barlow, Merita A. Hopkins, City of Boston Law Department, Boston, MA, for Defendants.
Joel Z. Eigerman, Newton, MA, Joel Z. Eigerman, Murtha Cullina Roche Carens & DeGiacomo, Boston, MA, for Interested Parties.
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER ON DEFENDANTS' MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
The plaintiffs, ten white school-age children who reside in the City of Boston, joined by Boston's Children First, an advocacy group, allege that the Boston School Committee's race-based school assignment plan denied them admission to the public school of their choice in violation of federal and state law. The children seek either compensatory or nominal damages, as well as declaratory and injunctive relief. The defendants deny that in the majority of instances race was the determinative factor in the children's school assignments. Asserting that race is no longer considered in assigning students to the Boston public schools, defendants maintain that there is no "case or controversy" before the court and that summary judgment should therefore enter on plaintiffs' prayer for declaratory relief. Defendants also maintain that none of the individual plaintiffs have standing to seek injunctive relief as they have all either withdrawn from the Boston school system or have been placed in the school of their choice. Finally, defendants challenge the participation of Boston's Children First in this lawsuit.
The named plaintiffs are Michael Gattozzi, Kathleen McCoy, Nicholas Anderson, Kayleigh Barry-Meltzer, Sean Stoddard, John Feeney, Jamie Lee Higgins, Andrew Sharaffa, Thomas Stoddard and John O'Toole.1 Boston's Children First is an "advocacy and membership organization" whose goal is to achieve a "reform policy" returning the City of Boston to "neighborhood schools." Boston's Children First contends that the Boston School Committee's "anti-white" student assignment policy remains "the main barrier to the reform of our schools."
On May 19, 2000, Judge Gertner, to whom the case was initially assigned, deferred acting on the defendants' motion to dismiss on grounds of standing and mootness. Judge Gertner agreed with plaintiffs that they "should be allowed to conduct discovery before the court addresses any of the arguments premised on the information contained in the affidavits of [Hagop] Yessayan [the Director of Records Management for the Boston Public Schools]." Boston's Children First, 98 F.Supp.2d, at 114. She further observed that:
Yessayan's affidavits do not fully explain the workings of the school assignment process (the role of the three school zones and ideal racial percentages in the assignment process, how temporary and permanent seats are determined, how race affected the students with present school guarantees and how these students affected the number of available seats in the assignment process, the effect of present school guarantees on the future assignment process, etc.). The Court believes that the further workings of the adversary process will produce a more intelligible record from which to evaluate the plaintiffs' claims.
Judge Gertner also deferred acting on the defendants' suggestion of mootness. She reasoned that " it is not clear that the [S]chool [C]ommittee vote" taken on July 14, 1999, purporting to eliminate race as a factor in student assignments, is "sufficient to satisfy the `no reasonable expectation [of recurrence]' standard." Id. at 116. Judge Gertner further stated that she did not have adequate information to address plaintiffs' argument, that notwithstanding the School Committee's vote, the "continuation of the allegedly unlawful zones adversely affects [plaintiffs'] school assignments." She ruled that the "plaintiffs should be given the opportunity to conduct discovery to gather the requisite information to clarify this theory." Id. "Upon completion of discovery, if there is no factual dispute over whether the plaintiffs' school assignments are unlawfully affected by the continued use of the zones, the claims relying on this argument can be disposed of on summary judgment." Id.
Plaintiffs also sought to certify a class for which the ten individually named plaintiffs would serve as class representatives. The proposed class would consist of all children who: (1) live in the city of Boston; (2) are of school age; (3) were classified under the School Committee's prior assignment plan as "white"; and (4) were denied access to a public school because of that classification. In an Order dated June 29, 2000, Judge Gertner declined to address the class certification issue until the standing and mootness issues were resolved.
On March 26, 2001, the case was transferred to this session by the Court of Appeals. The parties were directed to complete discovery regarding the standing and mootness issues, and to submit further briefing once that discovery had been concluded. On August 22, 2001, the court heard oral argument on defendants' motion contesting plaintiffs' standing to maintain this lawsuit. The undisputed or uncontroverted facts relevant to the disposition of that motion are set out below.
Students are assigned to schools in the City of Boston under a so-called "Controlled Choice Student Assignment Plan." For purposes of elementary and middle school assignments, the City of Boston is divided into three geographic zones: the East Zone, the North Zone, and the West Zone.2 Each zone has its own administrative structure headed by a Zone Superintendent whose staff includes specialists in bilingual education, special education, curriculum development, in-service training, and student transportation. A Parent Information and Student Assignment Center in each zone helps parents cope with the school assignment process and provides other administrative support. Parent Councils and School Improvement and Planning Councils are intended to encourage parental involvement in school issues.
The boundaries of the zones are for the most part contiguous with major streets and avenues. "[T]he zones are drawn so as not to divide existing well-defined neighborhoods." Second Halloran Aff. ¶ 5. Students may apply to any school in the zone in which they reside. Id. ¶ 3. The plaintiffs all reside in the East Zone, which includes thirty Boston elementary schools. Students may also apply to designated citywide elementary programs such as Young Achievers and the Mission Hill School. Defendants' Ex. D(1).
Under the "New Plan," which took effect at the beginning of the 2000 school year, the following factors are considered in assigning students to a particular school: (a) the applicant's ranking of schools by choice; (b) whether a sibling is already assigned to the school; (c) whether the applicant lives within the school's "walk zone";3 and (d) the relative weight of a student's random number.4 Prior to the 2000 school year, under the "Old Plan," assignments were also adjusted to conform to "ideal racial percentages." Fourth Yessayan Aff. ¶ 12. If, for example, the "ideal" racial percentage for K-2 students in the West Zone was 20% white, 60% black, and 20% other minorities, and assuming that a school had 100 available seats, 20 seats would be allocated to white students, 60 seats to black students, and 20 seats to other minorities. Kindergarten seats under the Old Plan were also designated as "permanent" or "temporary." Because typically kindergarten programs are half-day, many schools had a "surplus" of kindergarten seats as compared to seats for full-day grade school students. A permanent kindergarten seat guaranteed a student a seat in the school's first grade class. A student assigned to a temporary seat, on the other hand, was required to apply for a first grade seat, assuming that all openings had not been filled by students with permanent seats. Plaintiffs allege that because of the School Committee's racial balancing policy, minority students received a disproportionate share of the permanent seats at certain schools. On July 14, 1999, the Boston School Committee voted to amend the Old Plan to eliminate race as a factor in the school admissions process.
Under the New Plan, students submit applications ranking their choice of schools in a series of assignment rounds. If a student fails to submit a timely application for the first round, he or she is not considered until the second round. If he or she misses that deadline, consideration is deferred to the third round, and so on. It goes without saying that a student is more likely to receive his or her first (or second) choice of schools if he or she applies for first round consideration.
In making assignments, a computer program sorts a student's choices of schools according to the following hierarchy:
first priority: sibling and walk zone— student has a sibling already assigned to the school and student resides within walk zone of school.
second priority: sibling— student has a sibling already assigned to the school.
third priority: walk zone—student resides within the walk zone of the school
Preference is given to the student with the higher priority ranking. In the event of a tie, the student with the lower random number is chosen. On November 10, 1999, the School Committee voted, on Superintendent Thomas Payzant's recommendation, to reduce the allocation of walk zone preferences from 100% to 50% of the available seats in each school. Fourth Halloran Aff., at Ex. 1.
In 1995, Nicholas applied for a K-1 kindergarten assignment after three selection rounds had been completed. He did not receive a kindergarten seat.
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