Bradley v. Board of Public Instruction of Pinellas Co., Fla., 28639.
| Decision Date | 28 July 1970 |
| Docket Number | No. 28639.,28639. |
| Citation | 431 F.2d 1377 |
| Parties | Leon W. BRADLEY, Jr., a minor, by Leon W. Bradley, Sr., his father and next friend, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BOARD OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION OF PINELLAS COUNTY, FLORIDA, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
James B. Sanderlin, St. Petersburg, Fla., Jack Greenberg, William L. Robinson, Norman J. Chachkin, Drew S. Days, III, New York City, for plaintiffs-appellants.
Edward A. Turville, St. Petersburg, Fla., for defendants-appellees.
William C. Cramer, U. S. House of Rep., Washington, D. C., amicus curiae.
Gerald Mager, Legal Counsel to the Governor, Tallahassee, Fla., for Claude R. Kirk, Jr., amicus curiae.
Before SIMPSON, MORGAN and INGRAHAM, Circuit Judges.
ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
In the light of subsequent changes made by the school board in attendance zones and enrollment figures, and in order to incorporate into the Pinellas County school system new schools not shown in the original record, all as set out in the school board's motion for rehearing, the prior opinion and judgment of this court of July 1, 1970, are withdrawn and the following opinion and orders are substituted therefor.
The issue presented in this school desegregation case is whether the Pinellas County, Florida, public school system is unitary. The district court, by its final order of August 4, 1969, held that the desegregation plan submitted by the school board for the year 1969-1970 (hereinafter, the school board's plan) effectively "converted the old dual system to a unitary system in which racial discrimination is eliminated".1 The school board's plan was put into effect for the 1969-70 school year even though plaintiffs appealed. From the district court's order, plaintiffs filed notice of appeal to this court on September 12, 1969. Upon oral argument and this court's request for additional findings of fact, the district court entered its supplemental findings on April 18, 1970.
Tested against the six criteria of Green v. New Kent County School Bd., 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968) — faculty, transportation, staff, facilities, extracurricular activities, and student body composition — and the end to be achieved as set out in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 19, 90 S.Ct. 29, 24 L.Ed.2d 19 (1969) — that the school system no longer operate as a dual system based on race or color but as a "unitary school system within which no person is to be effectively excluded from any school because of race or color" — we find the school board's plan, as approved by the district court, to be deficient in student assignment in certain schools. In keeping with the approach of Ellis v. Board of Public Instruction of Orange County, Florida, 5 Cir., 1970, 423 F.2d 203; Mannings v. Board of Public Instruction of Hillsborough County, Florida, 5 Cir., 1970, 427 F.2d 874; and Davis v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, 5 Cir., 1970, 430 F.2d 883; we will review all the requisites of Green, supra, to make a final determination as to whether Pinellas County has been effectively converted into a unitary system.
The Pinellas school system covers the whole of Pinellas County with a land area of 265 square miles. The student population of the system is approximately 80,000, of which 12,700, or 16%, are Negro students. Approximately 9,500 of these Negro students live in the City of St. Petersburg, in the southernmost part of the system.
Since 1964, when the original complaint in this case was filed up to the 1969-70 school year, there has been a gradual decrease in the percentage of students in all-Negro schools throughout the entire system. In the 1969-70 school year, there were 102 schools in operation — 72 elementary, 19 junior high, and 11 senior high schools. During the 1969-70 school year, 12 elementary schools, one junior high and one senior high school served all-Negro or virtually all-Negro student bodies. Approximately 8,400, or 66%, of the 12,700 Negro students in the entire system at all levels attended all-Negro or virtually all-Negro schools.
Under the school board's plan, the plan approved by the district court, there were to be 107 schools in operation — 75 elementary, 20 junior high, and 12 senior high schools. At the elementary level, nine would remain all-Negro or virtually all-Negro. There would also remain the one all-Negro junior high and one all-Negro senior high school. Under this plan, 8,200 out of the 12,700 Negro students in the entire system at all grade levels, or 64%, would attend all-Negro or virtually all-Negro schools.
The school board's plan does not change the already-existing majority-to-minority transfer policy, which during the 1969-70 school year has resulted in the transfer of only 62 students.2 The plan also leaves intact two bi-racial committees operating in Pinellas County. We do not disapprove of either of these two features of the school board's plan.
The faculty and staff desegregation standard enunciated in Singleton v. Jackson Municipal Separate School District, 5 Cir., 1969, 419 F.2d 1211, requires assignment on a basis whereunder the ratio of Negro to white teachers and staff members in each school is substantially the same as each such ratio is to teachers and staff in the entire school system. This standard has been met in the Pinellas County school system. According to the school board's "Instructional Personnel Assignments" submitted to this court and dated July 15, 1970, each school system has a faculty composition which closely approximates the 87.5%-white — 12.5%-Negro ratio in compliance with Singleton. The Board is ordered to implement this faculty and staff assignment for its 1970-71 school year.
From the record, it appears that the Pinellas County transportation system is operated on a desegregated basis. The district court, through its approval of the school board's Exhibits D-1, D-2, and D-3, found that the transportation is equally available to both Negro and white students in Pinellas County.
The facts indicate that the extracurricular activities and facilities of the Pinellas County schools are also operated on a desegregated basis. There is no complaint regarding transportation, extracurricular activities or facilities.
The district court is directed to enter an order requiring the continued desegregation of facilities and extracurricular activities and to include the requirements of Singleton v. Jackson, supra, as to transportation, school construction, and school site selection as a part of the order.
We have examined the board's proposed plan, and, on our own initiative, have considered various means of modifying the plan so as to eliminate all-Negro or virtually all-Negro student bodies while at the same time maintaining the neighborhood school concept of the school system. The Pinellas school board does not purport to use the strict neighborhood assignment system that was applicable in Ellis, supra, but rather employs attendance zones based on discretionary zone lines. We find that the situation can be greatly improved by pairing some schools located in close proximity to each other, as was done in Mannings, supra, by redrawing the zone lines in several instances, and by grouping several schools into a common attendance zone.
In the following pages of this opinion, we undertake to set out the modifications of the school board's plan which will be necessary to achieve an assignment of students commensurate with a unitary system. The modifications reduce the number of all-Negro or virtually all-Negro elementary schools from nine, as contemplated by the district court-approved board's plan, to three. The modification will desegregate all junior and senior high schools in the system. Instead of 64% of the Negro students being assigned to all-Negro schools, as would be the case under the school board's plan, the result under our modifications will be 14.2% (1,738 students instead of 8,700). Every Negro child will attend an integrated school at some time during his educational career.
Attached as Appendix A is a chart depicting student body composition by school and race under the district court-approved board plan and the plan as modified by this court. The district court is directed to implement the board's plan as herein modified before August 14, 1970.
The majority of the Negro population in the Pinellas school system is situated in a densely populated 40-square block area in the middle of St. Petersburg. Nine of the 11 schools which would remain all-Negro or virtually all-Negro under the board's plan are located within this area-seven elementary, one junior high, and one senior high. Together, these nine schools enrolled 7,019, or 58% of the entire Negro student population in the school system, during the 1969-70 school year.
The other two all-Negro or virtually all-Negro schools remaining under the board's plan are located in the urban area of the City of Clearwater in the northern sector of Pinellas County. Both are elementary.3
As for the two all-Negro schools in Clearwater, the board has paired Palmetto Elementary (formerly 331 Negroes, 0 white) with Kings Highway (formerly 0 Negro, 718 whites), which schools have contiguous attendance zones and are less than one mile apart. Such a pairing has resulted in an enrollment in the schools of 260 Negroes, 650 whites as of the end of the 1969-70 school year. In light of these facts, we find that Palmetto has been effectively desegregated under this pairing plan.
The remaining all-Negro school in the Clearwater area is Curtis Elementary (362 Negroes, 0 white). The board's earlier attempt to desegregate this school by extending its attendance zone lines northward into the Dunedin attendance zone has not effectively achieved this goal. There being...
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Carr v. Montgomery County Board of Education, 74-2633
...Bd., 5 Cir.1970, 434 F.2d 11451, cert. denied, 1971, 402 U.S. 953, 91 S.Ct. 1613, 29 L.Ed.2d 123; Bradley v. Board of Public Instruc. of Pinellas County, 5 Cir.1970, 431 F.2d 1377, cert. denied, 1971, 402 U.S. 943, 91 S.Ct. 1608, 29 L.Ed.2d 111; Hightower v. West, 5 Cir.1970, 430 F.2d 552; ......
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Carr v. Montgomery County Board of Education, Civ. A. No. 2072-N.
...to desegregate these schools. 27 For instance, Lanier—57 percent white, or Carver—61 percent white. 28 Bradley v. Bd. of Public Instruction, 431 F.2d 1377, 1380-1381 (5th Cir. 1970). 29 Weaver v. Bd. of Public Instruction, 467 F.2d 473, 474 (5th Cir. 1972) (all-black school 1.2 to 5.6 miles......
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Price v. Denison Independent School Dist., s. 81-2264
...or virtually all-white schools in the circumstances of those particular cases. See e.g., Bradley v. Board of Public Instruction of Pinellas County, Florida, 431 F.2d 1377, 1383-85 (5th Cir.1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 943, 91 S.Ct. 1608, 29 L.Ed.2d 111 (1971) (court-ordered plan eliminates......
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Smiley v. Vollert, Civ. A. No. 2643.
...Elementary `without creating impractical attendance zones or inordinate transportation problems.' Bradley v. Board of Public Instruction of Pinellas County, 431 F.2d 1377, 1381 (5th Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 943, 91 S.Ct. 1608, 29 L.Ed.2d 111 (1971). Although pairing might not be t......