Greene v. School Bd. of City of Alexandria, Civ. A. No. 78-561-A.
| Decision Date | 05 March 1979 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 78-561-A. |
| Citation | 494 F. Supp. 467 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia |
| Parties | Nina E. GREENE et al., Plaintiffs, v. The SCHOOL BOARD OF the CITY OF ALEXANDRIA, Defendant. |
S. W. Tucker, Henry L. Marsh, III, Hill, Tucker & Marsh, Richmond, Va., for plaintiffs.
E. Walker Dudley, Boothe, Prichard & Dudley, Alexandria, Va., for defendant.
In this action plaintiffs assert that the decision by the defendant, The School Board of the City of Alexandria (the Board), to close certain elementary schools in the Alexandria school system places the burden of bussing to achieve racial integration more heavily upon black students than upon white.1 They allege that this burden is the result of a policy of terminating schools in predominantly black neighborhoods. The following relief is requested to alleviate this alleged denial of equal protection:
The action is founded on 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983 and jurisdiction is present pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3).2
The case was tried to the Court on February 7, 1979 and decision was reserved to allow counsel for the parties to submit post-trial briefs. This has now been accomplished.
From the evidence presented at trial, including the exhibits, and upon consideration of that evidence in light of the briefs of the parties, the Court makes the following findings of fact and conclusions of law:
1. Plaintiffs are black children, attending or expecting in the future to attend public schools in the City of Alexandria, and the Alexandria Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. No question is raised concerning the standing of the plaintiffs to bring this action, although since trial the plaintiff National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has acknowledged lack of sufficient proof to confer standing on it, and has moved to be dismissed as a plaintiff. That motion will be granted.
2. Defendant is the School Board of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, and is charged by law with the responsibility of establishing and maintaining a system of free public schools in the City. Included among its powers is the authority to provide for transportation of pupils.
3. As of March 31, 1973, the defendant operated fifteen (15) elementary schools with the percentages of black students as follows:
Jefferson Houston 96%
Cora Kelly 87%
Theodore Ficklin (Ficklin) 86%
Robert E. Lee (Lee) 86%
Lyles-Crouch 75%
Stonewall Jackson (Jackson) 40%
Mount Vernon 32%
Patrick Henry 18%
Douglas MacArthur (MacArthur) 11%
Maury 8%
Ramsey 6%
John Tyler (Tyler) 4%
George Mason 3%
Charles Barrett (Barrett) 3%
James K. Polk (Polk) 2%
4. As a part of a general plan to completely desegregate all of the elementary schools in Alexandria, the defendant, effective June 30, 1973, took the following actions:
By pairing is meant that one of the schools would serve grades K through 3 and the other would serve grades 4 through 6, for the combined school zones. In this way all of the children in the two zones would attend one school for grades K through 3 and the other school for grades 4 through 6. Bussing was used to transport children who lived in one school attendance zone but were attending the paired school in another zone. Under the pairing arrangement, therefore, a student would be bussed for approximately one-half of his or her K through 6 school career and not bussed for the other approximate one-half. In addition, some bussing was done within some zones for reasons unrelated to the objective of a racially integrated school system, such as where traffic conditions caused a safety problem for children who would have ordinarily walked to school.
Except to the extent that the closing of Ficklin school may be evidence of the practices complained of, plaintiffs do not challenge the propriety of the 1973 plan effecting racial integration of the elementary school system or the bussing instituted to accomplish that purpose. The plaintiffs' expert, Mr. Yale Rabin, testified concerning the impact on blacks of the bussing resulting from the original bussing plan. The pleadings, however, do not embrace in this action any more than a complaint that the present manner and practice of closing schools, and particularly the closing of Lee, Cora Kelly and perhaps Jackson, impacts on blacks more harshly than upon whites. Indeed, at trial counsel for the plaintiffs disclaimed any broader reach of the suit.
5. Because of repeated floodings and substantial damage to the school (in 1972 water reached a depth of 6 feet in the school library and approximately $400,000.00 in damage was sustained), operations at Cora Kelly school were terminated effective June 30, 1976, and all students in that school's attendance zone have since been bussed to its paired school, Tyler. A flood control project is currently underway which is expected to be completed near the end of 1979 or first of 1980. The defendant has not made a decision whether to reopen Cora Kelly but has committed itself no further than to reexamine the matter of its reopening when the flood control project is substantially completed, which has not yet occurred.
6. Effective June 30, 1978 the defendants closed Lee school and combined that school's operation with that of its paired school, MacArthur. MacArthur now serves grades K through 6 for the combined attendance zones.
7. Effective June 30, 1978 the defendant closed Jackson which had been paired with Polk and substituted Patrick Henry as the school to be paired with Polk. Patrick Henry thereafter was no longer a school serving grades K through 6.
Although the Court was told that the figures could be ascertained, no evidence of the actual number of black students bussed from one zone to another was presented to the Court. The evidence in the case does not persuade the Court that the defendant's action of closing certain schools in fact results in blacks bearing the burden of bussing more heavily than do whites, or that the Board maintains a policy of terminating schools in neighborhoods where the majority of students are black. Plaintiffs' expert Rabin concluded that there was an impact falling more heavily on blacks; however his basis for that conclusion was in large part that the closed schools were in predominantly black neighborhoods. When pressed on this Rabin revealed that his area of consideration was one within a three or four block radius from the closed school4 rather than one including that school's attendance zone. No one has questioned the propriety of the constitution of the attendance zones, and it is those zones which the Court feels should be considered in determining whether a closed school in that zone was serving predominantly children of one race. Since the bussing that takes place from one zone to the paired school in the other zone includes all the children in that zone, not just those in the three or four block area around the school, an evaluation of the racial composition of the entire zone is more appropriate. The evidence does not establish that the attendance zone of Lee school was predominantly black or that that of Jackson predominantly black or that that of Lyles-Crouch, the school Rabin concludes should have been closed instead of Lee, predominantly white.5 The areas of green shown on plaintiffs' exhibit 17 purport to show the areas of black population in the City. That map does not show the attendance zones, and the areas in green are not the only areas of black population in the City. The exhibit unfairly fails to reveal that a significant number of black children of a school age for grades K through 6 reside in other areas of the City, some concentrated and some not. Plaintiffs' exhibit 20 (prepared by the Administrative Assistant to the Superintendent of Schools, Leone, but offered in evidence by the plaintiffs) reveals the number and approximate location of the black K through 6 school age residents of all the attendance zones. Moreover, if the attendance zones are superimposed on plaintiffs' exhibit 17, and the green areas to which Rabin testified are accepted as the principal areas where grades K through 6 black children reside, the conclusion that the attendance zone of Jackson is predominantly black, that that of Lee is predominantly black, and that that of Lyles-Crouch is predominantly white, is incorrect.
Regarding the specific mandatory injunctive relief sought here, it is quite relevant that the number of black students in the MacArthur attendance zone is in fact greater than the number of black students in the Lee attendance zone.
Though the Court has found that the evidence does not establish that any policy or action of the defendant with regard to...
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...622 634 F.2d 622 Greene, In re 79-1259 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Fourth Circuit 9/17/80 E.D.Va., 494 F.Supp. 467 ...