Hart v. COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD OF ARLINGTON CTY., VIRGINIA, Civ. A. No. 193-70-A.

• Citation: 329 F. Supp. 953
• Decision Date: 10 August 1971
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 193-70-A.
• Parties: John E. HART et al., Plaintiffs, v. COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD OF ARLINGTON COUNTY, VIRGINIA, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia

329 F. Supp. 953

John E. HART et al., Plaintiffs, v. COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD OF ARLINGTON COUNTY, VIRGINIA, et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 193-70-A.

United States District Court, E. D. Virginia, Alexandria Division.

August 10, 1971.

S. W. Tucker, Henry L. Marsh, III, Hill, Tucker & Marsh, Richmond, Va., Robert M. Alexander, Arlington, Va., Larry Latto, Allison W. Brown, Jr., Washington, D. C., Jack Greenberg, James M. Nabrit, III, Norman Chachkin, New York City, for plaintiffs.

R. D. McIlwaine, III, Richmond, Va., James H. Simmonds, Gregory Ulrich Evans, Arlington, Va., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

OREN R. LEWIS, District Judge.

The black plaintiffs brought this suit in May of 1970¹ to require the Arlington County School Board to adopt and forthwith implement a plan which would promptly and efficiently complete the elimination of racial segregation in the public schools of Arlington County.

The Arlington County School Board did just that—in June of 1971—when it adopted the plan for desegregating Drew and Hoffman-Boston Elementary Schools.

Briefly stated, the plan provides that the students in grades one through six of Drew and Hoffman-Boston will be assigned to elementary schools throughout the Arlington school system. Kindergartens will continue at both Drew and Hoffman-Boston. No present school boundaries will be changed. A school will not be assigned students in such numbers that its total enrollment will exceed its rated capacity by more than five per cent. Every elementary school will be integrated. Transportation will be furnished where necessary.

The Drew building will be used for a model school, to be operated on an integrated basis—for the Montesorri pre-kindergarten, the Drew kindergarten, adult education and for other school programs. The Hoffman-Boston building will be used for the Hoffman-Boston pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and for the seventh grade of the Thomas Jefferson (integrated) Junior High School.

The School Board has, as shown by the table appended hereto, eliminated the last vestiges of the old dual school system and has converted to a unitary system throughout the County.

No one seriously questions that the primary responsibility for solving these problems rests with the School Board (Brown II, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955))—or that it has the duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system (Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968))—or that it must do it on or before July 1, 1971 (Adams v. School District Number 5, 444 F.2d 99 (4th Cir. June 10, 1971).

Paraphrasing Judge Craven in Allen v. Asheville City Board of Education, 434 F.2d 902 (4th Cir. 1970), it is plain to see that the Arlington County School Board has gone further down the road toward desegregation than any school board has ever been compelled to go, and probably much further than could be required.

Nevertheless, the plaintiffs fault the School Board's plan²—They say all of the burdens and inconveniences of the desegregation process are imposed entirely on the black children and their parents—White children will continue to do just what they are doing—attending schools in their own neighborhoods, while the black children will be required to spend about an hour a day being bused to and from schools away from their neighborhoods—They say this will have an adverse effect on the black children by causing them to believe that they are different from white children—that they are no good.

They further say the closing of the black schools amounts to an unlawful discrimination against the black children —when the required desegregation can be accomplished by other means, such as interchanging a like number of black and white children between the adjacent white schools—or, if necessary, between all of the other elementary schools in the County.

This Court rejects the plaintiffs' contention that the Arlington County School Board unlawfully discriminated against the black children when it desegregated the Drew and Hoffman-Boston Elementary Schools.

"* * * The mechanics of integration, where the purpose is obviously to implement the Brown II principle and effectively achieves that end, is ordinarily a matter within the discretion of school administrators. The question is not whether we might have selected different schools for extinction, nor even whether substantial evidence supports the Board's decision, but is instead whether the Board's decision is so plainly unfair that it clearly amounts to invidious

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