Mapp v. BD. OF EDUC. OF CITY OF CHATTANOOGA, TENN.

• Decision Date: 12 March 1986
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 3564.
• Citation: 630 F. Supp. 876
• Parties: James Jonathan MAPP, et al., Plaintiffs, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the CITY OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Tennessee

630 F. Supp. 876

James Jonathan MAPP, et al., Plaintiffs, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the CITY OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 3564.

United States District Court, E.D. Tennessee, S.D.

March 12, 1986.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Richard Dinkins and Avon N. Williams, Jr., Nashville, Tenn., and Lowell Johnston, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, New York City, for plaintiffs.

Raymond B. Witt, Jr., Eugene N. Collins & Associates, Chattanooga, Tenn., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM

EDGAR, District Judge.

This school desegregation suit is now nearly 26 years old. After extensive litigation the Chattanooga Board of Education, at the direction of the Court, adopted an amended desegregation plan (herein the "Plan") on June 16, 1971. The goal of this Plan was to eliminate from the Chattanooga public schools all vestiges of state-imposed segregation and to create a unitary school system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch.

On July 26, 1971, this Court, through The Honorable Frank W. Wilson, held that the contents of the Plan reached the desired goal with respect to the City's elementary and junior high schools. Mapp v. Board of Education of City of Chattanooga, Tennessee, 329 F.Supp. 1374 (E.D.Tenn.1971). This ruling was upheld on appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. 477 F.2d 851, cert. denied, 414 U.S. 1022, 94 S.Ct. 445, 38 L.Ed.2d 313 (1973). On November 16, 1973, Judge Wilson placed the Court's imprimatur on the Plan as it applied to Chattanooga's high schools. 366 F.Supp. 1257. This decision was also upheld on appeal by the Sixth Circuit. 525 F.2d 169 (1975), cert. denied, 427 U.S. 911, 96 S.Ct. 3199, 49 L.Ed.2d 1203 (1976). On August 2, 1974, then Chattanooga Superintendent of Schools James W. Henry filed an affidavit with the Court asserting that the school system was in compliance with the Court's orders as embodied in the Plan. On April 20, 1976, the District Court issued its final order on the mandate from the Sixth Circuit. At that point the Plan portrayed a school system which was unitary and in which all vestiges of state-imposed segregation had been eliminated.

Judge Wilson in his 1973 opinion and accompanying order had modified the Plan in part as follows:

The Board may at any time effect changes in school attendance zones under the following circumstances: (a) where such changes are administrative in nature and involve no transfer of pupils; (b) where such changes do not serve to further increase the majority racial ratio in any school affected thereby; (c) where such changes involve the alteration of school attendance zones to include continuous annexed areas; and (d) where school attendance zones are created wholly within newly annexed areas. Notice of the change of any school attendance zones as provided by this paragraph shall be filed in this cause not less than 30 days before the change will take effect. 366 F.Supp. at 1261.

Since that time, the City of Chattanooga has annexed additional territory, and the defendant Board of Education has filed a number of reports with the Court with respect to zone changes and other developments affecting schools in accordance with the Court's instructions. These zone changes and reports referred to matters impacting Chattanooga public schools located both in and out of newly annexed areas.

On July 16, 1979, the plaintiffs filed a "motion for further relief" in opposition to the Board's establishment of a school for academics at Brainerd High School. On August 10, 1983, the plaintiffs filed an amended motion for further relief seeking to reverse the Board's decision to close Riverside High School. On October 23, 1984, the defendants filed a motion for relief from final judgment seeking the dismissal of this suit. Since none of these motions had been acted upon, the Court on May 21, 1985, ordered an evidentiary hearing which would be confined to the following issues and which would necessarily be determinative of the various pending motions:

1. Whether the defendants have implemented the Plan of the Chattanooga Board of Education which received final approval by Judge Frank W. Wilson by order entered April 20, 1976.

2. Whether the Chattanooga Board of Education has, by any action taken by it since April 20, 1976, reestablished any vestiges of a dual school system.

This hearing was held on October 28, 29, 30 and 31, 1985, and with respect to the above issues, this Court makes the determinations that appear below.

I. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PLAN

Without serious question the Court finds that the Board did in fact implement all aspects of the Plan which had received court approval—except in the area of desegregation of faculty and staff. Paragraph V of the Plan, which addresses the faculty and staff issue, provides in its entirety that:

V. DESEGREGATION OF FACULTY AND OTHER STAFF

In order to implement a quality educational program for all the school children attending Chattanooga Public Schools consistent with the guidelines set forth by the District Court of the United Stated sic, the Board of Education proposes the following course of action.

A. Effective at the beginning of the 1971-72 school year, the principals, teachers, teacher aides, and other staff who work directly with children at a school shall be so assigned that in no case will the racial composition of a staff indicate that a school is intended for black students or white students. The system shall assign the staff described above so that the approximate ratio of black to white teachers in each school, and the ratio of other staff in each, is substantially the same as each such approximate ratio is to the teachers and other staff, respectively, in the entire school system as of the tenth day of the 1970-71 school year. Teachers shall be assigned on the basis of certification and qualification for the academic subjects or grade levels to be taught.

The school system shall, to the extent necessary to carry out this desegregation plan, direct members of its staff as a condition of continued employment to accept new assignments.

B. Following implementation of Step 1, staff members who work directly with children, and professional staff who work on the administrative level will be hired, assigned, promoted, paid, demoted, dismissed, and otherwise treated without regard to race, color, or national origin. All courses of action pertaining to hiring, assigning, promoting, paying, demoting, and dismissing are subject to existing Tennessee law, State School Board Regulations, and local ordinances.

C. If there is to be a reduction in the number of principals, teachers, teacher aides, or other professional staff employed by the school system which will result in a dismissal or demotion of any such staff member, the staff member to be dismissed or demoted must be selected on the basis of objective and reasonable nondiscriminatory standards from among all the staff of the school system. In addition, if there is any such dismissal or demotion, no staff vacancy may be filled through recruitment of a person of a race, color, or national origin different from that of the individual dismissed or demoted, until each displaced staff member regardless of race who is qualified has had an opportunity to fill the vacancy and has failed to accept an offer to do so.

As related to staff reduction, the school board will adhere to nonracial and objective criteria to be used in selecting the staff member who is to be dismissed or demoted. These criteria shall be stated as administrative procedures and/or Board policy, thereby becoming a matter of public record. The school system also shall record and preserve the evaluation of staff members under the criteria. Such evaluation shall be made available upon request to the dismissed or demoted employee.

Demotion as used above includes any reassignment (1) under which the staff member receives less pay or has less responsibility than under the assignment he held previously, (2) which requires a lesser degree of skill than did the assignment he held previously, or (3) under which the staff member is asked to teach a subject or grade other than one for which he is certified or for which he has had substantial experience within a reasonably current period.

Promotion includes any reassignment (1) under which the staff member receives more pay or more responsibility than under the assignment he held previously, or (2) which requires a greater degree of skill than did the assignment he held previously.

The purpose of this plan is to provide a method by which the staffs of each of the schools shall be desegregated in approximately the same ratio as black teachers and white teachers in the total system. It is the intent of the Board of Education through this plan for staff desegregation to remove racial identity as a result of teacher assignments in schools while in all instances effecting reassignments through objective administrative procedures.

Within the framework of commitments to implement total staff desegregation, specific procedures will be developed internally by the system's administrative staff and will be approved and periodically reviewed by the Board of Education.

In 1971-72 the Board, in accordance with paragraph V, subparagraph A, supra, did transfer faculty and staff so that each school had the approximate ratio of black and white teachers as the ratio of black and white ratios in the entire school system. Since that time, however, the Board has apparently not felt constrained to maintain anything approximating that ratio. In making faculty and staff assignments within the school system, the school administration utilizes, in addition to race, a number of factors including whether the faculty/staff person will be able to work with children and parents; leadership ability; ability to work under pressure; and the degree of acceptance that it is perceived the assignee will have in...