Quality Ed. for All Child., Inc. v. SCHOOL BD., ETC., ILL.

• Decision Date: 27 June 1974
• Docket Number: No. 70 C 16.,70 C 16.
• Citation: 385 F. Supp. 803
• Parties: QUALITY EDUCATION FOR ALL CHILDREN, INC., et al., Plaintiffs, v. SCHOOL BOARD OF SCHOOL DISTRICT #205 OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY, ILLINOIS, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

385 F. Supp. 803

QUALITY EDUCATION FOR ALL CHILDREN, INC., et al., Plaintiffs, v. SCHOOL BOARD OF SCHOOL DISTRICT #205 OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY, ILLINOIS, Defendant.

No. 70 C 16.

United States District Court, N. D. Illinois, W. D.

June 27, 1974.

Donald S. Frey, Evanston, Ill., for plaintiffs.

Dale F. Conde, Pedderson, Menzimer, Conde, Stoner, Ferolie & Spelman, Rockford, Ill., for defendant School Board.

Anthony R. Fabiano, Rockford, Ill., for defendant-intervenor REA.

Rolland J. McFarland, Rockford, Ill. and James C. Murray, Richard M. Calkins, Burditt & Calkins, Chicago, Ill., for defendant-intervenor Parents.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

BAUER, District Judge.

This cause comes on the submission by the respective parties of their various proposals for school desegregation.

The named plaintiffs are all citizens of the United States and residents of School District #205 of Winnebago County, Illinois. Some of the named plaintiffs are individuals while others are community organizations which are allegedly voluntary associations of citizens, most of whom are also citizens of the school district and taxpayers of the State of Illinois. The defendant is the School Board of School District #205 of the Winnebago County Schools, State of Illinois.

On January 4, 1974 this Court allowed the parents of certain school children attending school in School District #205 to intervene in these proceedings as self styled defendant-intervenors. On February 15, 1974, the Rockford Education Association, Inc. ("REA"), which is the teachers' union for the school district, was allowed to intervene in this litigation as a defendant.

The instant suit is a class action, brought by the plaintiffs (qua individual taxpayers and voluntary associations) on behalf of other residents and taxpayers similarly situated in School District #205 of Winnebago County, State of Illinois ("School District"), pursuant to Rule 23(a) and Rule 23(b)(2), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The class represented by the named plaintiffs allegedly consists of all residents of the School District including both black and white citizens.¹

The instant suit seeks to redress the alleged deprivation of the plaintiffs' civil rights by the alleged racial discrimination and imbalanced educational opportunities existing in the defendant School District in violation of the Tenth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. See Quality Education for All Children, Inc. et al. v. School Board of School District #205 of Winnebago County, Illinois, 362 F.Supp. 985 (N.D. Ill.1973). This Court allegedly has jurisdiction over the instant action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1981.

This Court in its Memorandum Opinion and Order dated August 16, 1973 clearly explicated the relevant facts which strongly suggest a problem of minority isolation in the School District. See Quality Education for All Children, Inc. et al. v. School Board of School District #205 of Winnebago County, Illinois, supra. It was clear that the School District failed to comply with state standards relating to minority integration.² This Court's Memorandum Opinion and Order dated August 16, 1973 contains, inter alia, the following facts which are important to the proper evaluation of any school desegregation program:

1. Minority Isolation.

Minority enrollment in the School District is approximately 15% (6,233 out of 41,364 students). In the school year of 1971-72, there were a total of 5,362 minority students in the School District and 2,386 (44.4%) of those minority students were attending schools in which minority attendance exceeded 50% of the enrollment. From figures submitted by the School Board it was projected that these statistics would increase in the school year 1973-74 to 6,233 minority students, 2,758 (44.2%) in schools which have 50% or more minority attendance³ enrollment.⁴ Table 1, from the Order of August 16, 1973, summarizes these statistics in non-complying schools for the year 1972-73 and the projection for the following school year.⁵

                                                       TABLE 1
                                      MINORITY ENROLLMENT IN NON-COMPLYING SCHOOLS
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            |             School Year 1972-73          |          School Year 1973-74
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            |      Total    |  No. of  | % of minority |   Total    |  No. of  | % of minority
                            |    enrollment | minority |  enrollment   | enrollment | minority |  enrollment
                School      |               | students |               |            | students |
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                Barbour     |       431     |   317    |      73.5     |    431     |   317    |      73.5
                Beyer       |       355     |   137    |      38.5     |    355     |   137    |      38.5
                Dennis      |       400     |   370    |      92.5     |    400     |   370    |      92.5
                Ellis       |       435     |   343    |      78.8     |    408     |   316    |      77.4
                Haskell     |       432     |   285    |      65.9     |    432     |   284    |      65.7
                Henrietta   |       178     |   136    |      76.4     |    178     |   132    |      74.1
                Lathrop     |       305     |   219    |      71.8     |    305     |   319    |      71.8
                Lincoln Pk. |       532     |   299    |      56.2     |    532     |   299    |      56.2
                McIntosh    |       459     |   171    |      37.2     |    459     |   171    |      37.2
                Muldoon     |       290     |   226    |      77.9     |    290     |   226    |      77.9
                (to be      |               |          |               |            |          |
                closed      |               |          |               |            |          |
                '73-'74)    |               |          |               |            |          |
                Rock River  |       456     |   195    |      42.7     |    456     |   195    |      42.7
                Washington  |       579     |   350    |      60.4     |    579     |   350    |      60.4
                Wilson      |      1236     |   610    |      49.3     |   1236     |   509    |      49.2
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                

2. High Minority Enrollment Correlated to High Minority Underachievement.

Many witnesses who testified for the plaintiffs at the Hearing on July 2-3, 1973, expressed the opinion that schools with high minority enrollment have high minority underachievement.⁶ Certain statistics seem to indicate higher underachievement among minority students in schools cited for non-compliance with Illinois State Standards, as Table 3 from the Order of August 16, 1973 demonstrates:⁷

                                             TABLE 3
                                 MEAN SCORES OF 5th GRADE STUDENTS
                      (for percentages of minority enrollment see Table 1)
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------
                            |     Minority    |     Non-Minority     |  All Students
                            |-----------------|----------------------|----------------
                SCHOOL      | Reading |  Math |   Reading |  Math    | Reading |  Math
                ------------|---------|-------|-----------|----------|---------|------
                Barbour     |  36.77  | 34.89 |    46.30  | 40.76    |  38.80  | 36.14
                Beyer       |  30.63  | 44.05 |    36.88  | 44.60    |  34.18  | 44.30
                Dennis      |.........|.......|.... NO 5th| GRADE ...|.........|
                Ellis       |.........|.......|.... NO 5th| GRADE ...|.........|
                Haskell     |  31.67  | 31.92 |    38.54  | 35.63    |  34.70  | 33.56
                Henrietta   |.........|.......|.... NO 5th| GRADE ...|.........|
                Lathrop     |  45.14  | 47.00 |    47.08  | 46.16    |  45.63  | 46.63
                Lincoln Pk. |  28.87  | 29.24 |    42.12  | 37.47    |  33.36  | 32.03
                McIntosh    |  30.44  | 27.27 |    41.31  | 36.95    |  35.76  | 32.01
                Muldoon     |  29.21  | 29.61 |    40.11  | 28.92    |  31.39  | 29.47
                Rock River  |  32.30  | 36.19 |    41.69  | 35.05    |  37.75  | 35.57
                                    MEAN SCORES OF 7th GRADE STUDENTS
                Washington  |  31.94  | 33.92 |    38.76  | 39.59    |  35.20  | 36.64
                Wilson      |  27.68  | 34.59 |    38.88  | 42.57    |  33.83  | 38.97
                All City    |  29.63  | 34.30 |    49.94  | 53.27    |  47.52  | 51.01
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------
                

Additional data deems to reveal that schools with higher minority enrollment also have higher drop-out rates. For example, Auburn and West, which had respectively 30% and 15.7% minority enrollment in 1972-73, had a considerably higher drop-out rate over the year than Gilford, which had only .9% minority enrollment. It should be noted that high schools in School District #205 have considerably less minority isolation than the elementary or middle schools. Table 4 from the Order of August 16, 1974, clearly demonstrates this:

                                              TABLE 4
                                       DROP-OUT RATE IN SCHOOL
                                    DISTRICT #205 FOR GRADES 9-12
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                          | Percent of |
                          |  minority  |   Percentage of drop-outs to the total enrollment
                          | enrollment |----------------------------------------------------
                School    |  1972-73   |  1970-71      |      1971-72     |        1972-73
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                Auburn    |    30.7    | 11.0 (227)    |     12.5 (252)   |       12.1 (237)
                East      |    10.4    |  8.0 (192)    |      7.4 (186)   |        7.2 (195)
                Gilford   |      .9    |  4.0 (110)    |      2.6 (68)    |        2.2 (55)
                Jefferson |     7.0    |  8.0 (167)    |     10.9 (258)   |       10.9 (247)
                West      |    15.7    |  7.0 (164)    |      9.2 (205)   |        9.9 (946)
                ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                

Although some witnesses

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