United States v. ELLOREE SCH. DIST. NO. 7, ORANGEBURG CO., SC
| Decision Date | 03 April 1968 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 67-628. |
| Citation | 283 F. Supp. 557 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, by Ramsey CLARK, Attorney General of the United States, Plaintiff, v. ELLOREE SCHOOL DISTRICT NUMBER 7, ORANGEBURG COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA, a public body corporate; Hugo L. Felkel, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Elloree School District Number 7, Orangeburg County; C. Francis Martin, James Howard Shirer, Jakie Felder, and Jack Ford, Members of the Board of Trustees of Elloree School District Number 7, Orangeburg County, South Carolina; and M. G. Austin, Superintendent of Elloree School District Number 7, Orangeburg County, South Carolina, Defendants. |
Klyde Robinson, U. S. Atty., Columbia, S. C., Frank E. Schwelb, Frank W. Hill, Robert B. Hocutt, Attys., U. S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for plaintiff.
Augustus T. Graydon, Graydon & Davis, Columbia, S. C., for defendant.
FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW, OPINION AND ORDER
Filed by the Attorney General under Section 407 of the Civil Rights Act of 19641 and supported by his certificate of the essential jurisdictional facts thereunder,2 this action seeks the desegregation of the public schools maintained by the defendant school district.
The record herein is confined to the deposition of the district's superintendent, M. G. Austin, taken at the instance of the plaintiff, and certain exhibits produced and identified in the course of such deposition. This record establishes that the defendant herein, a public school district, organized under the laws of South Carolina, operates two public schools, separately housed, located about a mile apart, and each offering a full complement of elementary and high school grades. The division between elementary and high school is uniform in the two: 1 through 6 are classified as elementary, 7 through 12 as high school. Both schools serve the school population living within the geographical limits of the school district. Economically, the district is agricultural. Its population is about two-thirds Negro and one-third white.
Prior to the school year 1965-6, one of the schools operated by the defendant, known as the Elloree Training School, was all-Negro, both in faculty and student body; the other, designated as Elloree Public School, was all-white, in faculty and student body. Administratively, all Negro students enrolled were assigned to the Training School and similarly all white students to the Public School. Following the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and by way of compliance therewith, the school district adopted for the school year 1965-6 a freedom of choice plan, under which the parents of a student were given the right within a fixed and limited time to apply in writing on a form furnished by the district for transfer of their child to either of the schools operated by the district. Absent such application, students were assigned to the school they attended the previous school year. This plan followed generally the plans being proposed by other school districts in this District and was approved by the Office of Education, H. E. W. The parents of eighteen Negro students applied for transfer from the Training School to Elloree Public School under this original freedom-of-choice plan. Eleven of such applications were rejected for a variety of reasons. Several were denied because of poor grades, one because she was an unwed mother and three because of the failure of the parents to sign the request for transfer in time. Some of these reasons indicated an excessive and unreasonable zeal for administrative inflexibility. While the reasons given were not proper grounds in most instances for the denial of transfer, the good faith of the defendant in the action it took was not put in issue herein.3
The defendant has continued to operate its school system under this freedom-of-choice plan, unchanged except for the discontinuance, after the 1965-6 school year, of any denial administratively of a transfer on any ground other than the failure of the parents to sign the transfer application. Even this latter requirement was relaxed for the school year 1967-8, though it should be noted that this relaxation followed an inquiry by the FBI in April, 1966, into the operation of defendant's freedom-of-choice plan.
For the current school year 1967-8, 14 or 15 students sought transfer from the Training School to the Elloree Public School but only nine actually enrolled in the latter school. 591 of the students at the Training School and 287 of the students at the Public School indicated in writing their choice of school for attendance.
Considerable attention was focused by the plaintiff, during the examination of Mr. Austin, upon a comparison of the relative quality of the two school systems. It was agreed that the physical plants of the two schools are comparable. The Training School has 26 permanent classrooms, together with 3 mobile classrooms, just completed.4 The enrollment in the Training School for the year 1966-7 was 888. South Carolina, however, has made quite a distinction between enrollment and average daily attendance. A teacher's load is determined not by the number of pupils on the roll but by those who actually attend class. Accordingly, all allocations of state aid for teachers' salaries are made on the basis of average daily attendance.5 By like reasoning teaching loads should be measured in terms not of enrollment but of average daily attendance. In the elementary grades (1 through 6), student load at the Training School, calculated in terms of this average daily attendance, was 505 (as contrasted with an enrollment figure of 549) and in the high school was 305 (as contrasted with the enrollment figure of 339). 16 teachers staff the elementary grades at the Training School, with an average class load of just over 31 students, based on average daily attendance; in the high school, there is a like number of teachers, with an average class load of 19, again based on average daily attendance.
The Public School, on the other hand, has 15 classrooms. It has an enrollment of 182 in the elementary grades, with an average daily attendance of 179. There are 6 teachers for such elementary grades, with an average class load, based on average daily attendance, of approximately 30. In the high school, the enrollment figure is 154 and the average daily attendance is 155.6 It has 11 teachers; with an average class load of 14, calculated on average daily attendance.
Summarized, these comparisons of the two schools operated by the defendant district are as follows:
Training Public
School School
No. Enrolled in Elementary Grades 549 182
Average Daily Attendance in
Elementary Grades 505 179
Teachers in Elementary Grades 16 6
Teacher Load Based on ADA 31 30
No. Enrolled in High School 339 1546
Average Daily Attendance in H. S. 305 1556
Teachers in H. S. 16 11
Teacher Load Based on ADA 19 14
For purposes of state aid, teachers in South Carolina are graded by their scores attained on the National Teachers' Examination. Those with the higher level of scores (i. e., 500 or more) are graded "A" and those with lesser scores are given "B" and "C" certificates. At the Training School, there are two teachers with an "A" certificate, 18 with a "B" certificate and 6 with a "C" certificate. On the other hand, the Public School has 13 teachers with an "A" certificate and 2 with a "B" certificate. This variation in certificates has created naturally a variation in teachers' salaries in favor of teachers at the Public School. Reflecting this variation, Elloree Training School, on average, received in annual state aid per teacher $4,160; Elloree Public School received $4,835. On the other hand, more teachers at the Training School have Master's Degrees than teachers at the Public School (i. e., 7 in the Training School and 1 in the Public School).
The applications for accreditation, submitted by the two schools on behalf of their respective high schools, were offered by the plaintiff as providing some basis for a comparison of the two schools.7 Thus, in library facilities and support, the two schools are relatively equal. The Training School reports 15 library books per pupil as against 13 at the Public School.8 At the Training School all teachers have earned "a Bachelor's degree or the equivalency certificate" but at the Public School one had not. No teacher at the Public School exceeded the standard teaching load. At the Training School, on the other hand, one carried more than the standard teaching load. The basic curriculum offerings at the two schools seemed largely similar, though the exercise of choice of elective subjects, largely accounting for the difference in course offerings, varied somewhat in the two schools. In the high school at the Public School, the courses offered totalled 33, as opposed to 29 at the Training School. One school had a substantial class in Business Mathematics, which was not duplicated in the other. In the eighth grade in one school, the science offering is General Science and in the other Earth Science. In the higher grades, Biology as a science elective is generally preferred over Chemistry in one school and the reverse in the other.
On the basis of their applications, supplemented by such additional inquiries as may have appeared appropriate, both high schools were duly accredited. In fact, Superintendent Austin testified that both had been accredited for many years. On the other hand, the elementary department at the Public School was accredited for the school year 1966-7 but...
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Robinson v. Vollert
...865 (5th Cir. 1966); Whittenberg v. Greenville County School Dist., 298 F.Supp. 784, 789 (D.S.C.1969); United States v. Elloree School District No. 7, 283 F.Supp. 557, 562 (D.S.C.1968). Precedent in this Circuit leaves no doubt that the Department's action in this case violated the separati......