DYER, Circuit Judge:
In this desegregation class action brought against the Corpus Christi Independent School District and its Board of Trustees,1 the district court held that the city’s mexican-american and black children were segregated from anglo children in the public school system as a result of official action of the Board in violation of the mandate of Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District, S.D. Texas 1970, 324 F.Supp. 599 (Cisneros I). The court ordered an immediate reassignment of the District’s teaching staff, consideration of the achievement or preservation of a “reasonable mixture” of mexican-american and black students with other students in construction of new schools, the filing of a revised student assignment plan for the purpose of creating “a unitary school system”, and the creation of a Human Relations Advisory committee. Subsequently, after extended hearings, the court formulated and ordered into effect a student assignment plan to achieve integration of the school system in accordance with contemporary constitutional guidelines. Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District, S.D. Texas 1971, 330 F.Supp. 1377 (Cisneros II). See Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 1971, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554. This order was stayed by Mr. Justice Black, sitting as Circuit Justice, pending consideration of the merits of the Board’s appeal by this Court.2
This is a novel school desegregation ease. A large number of mexicanamerican children attend the public schools of Corpus Christi. Although they are now and have been historically separated in fact from anglos in the schools of the city, this separation has {/never had a statutory origin. Therefore, unlike cases involving the traditional black-white dual systems, the question is whether the segregation of mexican-american children who are not the victims of statutorily mandated segregation is constitutionally impermissible. We hold that it is, and affirm the district court’s finding that the mexican-american children of Corpus Christi y/are segregated in violation of the Con[145]*145stitution. For reasons hereinafter explicated, however, we disagree with the remedy prescribed by the district court and require it to be modified.
Although we are faced with a tri-eth-nic school population, the determination below that the relatively few black students in the school system were segregated contrary to law is basically uncontested in this appeal. The district court must, however, also reconsider the remedy with regard to black students in accordance with this opinion.
The Corpus Christi Independent School District encompasses the metropolitan area of Corpus Christi, Texas. The district is crescent-shaped extending approximately 11 miles in- length from its southeast to its northwest corner, and varies in width from three to four miles. Following the curvatures of Corpus Christi and Nueces Bays, it is bounded by water on its north, east, and south sides.
In the school year 1969-70, upon which the statistics in this case are based,3 there were 46,023 scholastics in the public school system. In terms of total ethnic distribution, 47.4% of the school children were anglo, 47.2% mexi-can-american, and 5.4% black. There are 61 public schools in the school system, 45 elementary schools, 12 junior highs, and 5 senior highs. In terms of ethnic distribution by grade level, of the 24,389 elementary students, 43.4% were anglo, 50.8% mexican-american, and 5.-7% black. Of the 11,793 junior high students, 48% were anglo, 46.7% mexi-can-american, and 5.25% black. Of the 9,841 senior high school students, 56.4% were anglo, 38.9% mexican-american, and 4.6% black.
The ethnic distribution figures further show that in 1969-70, one third of the district’s mexican-american high school students attended Moody High School, the enrollment of which was 97% mexican-american and black (11% black). Another one-third of the mexi-can-american high school students attend Miller High, which is 80% mexi-can-american and black (14% black). One-third of the district’s anglo high school students attend King High, the enrollment of which is over 90% anglo. Another 57% of the anglo high school students attend either Carroll or Ray high schools, each of which is over 75% anglo.
In the junior high schools, approximately 61% of the mexican-american students attend three junior highs which are over 90% mexican-american in enrollment. Over 50% of the anglo junior high students attend junior highs that are over 90% anglo in enrollment. Of the 24,389 elementary level students, approximately 10,178 mexiean-americans and blacks (1,250 blacks) attend elementary schools in which over 90% of the enrollment is non-anglo. Approximately 6,561 anglo elementary students attend schools in which the non-anglo enrollment is less than 20%. The enrollment in eleven of the 45 elementary schools in the school system is over 90% mexican-american, over 75% mexican-american in three other schools, over 95% mexican-american and black in four other schools, over 90% anglo in six other schools, and over 80% anglo in nine other schools.4
At the elementary level alone, 29 of the 45 schools, or almost a full two-thirds, are clearly identifiable as con[146]*146sisting of one ethnic derivation. The same total figure comparisons can roughly be made with regard to the junior and senior high schools of the school system.
Highly relevant to these enrollment statistics are the historic and established residential patterns of the city. There is today and has traditionally been substantial residential concentration by ethnic groups in Corpus Christi. / The mexican-american and black population of the district is concentrated in a narrow area that comprises the middle part of the district, running roughly southwest to northeast, bordered on the south side by a major city artery, Ayres Street. This residential concentration is referred to throughout the litigation as the mexican “corridor”. To the south of Ayres Street, as the corridor boundary, the relative number of mexican-ameri-cans and blacks, as opposed to anglos, drops sharply. The southern part of the district exists almost exclusively as an anglo residential area.
Since before 1938, the district has assigned anglo children to schools according to a neighborhood school plan composed of geographic attendance zones. Students of mexican-american descent have always been classified as anglo by the school board. Generally, students attend school at all levels at the school nearest their home. Thus, the imposition of neighborhood school zones over the pattern of marked residential segregation in Corpus Christi has, inevitably, resulted in mexican-american and anglo children being substantially separated in the public schools.
The city’s high schools provide a striking example. The first public high school built in the district still in existence is Miller High, built in 1928, and rebuilt in 1966. It is located at the north end of the mexican corridor, although not in the area of highest mexi-can-american concentration. Its attendance zone until 1968 comprised all the northern part of the school district. In 1949, its enrollment was 78% anglo, 22% mexican-american. In 1950, Ray High School was built approximately in the center of the school district, to the 'southeast of the Ayres Street artery which has served as the corridor boundary. It opened with an enrollment that was 87% anglo. A significant number of anglo students was then withdrawn from Miller into Ray High School. In 1958, Carrol was opened in the south central part of the district, again south of Ayres Street, and served an attendance zone that extended beyond Ayres north into the heart of the mexi-can-american corridor. It opened, however, as a 78% anglo school. While Ray remained fairly constant at its 87% an-glo enrollment figure, Miller now had a majority of mexican-american students. In 1965, King High School was opened in the southernmost corner of the district, with an enrollment that was 95% anglo (90% in 1969-70). By this time Miller High had become 71% mexican-american, and 8% black.
In 1968, Moody High School was opened in the heart of the mexican-american corridor as a 96% mexiean-american-black school (11% black). Its southernmost boundary was Ayres Street. Its attendance zone encompassed the great majority of the mexican-amer-ican concentration of the corridor, sequestering all of that area north of Ayres that once was included in the Carroll attendance zone. Whereas the students that lived in the corridor had formerly been divided in the Carroll, Miller, and Ray schools, their inclusion in the Moody zone now locked over two-thirds of the city’s mexican-american high school students into two high schools located in the non-anglo residential area of the city each of which was clearly identifiable as a minority group high school. Importantly, the drawing of the new boundary lines after the building of Moody, in furtherance of the neighborhood school concept, with its withdrawal of significant numbers of mexican-american and black students from Carroll, Ray, and Miller into Moody, decreased the degree of integration in those schools, increased their re-[147]*147fleeted ethnic identity, and further locked the residents of the corridor into their racially and ethnically homogeneous high schools.
With this background we briefly trace the protracted litigation in this case. The suit was filed on July 22, 1968, by the parents of black and mexican-ameri-can children, alleging that the local school authorities had operated the schools of the district in a discriminatory manner which resulted in the unlawful segregation of black and mexi-ean-american students from whites. In Cisneros I, supra, June 4, 1970, the court found that de jure segregation existed in Corpus Christi. The court held that mexiean-americans constituted an identifiable, ethnic-minority group entitled to the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equality in public education, and that both mexican-americans and blacks were unconstitutionally segregated in the public schools of Corpus Christi, as a result of official action by the defendant Board.
In Cisneros II, July 2, 1971, a court-designed student assignment plan was promulgated, based upon various parts of plans submitted by the District and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The court directed that the plan be implemented by the commencement of the fall 1972 school term. The plan, in essence, required the pairing of elementary schools in two levels, a complete revision of high school attendance zones, and further reassignment of specific groups of school children throughout the system to aid in the dismantling of identifiable ethnic group schools. The district court found that extensive busing would be required to implement the new plan, as it contemplated the transportation of approximately 15,000 school children at an initial estimated cost ranging from $1,400,000 to $1,700,000. The School District then had a total of only nine buses transporting 400 students. On July 13, 1971, the Board moved for a stay of the July 2 order insofar as it concerned mexiean-american desegregation. On July 16, 1971, a different district judge granted the partial stay. That stay was vacated by an order of this Court on August 5, 1971, but was reinstated by Mr. Justice Black on August 19, 1971.5 This appeal followed.
The district court’s finding that the black students were segregated as a result of constitutionally impermissible state action was not contested at argument. It is clearly supported by the record. The stay order of the district court, entered August 23, 1971, against that portion of the district court plan requiring the immediate integration of the black plaintiffs in this case must be vacated. See Cisneros I, 324 F.Supp. at 615, and n. 46.
We now turn to the main thrust of this appeal. Although Brown arose in the context of segregation by state law, often termed “classical or historical de jure segregation,” see Gomperts v. Chase, 1971, 404 U.S. 1237, 1238, 92 S.Ct. 16, 30 L.Ed.2d 30 (Douglas, Circuit Justice), we think it clear today beyond peradventure that the contour of unlawful segregation extends beyond statutorily mandated segregation to include the actions and policies of school authorities which deny to students equal protection of the laws by separating them ethnically and racially in public schools. See Cooper v. Aaron, 1958, 358 U.S. 1, 17, 78 S.Ct. 1401, 3 L.Ed.2d 5, 19 and cited cases; Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colo., 10 Cir. 1971, 445 F.2d 990, 999, cert. granted, 1972, No. 71-507, 404 U.S. 1036, 92 S.Ct. 707, 30 L.Ed.2d 728; Davis v. School District of Pontiac, 6 Cir. 1971, 443 F.2d 573, cert. denied, 1972, 404 U.S. 913, 92 S.Ct. 233, 30 L.Ed.2d 186; Bradley v. Milliken, E.D. Mich.1971, 338 F.Supp. 582; Johnson v. San Francisco, N.D.Cal.1971, 339 F. [148]*148Supp. 1315. Such actions are “state action” for the purposes of the Fourteenth 'Amendment, and result in dual school systems that cannot be somehow less odious because they do not flow from a statutory source. The imprimatur of the state is no less visible. The continuing attempt to cast segregation that results from such action as de facto and beyond the power of the court to rectify is no longer entitled to serious consideration.
Thus, we discard the anodyne dichotomy of classical de facto and de jure segregation. We can find no support for the view that the Constitution should be applied antithetically to children in the north and south, or to mexican-ameri-cans vis-a-vis anglos, simply because of the adventitious circumstance of their origin or the happenstance of locality. Time has proven the soundness of the view expressed in dissent in Jefferson II, which, in focusing upon de facto dicta in Jefferson I,6 said:
The Negro children in Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, or any other area of the nation which the opinion classifies under de facto segregation, would receive little comfort from the assertion that the racial make-up of their school system does not violate their constitutional rights because they were born into a de facto society, while the exact same racial make-up of the school system in the 17 Southern and border states violates the constitutional rights of their counterparts, or even their blood brothers, because they were born into a de jure society. All children everywhere in the nation are protected by the Constitution, and treatment which violates their constitutional rights in one area of the country, also violates such constitutional rights in another area.
Jefferson II at 397.
The Board, however, conceding the existence of severe racial and ethnic separation in the Corpus Christi public schools, nevertheless maintains that another type of de facto segregation exists here, arguing that this separation is not a result of school board actions and policies but rather of housing patterns, geographic fluctuations, and other social and economic factors prevalent in the city. Moreover, it urges, even if the imbalance could be traced to Board action, it does not fall within constitutional proscription because it has not acted with a discriminatory motive or purpose.
We must also reject this type of continued meaningless use of de facto and de jure nomenclature to attempt to establish a kind of ethnic and racial separation of students in public schools that federal courts are powerless to remedy. Such attempts are confusing and unnecessary. The decision in Brown is the clear embodiment of the legal framework for the resolution of these important issues.
Brown prohibits segregation in public schools that is a result of state action. It requires simply the making of two distinct factual determinations to support a finding of unlawful segregation. First, a denial of equal educational opportunity must be found to exist, defined as racial or ethnic segregation. Secondly, this segregation must be the result of state action.
We need not define the quantity of state action or the severity of the segregation necessary to sustain a constitutional violation. These factual determinations are better dealt with on a case by case basis. We need only find a real and significant relationship, in terms of cause and effect, between state action and the denial of educational opportunity occasioned by the racial and ethnic separation of public school students.
We affirm the finding of the district court that action by the school district here has, in terms of cause and effect, resulted in a severely segregated school system in Corpus Christi. We [149]*149need find nothing more. Discriminatory motive and purpose, while they may reinforce a finding of effective segregation, are not necessary ingredients of constitutional violations in the field of public education. We therefore hold that the racial and ethnic segregation that exists in the Corpus Christi school system is unconstitutional — not de facto, not de jure, but unconstitutional.
In limine, we note that there is no serious challenge to the district court’s finding that the mexican-americans in the Corpus Christi school system are an identifiable, ethnic-minority class entitled to the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. Hernandez v. Texas, 1954, 347 U.S. 475, 477-478, 74 S.Ct. 667, 98 L.Ed. 866. See Hirabay-ashi v. United States, 1943, 320 U.S. 81, 100, 63 S.Ct. 1375, 87 L.Ed. 1774; Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 1885, 118 U.S. 356, 369, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220. The Board does contend, however, that segregation of mexican-american children in Corpus Christi is not a result of Board action.
The explicit holding of Cisneros I, which we now affirm, was that actions and policies of the Board, had, in terms of their actual effect, either created or maintained racial and ethnic segregation in the public schools of Corpus Christi. The district Court found that
[ A] dministrative decision by the school board in drawing boundaries, locating new schools, building new schools and renovating old schools in the predominantly Negro and Mexican parts of town, in providing an elastic and flexible subjective, transfer system that resulted in some Anglo children being allowed to avoid the ghetto, or “corridor” schools, by bussing some students, by providing one or more optional transfer zones which resulted in Anglos being able to avoid Negro and Mexican-American schools, not allowing Mexican-Americans or Negroes the option of going to Anglo schools, by spending extraordinarily large sums of money which resulted in intensifying and perpetuating a segregated, dual school system, by assigning Negro and Mexican-American teachers in disparate ratios to these segregated schools, and further failing to employ a sufficient number of Negro and Mexican-American school teachers, and failing to provide a majority-to-minority transfer rule, were, regardless of all explanations and regardless of all expressions of good intentions, calculated to, and did, maintain and promote a dual school system.
Id. 324 F.Supp. at 617-620. Each of these findings is clearly supported by the record.<^But in our view the use of the neighborhood school plan is the direct and effective cause of segregation in the schools of the citj£>
Here, the Board, by a rigid superimposition of a neighborhood school plan upon the historic pattern of marked residential segregation that existed in Corpus Christi equated the residential ho-mogeny to ethnic and racial homogeny in the public school system, producing inevitable segregation. That there was an absence of state action involved in creating the city’s residential patterns is of no significance. The Board imposed a neighborhood school plan, ab initio, upon a clear and established pattern of residential segregation in the face of an obvious and inevitable result.
We have considered the Board’s claim that its neighborhood school plan was established on racially or ethnically neutral criteria and impartially administered, and is therefore not beyond the pale. This contention, that treatment of mexican-americans the same as anglos lends a patina of non-segregated respectability to the system is, when analyzed, not as pristine as it appears. The Supreme Court made it plain in Swann that
[a]n assignment plan is not acceptable simply because it appears to be neutral . . . such plans may fail to counteract the continuing effects of past school segregation resulting from discriminatory location of school sites or distortion of school size in order to achieve or maintain an artificial ra[150]*150cial separation. When school authorities present a district court with a “loaded game board,” affirmative action in the form of remedial altering of attendance zones is proper to achieve truly nondiscriminatory assignments.
402 U.S. at 28, 91 S.Ct. at 1282.
The Board nevertheless argues that unlawful segregation in the constitutional sense cannot exist in the absence of actions by the Board that are intentionally designed to achieve segregation, and that such a discriminatory purpose is absent here. It iterates that in the absence of a malevolent motive, de facto and not dejure segregation exists.
While there is admittedly no catholicity of viewpoint in the Circuits on the question of intentional state action, this Court has never tempered its prohibition of school board actions that create, maintain, or foster segregation by the requirement that a discriminatory intent be shown. The underpinning of our decisions is a determination of the unlawful effect of state action upon the existence of unitary school systems. Lee v. Macon County Board of Educ., 5 Cir. 1971, 448 F.2d 746, 752; Stout v. United States, 5 Cir. 1971, 448 F.2d 403, 404, citing Cooper v. Aaron, supra; Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board, E.D.La. 1960, 190 F.Supp. 861, aff’d sub nom. City of New Orleans v. Bush, 1961, 366 U.S. 212, 81 S.Ct. 1091, 6 L.Ed.2d 239; United States v. Texas, E.D.Texas 1971, 330 F.Supp. 235, Part II, aff’d as modified, United States v. Texas, 5 Cir. 1971, 447 F.2d 441; see Wright v. City of Brighton, Ala., 5 Cir. 1969, 441 F.2d 447, cert. denied, Hoover Academy v. Wright, 404 U.S. 915, 92 S.Ct. 228, 30 L.Ed.2d 190; Hall v. St. Helena Parish School Board, 5 Cir. 1969, 417 F.2d 801, 807, cert. denied, 396 U.S. 904, 90 S.Ct. 218, 24 L.Ed.2d 180; Henry v. Clarksdale Municipal School District, 5 Cir. 1969, 409 F.2d 682, 687, cert. denied, 396 U.S. 940, 90 S.Ct. 375, 24 L.Ed.2d 242.
This principle has now become the law of the land. In Wright v. Council of City of Emporia, 1972, 407 U.S. 451, 92 S.Ct. 2196, 33 L.Ed.2d 51, the Supreme Court held that the city could not create a new school district separate from that of the surrounding county where “its effect would be to impede the process” of the court-ordered dismantling of a dual school system, id. 92 S.Ct. at 2207, finding that under its previous decisions in Green v. County School Board, 1968, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716, and Monroe v. Board of Commissioners, 1968, 391 U.S. 450, 88 S.Ct. 1700, 20 L.Ed.2d 733, school board action must be judged “according to whether it hinders or furthers the process of school desegregation.” Id. 92 S.Ct. at 2202. Citing with approval our decisions in Lee and Stout, supra, the Court rejected the “dominant purpose” test adopted by the Fourth Circuit decision in the case, focusing rather “upon the effect — not the purpose or motivation — of a school board’s action in determining whether it is a permissible method of dismantling a dual system. . . . [T]his ‘dominant purpose’ test,” said the Court, “finds no precedent in our decisions.” Id. at 2203.
Importantly, the dissent voiced no opposition to the discarding of purpose and motivation, but objected only to the majority’s factual determination that the action of the city in creating its own school district would impede the progress of desegregation.
School cases serve to emphasize the correctness of this principle, for regardless of motive, the children that suffer from segregation suffer the same deprivation of educational opportunity that Brown condemns. No one would suggest that the validity of a segregation law depends upon the legislators’ motives in enacting it, or that such a law is unconstitutional only when it can be ascribed to racial animus. Why then the distinction between types of school board action that produce segregation? “[T]he factor of malevolent motivation is farther from the core of invidiousness that condemns explicit racial discrimination than are the odious effects produced.” [151]*151Goodman, De Facto School Segregation: A Constitutional and Empirical Analysis, 60 Calif.L.Rev. 275, 291 (1972).7
Next we direct our attention to the hiring and reassignment of mexican-american teachers. The district court held that the faculty and administrative staff of the system were more segregated than the schools, and used this finding as further evidence of an unlawfully segregated school system. The Board was directed to assign black and mexiean-american teachers throughout the system on the same ratio of percentages they comprise of the total teacher and staff population.8 This finding is clearly supported by the record and the court’s order is necessary to bring the Board into compliance with Singleton v. Jackson Municipal Separate School District, 5 Cir. 1970, 419 F.2d 1211, 1218 (en banc); Ellis v. Board of Public Instruction of Orange County, 5 Cir. 1970, 423 F.2d 203. The requirement of percentage assignments of faculty was presaged by the decision of the Supreme Court in United States v. Montgomery County Board of Education, 1969, 395 U.S. 225, 89 S.Ct. 1670, 23 L.Ed.2d 263, in which the Court held that as a goal, the ratio of white to black teachers be substantially the same in each school as the ratio of white to black teachers throughout the system. This method of faculty desegregation has been endorsed by the Court in Swann, supra, 402 U.S. at 19-20, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554.
The trial judge further found, and we agree, that" the Board had discriminated against mexican-americans by failing to employ mexiean-american teachers in the system, and ordered that it move immediately to employ more.9 In order for the dual nature of the system to be realistically dismantled, faculty composition must more truly reflect the ratio of mexiean-american students to the total scholastic population of the school district. The Board therefore must continue its efforts, which we acknowledge as substantial, toward the achievement, as a goal, of a ratio of mexiean-american teachers to total fac[152]*152ulty that approaches the ratio of mexi-can-american students to the total student population. In United States v. Texas Education Agency, 5 Cir. 1972, 467 F.2d 848 (en banc) [No. 71-2508], today decided, we pointed out, however, that “[i]fte school board, need not, of course, lower its employment standards. A showing of a good faith effort to find sufficient qualified Mexican-Ameriean teachers to achieve an equitable ratio, will rebut any inference of discrimination.” Id. at 873.
We turn now briefly to the position of the United States, the invited intervenor in this case. Essentially, it argues that we are confronted with de facto segregation with “maybe something more than isolated discrimination.” The interve-nor contrasts this with traditional dualism where the segregation is system wide because that is what the law required, and thus the remedy had to be system wide. But here, it is suggested, the remedy should be applied only to the areas which have become segregated by Board action.
Such an approach is untenable here in view of our holding that over two-thirds of the public' school students in Corpus Christi are the victims of unconstitutional ethnic and racial segregation. There is established here an overwhelming pattern of unlawful segregation that has infected the entire school system. To select other than a system-wide remedy would be to ignore system-wide discrimination and make conversion to a unitary system impossible. See Green v. County School Board, supra. A majority of the Court, Chief Judge John R. Brown and Judges Wisdom, Gewin, Thornberry, Goldberg, Simpson and In-graham, concur in this part of the opinion. Judges Bell, Ainsworth, Morgan and Roney concur in the result.
REMEDY
We turn now to the remedy fashioned by the district court. We conclude that a different approach may achieve a constitutional result without involving the conversion of the school system from a non-transportation to a transportation basis to the extent ordered by the district court.
On remand, the district court is directed to desegregate the school system on the following basis:
(1) It is the prerogative and duty of those local officials having charge of the Corpus Christi Independent School District to formulate and implement student assignment plans.
(2) Where a student assignment plan is found to be unconstitutional, as here, because of the existence of segregation which has been imposed by statute or by official act against blacks and an identifiable ethnic group (here the mexican-ameriean students), it is the duty of the school officials to forthwith formulate and implement such student assignment plan as will remedy the discrimination which has been found to exist. Where one race schools continue to exist, school authorities must show that such schools are not the result of present or past discrimination on their part. Swann, 402 U.S. at 26, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554.
(3) In the event the school officials abdicate this responsibility or fail to remedy the discrimination forthwith, the district court is empowered to and should proceed forthwith to remedy the discrimination.
(4) Usually in rural, and in some city school districts where the population is diffused, assignment on a strict neighborhood basis has been sufficient to eliminate discrimination in student assignments. It is apparent that this will not suffice in the Corpus Christi Independent School District, although it may suffice as to some schools. To the extent that it does not suffice, the district court will proceed to employ other methods of desegregation.
(5) The pairing or clustering of schools, the realignment of school assignment zones, and the relocation of portable school rooms will be methods of eliminating segregated schools. Pairing or clustering should be of schools [153]*153in close proximity. The pairing or clustering of schools in close proximity and the realignment of school zones will result merely in an expansion of the neighborhood or community school concept. Such transportation problems as may arise will thereby be minimized. Another method of eliminating segregated schools with little increase in transportation is to restructure the assignment of students already being transported.
(6) If after utilizing the procedures outlined above, proscribed segregated schools still exist, the court must consider the pairing or clustering of schools in non-contiguous school zones. Swann, 402 U.S. at 28, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554. No such pairing or clustering of non-contiguous school zones may be required until the court has exhausted every other possible remedy which would not involve increased student transportation. Whenever the court must exercise its power to pair or cluster schools located in non-contiguous zones, it must minimize student transportation requirements in such plan as is devised to pair or cluster schools located in non-contiguous zones.
The length and time of travel for students under any plan must be considered in light of the age of the children, and the risk to health and probable impingement on the educational process. Swann, 402 U.S. at 30-31, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554. The material consideration in assessing the probable effect on health and the educational process as to each particular child will be the time required for transportation as distinguished from distance. Under some plans, children will be transported from their neighborhood school to the school of assignment rather than from their homes to the school of assignment. In such event, the time consumed in travel must include the time necessary to reach the neighborhood school or other point of embarkation.
In fashioning transportation plans the school board and district court must avoid invidious discrimination on the basis of race or national origin through the imposition of the burden of desegregation on one or both of the minority groups. Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, supra, 448 F.2d at 753-754; Mims v. Duval County School Board, 5 Cir. 1971, 447 F.2d 1330, 1331-1332.
(7) As the Supreme Court made clear in Swann, the requirement of “any particular degree of racial balance or mixing . . .” as a matter of substantive constitutional right would be disapproved. 402 U.S. at 24, 91 S.Ct. at 1280. Such racial balance as may result from the pairing or clustering or rezoning of schools is constitutionally permitted as “an interim corrective measure.” Swann, 402 U.S. at 27, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554.10
An overall amelioration of any possible discrimination will tend to be accomplished by the use of the mandatory majority to minority transfer provision of Swann, supra, 402 U.S. at 36-37, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554, heretofore ordered by the district court. Such a provision will guarantee to both races an unfettered right to attend schools with members of an opposite race or identifiable ethnic group, and with transportation provided. The district court is directed to constitute a triethnic committee in the school district to foster the use of the majority to [154]*154minority transfer.11 A majority of the Court, Judges Bell, Thornberry, Coleman, Ainsworth, Godbold, Morgan, Clark, Ingraham and Roney concur in this part of the opinion.
Affirmed in part, modified in part, and remanded.