Lee v. MacOn County Board of Education

317 F. Supp. 103, 1970 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10543
District Court, M.D. Alabama·Decided August 14, 1970·No. Civ. A. 604-E·Published·Cited by 14 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION

PER CURIAM.

In the order of this Court made and entered in this case March 22, 1967, 267 F.Supp. 458, 484, after making appropriate findings of fact and conclusions of law relative to the operation of the trade schools and junior colleges in the State of Alabama by the Alabama State Board of Education, this Court stated:

Institutions Under State Board of Education Control
No person shall be denied admission to any trade school, junior college, or state college administered by the Alabama State Board of Education upon the ground of race, nor shall he be subjected to racial discrimination in connection with his application for enrollment in or his attendance at any such trade school, junior college, or state college. Dual attendance zones based on race for such trade schools, junior colleges, and state colleges shall be abolished. The State Department of Education shall direct such trade schools, junior colleges, and state colleges to recruit, hire, and assign teachers so as to desegregate faculty and to accomplish some faculty desegregation in each such trade school, junior college, and state college by September 1967.

On April 30, 1969, the United States, as the plaintiff-intervenor in this case, filed a formal motion asking this Court to require the defendants the Alabama State Board of Education, its members, and the State Superintendent of Education to formulate and execute a plan *105 for the desegregation of the state-established dual systems of trade schools and junior colleges and further asking this Court to require the formulation of unitary, nonracially identifiable systems of trade schools and junior colleges. Upon this motion this Court ordered the defendants to prepare a plan for achieving full and immediate compliance with this Court’s order of March 22, 1967, and to prepare a plan setting forth further steps necessary to accomplish the complete disestablishment of the dual systems of trade schools and junior colleges based on race; defendants were directed to file such plans with this Court on or before May 20, 1969. The matter was set for a hearing on May 27, 1969. As directed, the defendants filed proposed plans. Upon consideration of the defendants’ proposed plans and the objections of the United States thereto, this Court determined that the plans as advanced by the defendants when implemented would only partially abolish the dual attendance areas based upon race. Furthermore, the plans continued to provide for separate transportation areas based upon race; they did not provide for any separate student recruiting areas. The plans were lacking in specificity as to when faculties and student bodies would be desegregated so that the racial identifiability of the institutions involved would be eliminated. No justification for the continuance of the duplication of programs and of curricula in the same geographical areas was advanced by the defendants in their proposed plans and the plans did not specify how future construction, or the expansion of facilities, or changes in programs or curricula would be used in the desegregation process.

At the conclusion of the hearing on this phase of this case on May 27, 1969, counsel for the defendants were advised in open court that their plans for/ desegregating the trade schools and junior colleges administered by the Alabama State Board of Education were deficient. They were advised further that the Alabama State Board of Education, in order to discharge the duty that the law places upon it and that this Court ordered in March 1967 would be required to abolish all the dual attendance areas for the trade schools and junior colleges to the extent that these areas might be based upon race, to abolish the separate transportation areas, to provide specifically for faculty desegregation so that the racial identifiability of these institutions, insofar as faculty is concerned, would be eliminated, and to eliminate the duplication of programs and of curricula in those institutions where similar institutions were located in the geographical areas. Counsel for the parties requested additional time to study these problems further, to make another attempt to formulate more specific plans.

On September 17, 1969, this Court ordered the United States through its Office of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, to formulate and submit to the Court a plan for desegregating the trade schools and junior colleges operated by the State of Alabama and administered by the Alabama State Board of Education, said plan to be designed to desegregate said institutions not later than September 1970. The defendant members of the Alabama State Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Education were directed to cooperate fully with the representatives of the United States Office of Education and to make available all information and records in their possession necessary to the development of the plan ordered prepared. This Court granted the Alabama State Board of Education thirty days from the date of the submission of said plan by the United States Office of Education within which to submit alternative plans. On March 3, 1970, the United States through its Office of Education submitted its proposed plan, and on July 16, 1970, the defendants submitted their proposed alternative plan.

Now, upon this submission, this Court finds that the State of Alabama operates 27 trade schools and 17 junior colleges located throughout the State. Each of *106 these institutions is administered by the Alabama State Board of Education. Only three of the junior colleges have dormitories and only a small percentage of students use them. The junior colleges were designed to be, and they are, commuter-type colleges. Although there is no policy restriction placed on admission with regard to residence, there is a practical restriction by reason of the location of these junior colleges. To aid in the “commuter concept”, the defendants have provided free transportation to each of these institutions. The portion of students transported to these schools varies considerably. Based upon a report filed with this Court in October, 1968, the number and percentage of students transported to fourteen of these junior colleges was:

School Enrollment Transported Percentage

Calhoun 1612 616 38%

Jefferson State 4343 471 10%

Mobile 906 77 08°/;

Northwest 618 144 21%

Wallace 724 222 30%

Wenonah 752 95 12%

Faulkner 1350 314 23%

(formerly Yancey)

Gadsden 2352 185 08%

Snead 629 52 08%

Southern Union 535 55 10%

Northeast 638 256 40%

Patrick Henry 462 140 30%

Enterprise 926 151 16%

Jefferson Davis 547 112 20%

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Lee v. MacOn County Board of Education, 317 F. Supp. 103, 1970 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10543 (M.D. Ala. 1970).

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