Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education

379 F. Supp. 1102, 1974 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7389
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. North Carolina
DecidedJuly 30, 1974
DocketCiv. 1974
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 379 F. Supp. 1102 (Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. North Carolina primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 379 F. Supp. 1102, 1974 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7389 (W.D.N.C. 1974).

Opinion

ORDER

McMILLAN, District Judge.

Upon the express assumption and condition that the Board of Education will constructively implement and follow all of its new guidelines and policies (Exhibit A to this order), which were adopted by the Board on July 9, 1974, and filed with this court on July 10, 1974, and subject to the further conditions stated below, the court approves those guidelines and policies and the proposals for pupil assignment.

Adoption of these new guidelines and policies is understood as a clean break with the essentially “reluctant” attitude which dominated Board actions for many years. The new guidelines and policies appear to reflect a growing community realization that equal protection of laws in public education is the concern of private citizens and local officials and is not the private problem of courts, federal or otherwise. This court welcomes the new guidelines and policies and the new plan, and the declared intention of the new Board to carry them out. If implemented according to their stated principles, they will produce a “unitary” (whatever that is) school system.

This court cannot express too strongly its appreciation to Mrs. Margaret Ray and the Citizens Advisory Group for their unique and intelligent and determined efforts which presented to the Board and the community an acceptable consensus on methods to solve this constitutional issue — and to Assistant Superintendent Ed Sanders and his associates for their cheerful and skilled professional cooperation in devising and completing the proposal. To borrow an old Navy phrase, the work of the Citizens Advisory Group and the school staff in this connection has been “in the highest traditions” of public service.

The future depends upon the implementation of the new guidelines and policies. This approval is expressly contingent upon the implementation and carrying out of all the stated policies and guidelines. Here is the heart of the matter. Only if they are thus implemented is it likely that a fair and stable school operation will occur, and that the court can close the case.

The guidelines include undertakings to prepare and put into effect:

(I) Transfer policies and procedures for “the purpose of maintaining an integrated school system with a stabilized assignment program.”
(II) Optional school assignment procedures to provide county-wide access to appropriately integrated optional schools, and to prevent significant jeopardy to the racial composition of other schools. [The future of optional schools as desirable educational experimentation and variety, and their legal future, are clouded by the failure thus far to provide transportation (which I understand is now being procured and which of course must be provided for such schools in *1104 the future); by the less-than-equal notification and opportunity for people from the entire county to enroll; and by the havoc which such schools, lately conceived, can wreak on an orderly pupil assignment program. “Freedom of choice” was a synonym for segregation for many years, and though a high ideal in theory, it should not be resurrected at this late date sub nom. “optional schools” without adequate safeguards against discriminatory results.]
(III) West Charlotte High School has been given a “home base,” a new principal, and a group of students apparently well chosen from various areas. [It is understood and assumed that the white students who attended West Charlotte under the “lottery plan” in 1973-74 will be allowed to attend West Charlotte for 1974-75 with transportation provided.]
(IV) Hidden Valley school, in a recently integrated neighborhood, will be operated as a 1-6 neighborhood school, with a black population exceeding 50%. [This is viewed as a desirable experiment to encourage the neighborhood patrons to make a “go” of a desegregated “neighborhood” school, just as the people in rural North Carolina by the hundreds of thousands have done for many years. However, it must be carefully monitored; the school should not become racially identifiable; this experiment must not be a first step towards re-establishment of old policies which allowed schools to become identified as “black” whenever sizeable numbers of blacks moved into the school community.]
(V) , (VI) Distances of bus travel have been somewhat reduced; years of bussing for many children have been reduced; and the burdens of bussing have been more equally, though of course not perfectly, re-distributed.
(VII) Kindergartens and primary grades (grades 1-3 or 1-4) are promised in the immediate future for the black communities.
(X) Monitoring procedures to prevent adverse trends in racial make-up of schools are promised.
(XI) School location, construction and closing are to be planned to simplify rather than to complicate desegregation.

The policy recommendations adopted by the Board provide, under the heading “Transfer Policy and Procedure,” that “explicit policies and procedures for the management of future reassignments of pupils, either in the interest of the school system or on request of pupils, need formulation and adoption. Such policies are to fulfill the purpose of maintaining an integrated school system with a stabilized assignment program.” More explicitly, these policies will provide:

(a) That upon change of residence pupils “will be reassigned to the school serving the new residence provided that such reassignment does not contribute significantly to a racial ratio trend at either school involved.
(b) That pupils may be reassigned for other valid reasons such as health, home conditions or bona fide academic reasons, provided that the reassignment does not significantly and adversely affect desegregation.
(c) That the optional school enrollments will be controlled starting with 1974 so that they are open to all county residents and have about or above 20% black students.
(d) That guidelines and central monitoring by a pupil assignment staff will be set up for these purposes.

Racial discrimination begins with a mental process — the recognition of racial differences among human beings and the decision to treat them differently because of those differences. It is, in origin, an attitude or state of mind.

Its effects also start in the minds of those who are discriminated against.

*1105 Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) talked, not about “SAT” performance, but about the mental and emotional impact which segregation has on school children:

“To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” (Emphasis added.)

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Related

Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
269 F.3d 305 (Fourth Circuit, 2001)
Terry Belk Dwayne Collins, on Behalf of Themselves and the Class They Represent, William Capacchione, Individually and on Behalf of Christina Capacchione, a Minor Michael P. Grant Richard Easterling Lawrence Gauvreau Karen Bentley Charles Thompson Scott C. Willard v. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Boardof Education Eric Smith, Superintendent, in His Official Capacity Arthur Griffin, Chairman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board, in His Official Capacity, United States of America North Carolina School Boards Association National School Boards Association, Amici Curiae. William Capacchione, Individually and on Behalf of Christina Capacchione, a Minor Michael P. Grant Richard Easterling Lawrence Gauvreau Karen Bentley Charles Thompson Scott C. Willard, and Terry Belk Dwayne Collins, on Behalf of Themselves and the Class They Represent v. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Boardof Education Eric Smith, Superintendent, in His Official Capacity Arthur Griffin, Chairman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board, in His Official Capacity, United States of America North Carolina School Boards Association National School Boards Association, Amici Curiae. William Capacchione, Individually and on Behalf of Christina Capacchione, a Minor Michael P. Grant Richard Easterling Lawrence Gauvreau Karen Bentley Charles Thompson Scott C. Willard,plaintiffs-Appellees, and Terry Belk Dwayne Collins, on Behalf of Themselves and the Class They Represent v. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Boardof Education Eric Smith, Superintendent, in His Official Capacity Arthur Griffin, Chairman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board, in His Official Capacity, United States of America North Carolina School Boards Association National School Boards Association, Amici Curiae. William Capacchione, Individually and on Behalf of Christina Capacchione, a Minor Michael P. Grant Richard Easterling Lawrence Gauvreau Karen Bentley Charles Thompson Scott C. Willard, and Terry Belk Dwayne Collins, on Behalf of Themselves and the Class They Represent v. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Boardof Education Eric Smith, Superintendent, in His Official Capacity Arthur Griffin, Chairman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board, in His Official Capacity, United States of America North Carolina School Boards Association National School Boards Association, Amici Curiae
269 F.3d 305 (Fourth Circuit, 2001)
Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Fourth Circuit, 2001
Capacchione v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
57 F. Supp. 2d 228 (W.D. North Carolina, 1999)
Martin v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
475 F. Supp. 1318 (W.D. North Carolina, 1979)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
379 F. Supp. 1102, 1974 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7389, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/swann-v-charlotte-mecklenburg-board-of-education-ncwd-1974.