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Volume 1 Number 4 NORFOLK, VIRGINIA ALLOWED TO CURTAIL DESEGREGATION PLAN
On February 6, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, finding that 15 years after implementing a court ordered school desegregation plan the system had eliminated all vestiges of segregation, upheld a district court ruling allowing the city of Norfolk to end the busing of elementary school children for desegregation purposes. The ruling allows the school board to implement its "neighborhood school plan" for 35 elementary schools, 10 of which will become "virtually all black." The Appeals Court stated "our holding is a limited one, applicable only to those school systems which have succeeded in eradicating all vestiges of de jure segregation. In those systems the school .boards and not the federal courts will run the schools, absent a showing of an intent to discriminate." Despite the judges' efforts to narrow the decision, opponents and proponents of the decision alike suggested that the ruling could affect school desegregation nationwide.
Background
Historically, the Norfolk school board had operated a racially segregated public school system pursuant to state law. After the Brown decision, a group of black school children filed suit in 1956 to desegregate the system, and the Department of Justice intervened on the side of the black school children. In response to the Supreme Court's decision in Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971) in which a unanimous court approved a comprehensive desegregation holding that bus transportation is "a normal and accepted tool of educational policy," the Norfolk school system was ordered to consider the use of all techniques for reassignment, including pairing or grouping of schools, noncontiguous attendance zones, restructuring of grade levels and the transportation of pupils" (Brewer v. School Board of City of Norfolk, Virginia, 456 F.2d 943 (1972)). Accordingly, in the 197172 school year, a school desegregation plan which included the pairing and clustering of schools and the busing of students was implemented. As a result of the plan, in that school year none of the 53 elementary schools was over 90 percent black, and only four were over 70 percent black. The case was dismissed by the district court in February 1975.
[A]11 issues in this action have been disposed of... [T]he board has satisfied its affirmative duty to desegregate, ... racial discrimination through official action has been eliminated ... and the... system is now unitary.
Between 1971 and 1983 the student population decreased by 37 percent (21,290) with white students accounting for 90 percent of the decline (19,259). School desegregation accounted for the loss of between 6000 and 8000 white students,and for the last five years the student population has held steady at approximately 35,000. By 1981, there were seven elementary schools over 70 percent black, and in 1983 the school board voted to end the busing of elementary school children for school desegregation purposes.
In response a suit was filed in May 1983 on behalf of black school children, alleging that the plan "would segregate a substantial percentage of Norfolk's black elementary school students into ten racially isolated schools in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution." The district court judge upheld the constitutionality of the plan and plaintiffs appealed. The Department of Justice filed an amicus curiae brief in the Fourth Circuit supporting the position of the School Board and the Fourth Circuit upheld the decision of the District Court. The School System has 35,375 students, of whom 59 percent are black. There are 20,000 elementary school students. Under the neighborhood school plan, ten elementary schools will have a black enrollment over 98 percent, and two will have a black enrollment over 70 percent. Two schools will have a white enrollment over 80 percent.
The appellate court found:
We agree with the district court that the evidence reveals that Norfolk's neighborhood school assignment plan is a reasonable attempt by the school board to keep as many white students in public education as possible and so achieve a stable integrated school system. It also represents an attempt to improve the quality of the school system by seeking a program to gain greater parental involvement. While the effect of the plan in creating several black schools is disquieting, that fact alone is not sufficient to prove discriminatory intent.
  
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