1961 US Commission on Civil Rights Report Book 2 - University of ...

latter was rejected because it presented safety hazards for little children.
The court found no abuse of discretion, saying: M
[A school board] may consider such factors in selecting sites that it
considers relevant and reasonable and, in the absence of a showing
that the standards for selection are not relevant and reasonable and
that in reality they were adopted as a sham or subterfuge to foster
segregation, or for any other illegal purpose, their use is within the
administrative discretion of the school board. The fact that in a
given area a school is populated almost exclusively by the children
of a given race is not of itself evidence of discrimination. The
choice of a school site based on density of population and geographical
consideration, such as distance, accessibility, ease of transportation,
and other safety considerations, is a permissible exercise of
administrative discretion.
The New Rochelle case M discussed above, started with a school board
decision to build a new school on the site of the Lincoln School, which
the court found had been deliberately created and maintained as a
Negro school. Instead of issuing an injunction, the court ordered the
board to present a desegregation plan. The plan presented by a majority
of the board was based upon existing school zones, but included
strictly circumscribed, permissive-transfer privileges. 84 No transfer
would be allowed unless approved by the pupil's classroom teacher, his
school principal, and the superintendent of schools; nor would one be
valid for more than a year. (Transferees could be displaced after i year
by children living in the zone of the receiving school.) The right to
transfer was further limited by a board ruling as to maximum class size.
The minority members of the board submitted a plan which the court
refused to bar from consideration. 85 It called for immediate transfer of
upper-grade pupils and the abandonment of Lincoln School in igG^86
Upon the invitation of the court, 87 the United States submitted an
amicus curiae brief in which it criticized the majority plan, referred to
the minority plan only indirectly, and ignored the question of segregation
by site selection. Although acknowledging that, under the second Brown
decision the suitability of a plan is to be determined by local school
conditions, the United States suggested that the free transfer programs
of the border cities of Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Oklahoma City, and
Louisville should be the criterion for New Rochelle. 88 Then this crucial
observation: M
... It may well be that, upon experience, it will appear that
placing the burden of applying for transfers upon the Negro children
is not the most effective way of eliminating the deplorable
conditions which presently exist. It seems quite possible that
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