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

suit in serious disparities in staffing. Philadelphia's open transfer system
78 seems to provide a mitigating feature, yet discrimination in
teacher assignments is one of the charges in a suit filed on June 7, <strong>1961</strong>.
Reports on the situation in the Chicago schools suggest that it may be
an example of culpable official inaction which maintains out-dated zoning
and permits no transfers. 79 * The result is that severe overcrowding
and inferior teaching staffs are reported to have created inferior all-Negro
and predominantly Negro schools.
A report says that in the spring of 1957, 70 percent of Chicago elementary
schools were at least 90 percent white in enrollment while 21
percent had an equally high proportion of Negroes. 80 Eighty-seven
percent of all Negro elementary school children were found to be in
predominantly Negro schools. 81 Only 2 percent of the white, and 19
percent of the mixed schools were on double shift. 82 But 81 percent of
all children affected by double shift were Negro. 83
Inexperienced teachers were reported to be the rule, not the exception,
in the Negro and predominantly Negro schools of Chicago: 84
Negro and mixed schools also get a disproportionate number of in'
experienced teachers, a condition which was called to the attention
of the Chicago Board of Education in a study presented to them at
the School Budget hearing of December 1956. This situation was
implicitly acknowledged by the General Superintendent of Schools
in Report No. 64264 presented to the Board of Education on April
10, 1957: "The General Superintendent of Schools reports that it
is desirable to have beginning teachers with limited experience
assigned to schools throughout the city rather than concentrated
in a few."
Detailed charges of double shifts in strictly districted Negro schools
and unfilled classrooms in nearly all white schools are reported. 85 If
established this, presumably, would constitute a denial of equal protection
of the laws. This situation seems factually similar to that in the Skipwith
case.
699611—61 9
IJ 5