Public School Integration - Kansas City - The magnet District

8/12/2019 Public School Integration - Kansas City - The magnet District

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School Integration - Kansas City &Detroit 1s 11

Remedies Fall 2014

Fordham Law SchoolIntegration of Schools -

Kansas City and Detroit

Do the courts have any role to play?George W. Conk

Adjunct Professor of Law & Senior Fellow, Stein Center for Law &Ethics

Room 409

[email protected]

212-636-7446

Torts

Today: http://tortstoday.blogspot.com

OtherwiseCommentar ies on Law, Language & Poli tics

Blackstonetoday.blogspot.com 1
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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School Integration - Kansas City &Detroit 2s 22

Remedies Spring 2014Fordham Law School

Integration of Schools -

DetroitMilliken v. BradleyGeorge W. Conk

Adjunct Professor of Law & Senior Fellow, Stein Center for Law &Ethics

Room [email protected]

212-636-7446

Torts

Today: http://tortstoday.blogspot.com

OtherwiseCommentar ies on Law, Language & Poli tics

Blackstonetoday.blogspot.com 2
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


3/32

People ex rel. Workman v. Board of

Education of Detroit, 18 Mich. 400

(1869)

Act 34, 28, Mich. Pub. Acts of 1867:"[every] school district shall provide forthe education of its pupils without

discrimination as to religion, creed, race,color or national origin"

Mich. Const. 1963, Art. 8, 2:

"[no] separate school or department shallbe kept for any person or persons onaccount of race or color"

School Integration - Kansas City &Detroit 3


4/32

People ex rel. Workman v. Board of

Education of Detroit, 18 Mich. 400

(1869)

Mich. Comp. Laws 340.355:

"[all] persons, residents of a school district. . . shall have an equal right to attendschool therein,", 340.356.

See also Act 319, Part II, c. 2, 9, Mich.Pub. Acts of 1927.

What role do these laws play in thedecision of the SCOTUS majority?



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Michigan Const. 1963, Article VIII

2 Free public elementary andsecondary schools; discrimination.

The legislature shall maintain and support

a system of free public elementary andsecondary schools as defined by law.Every school district shall provide for the

education of its pupils withoutdiscrimination as to religion, creed, race,color or national origin.



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Elementary and Secondary Education and

the Michigan Constitution, Michigan

Constitutional Convention Studies 1 (1961) Michigans Constitution and laws have

resulted in "the establishment of a state

system of education in contrast to a seriesof local school systems.

Does this undermine the SupremeCourts refusal to approve a multi-district remedy?



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Milliken v. Bradley - 1974

Detroit had been losing jobs andpopulation for ten years

Black students were in a school district

that suffered from declining resources The City school board was found to have

engaged in de jure segregation.

Should that have been attributed to theState, permitting a cross-district remedy?



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Mil l iken v . Greenvacated 1973

What impact should th is have had

on federal cou rts?1972: Michigan Supreme Court holdsinequality in per-pupil expenditure amongdistricts, violated the equal protection clause

of the state constitution

* Education is a fundamental interest

* Wealth is a suspect class

* State had no compelling interest in, nor earational basis for classifications based onwealth that caused inequalities in public

school funding. School Integration - Kansas City &Detroit 8


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Milliken v. Bradley (1977)

433 U.S. 267

State compelled to pay half the costs ofremediation including reading and skillsprograms

Why does the federal court have authorityto do that?



10/32

What now?

Now that Detroit is bankrupt is thecase for a multi-district remedy

stronger, weaker, or unchanged? Under equal protection?

Under the Michigan state

Constitution?


K Cit


11/32

Remedying de jure discrimination

Limits of equitable power

Kansas City

The magnet

District

strategy



12/32

Kansas Citys Failed Public Schools -

NPR

Does the failure of Kansas Citys publicschools prove that money cant solve theproblems of the schools?

Or does it show that the dissenters inMissouri v. Jenkins were correct?

Or none of the above?



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Racial discrimination in Missouri

*1724, Louis XV of France issued the Code

Noir, the first slave code for the Colony ofLouisiana, an area that included Missouri.

* 1821 Missouri entered the Union as a

slave State * Missouri law declared "No person shall

keep or teach any school for the

instruction of negroes or mulattoes, inreading or writing, in this State."



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* Beginning in 1865, Missouri passed a

series of laws requiring separate publicschools for blacks. Its Constitution firstpermitted, then required, separate

schools. * The statutes were repealed in 1957 and

the constitutional provision was rescinded

in 1976



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* 1984 the District Court found that "the

State . . . cannot defend its failure to

affirmatively act to eliminate the structure

and effects of its past dual system on the

basis of restrictive state law."



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Ginsburg, dissentingJenkins (1995)

Today, the Court declares illegitimate the

goal of attracting nonminority students tothe Kansas City, Missouri, School Districtand thus stops the District Court's efforts

to integrate a school district that was, inthe 1984/1985 school year, sorely in needand 68.3% black.

Given the deep, inglorious history ofsegregation in Missouri, to curtaildesegregation at this time and in thismanner is an action at once too swift andtoo soon.



17/32

Missouri Constitution, Article IX, Education

Section 1(a). A general diffusion of

knowledge and intelligence being essentialto the preservation of the rights andliberties of the people, the general

assembly shall establish and maintain freepublic schools for the gratuitousinstruction of all persons in this statewithin ages not in excess of twenty-oneyears as prescribed by law.

Source: Const. of 1875, Art. XI, 1, 3.(AmendedAugust 3, 1976)



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KCMSD

Demographics (2011 Statistics)African-American - 62.6 percent

Hispanic - 25.3 percent

Asian/Pacific Islander - 3 percentAmerican Indian/Alaskan Native - 0.2percentWhite -8.9 percentFree/reduced lunch - 84.2percent (Missouri - 47.8 percent)



19/32

Creating a magnet district

Kansas City



20/32

Magnet schools

Public schools of voluntary

enrollment designed to promote

integration by drawing students

away from their neighborhoods and

private schools through distinctive

curricula and high quality.



21/32

District Courts goal

to integrate the Kansas City,

Missouri, School District to the

maximum degree possible



22/32

Missouri v. Jenkins (1990)

The District Court found the State andKCMSB jointly liable for maintaining a dualschool system

1983 is authority enough to require eachtortfeasor to pay its share of the cost of aremedy if it can, and apportionment of the

cost is part of the District Court's equitablepowers.



23/32

C.J. Rehnquist Jenkins (1995)

An equitable remedy must be tied to theconstitutional violation

That violation is in the Kansas City district

The magnet district is an interdistrictremedy imposed without an interdistrictwrong

White flight was caused by desegregation,not by segregation



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Missouri v. Jenkins (U.S. 1990)

Kennedy, concurring

It is discrimination, not the ineptitude ofeducators or the indifference of the public,that is the evil to be remedied.

An initial finding of discrimination cannotbe used as the basis for a wholesale shiftof authority over day-to-day schooloperations from parents, teachers, andelected officials to an unaccountabledistrict judge whose province is law, noteducation.



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Missouri v. Jenkins (U.S. 1990)

Kennedy, concurring

Article III of the Constitution states that [t]he judicial Power of the United States,

shall be vested in one supreme Court, and

in such inferior Courts as the Congressmay from time to time ordain andestablish.

The description of the judicial powernowhere includes the word "tax," oranything that resembles it.



26/32

District Court ordered a magnet district

To "provide a greater educational

opportunity to all KCMSD students

To draw non-minority students from theprivate schools who have abandoned or

avoided the KCMSD, and draw in

additional non-minority students from the

suburbs.School Integration - Kansas City &Detroit 26


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Capital improvements ordered Renovation of approximately 55 schools,

the closure of 18 facilities, and theconstruction of 17 new schools.

Achieve suburban comparability and visual

attractiveness

http://www.publicschoolreview.com/compare_schools.php#cmp

http://www.publicschoolreview.com/compare_schools.phphttp://www.publicschoolreview.com/compare_schools.phphttp://www.publicschoolreview.com/compare_schools.phphttp://www.publicschoolreview.com/compare_schools.php


28/32

Salary assistance ordered

Initially only to teachers but later to

all but three of the approximately

5,000 KCMSD employees.



29/32

Souter, dissenting

We have most recently summed up theobligation to correct the condition of dejure segregation by saying that "the dutyof a former de jure district is to 'takewhatever steps might be necessary toconvert to a unitary system in which racialdiscrimination would be eliminated root

and branch.'



30/32

Souter, dissenting - Jenkins (1995)

In Milliken we barred the

consolidation of 54 districts.

That is what we meant by an inter-

district remedy


S t di ti J ki (1995)


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Souter, dissentingJenkins (1995)

citing Milliken By emphasizing that remedies in school

desegregation cases are grounded intraditional equitable principles, we leftopen the possibility that a district court

might subject a proven constitutionalwrongdoer to a remedy with intendedeffects going beyond the district of the

wrongdoer's violation, when such aremedy is necessary to redress the harmsflowing from the constitutional violation.



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Souter, dissenting in Jenkins (1995)

The Court, nonetheless, reads Milliken Iquite differently. It reads the case ascategorically forbidding imposition of aremedy on a guilty district with intendedconsequences in a neighboring innocentdistrict, unless the constitutional violationyielded segregative effects in that

innocent district.


Documents

Public School Integration - Kansas City - The magnet District