Hugh Larry Bell v. West Point Municipal Separate School District ( 1971 )

LEWIS R. MORGAN, Circuit Judge:

In this school desegregation case the issue is whether the Board of Trustees for the West Point, Mississippi School District may validly close two schools as part of a plan to establish a unitary school system within the requirements of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 1968, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716, and Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 1969, 396 U.S. 19, 90 S.Ct. 29, 24 L.Ed.2d 19.

By an order entered on May 8, 1970, the District court refused to alter West Point’s desegregation plan which had been in operation since the court’s previous order of January 21, 1970. The plan assigns all students in the district (1,852 whites, 2,388 blacks) to five different schools according to grade attended. Racial segregation is virtually impossible since all the children in a particular grade attend the same school irrespective of the physical location of the student’s home within the district.

However, the West Point school plan closed two schools ¹ solely because of the fear on the part of the Board of Trustees that whites would not attend these formerly all-Negro schools located within the black neighborhood. As a result of the schools being closed, less classroom space became available so that the remaining five schools were forced to conduct classes on a “split session”² or “two shift a day” basis.

The closing of these schools for purely racial reasons is impermissible under Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1955, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083, which commands that the public school systems operate free from racial discrimination. While it is undisputed that a particular school may be terminated for sound educational reasons, an otherwise useful building may not be closed merely because the school board speculates that whites will refuse to attend the location. Such action constitutes racial discrimination in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Accordingly, we hold that Fifth Street Junior and Senior High School and Northside Elementary School cannot be closed for the reasons shown in the record below.

The case is hereby remanded to the district court with directions to formulate a school desegregation plan not inconsistent with this order.

Remanded with directions.

1 . Before the desegregation plan was implemented by the district court on January 21, 1970, West Point operated a total of seven schools which would not have qualified as a unitary system under Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 1968, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716.

2 . In a “split session” arrangement, the pupil attends school in either the morning or the afternoon shift, enabling the school building to handle approximately twice the number of students it could normally house in a single day. Under the West Point plan the morning shift begins at 7:45 A.M. and ends at 12:40 P.M., and the afternoon shift lasts from 1:00 P.M. to 5:45 P.M. There is no significant difference in the racial composition of any of the shifts.