San Diego Parents Challenge
Busing of Their Children,
in Carlin v. Board of Education,
as Real Parties In Interest,
Entitled to Intervene

In June of 1977 thirty-five people met in their neighborhood area in San Diego in response to a notice by a fellow citizen that their children were faced with “some sort of mandatory busing assignment” arising from a “desegregation” class action filed in 1967 known as the Carlin case.

Parents had reason to be concerned, because their school board in a series of meetings seemed to be preparing them for the forced busing of their children away from their neighborhood schools. They were “staged” at various schools around the District in the manner as described to a news reporter by a citizen, who became President of the group of parents, calling themselves “Groundswell”:

... The whole tenor of the meeting was — get ready because it's (busing) coming and there is nothing you can do about it. That was the way it was presented. Make whatever accommodations you have to but just accept it.

Instead of “just accepting it,” the President and about 300 other members of Groundswell, from June to October 1977, gathered the signatures of about 22,300 persons in support of a “Neighborhood Schools Amendment” to the Constitution. It included a provision that “(n)o student shall be compelled to attend public school other than the one nearest his residence....” The petitions were submitted to their congressman, but the House of Representatives failed to act upon those and many additional petitions to so amend the Constitution.   
  

Carlin v. Board of Education, San Diego Unified School District,
San Diego Superior Court No. 303800 (1967-1998)
San Diego, California
Enstrom: pro bono counsel, 1979-1998
 

— Handbook: Challenge One, pages 23 - 31 —