Parents Can Challenge Perpetual
Court Assignment of Pupils,
In Pending Class Actions,
Toward Restoring Local Control
According to the Constitution

governmental system... Where control lies, so does accountability.”); Milliken I, 418 U.S. 741-742 (“No single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools; local autonomy has long been thought essential both to the maintenance of community concern and support for public schools and to quality of the educational process.”). Id. at 17 (also see 269 F.3d at 318).

The success of the parents in the CMS system in restoring local control, under the above guidelines, supports challenges by other parents toward local control. This is particularly so as to the single (Green) factor of student assignment, as achieved in Freeman. The CMS parent achievement of release from court jurisdiction was remarkable in view of the opposition posed by their school board in conjunction with the Swann plaintiffs.

The parents also won a temporary victory when the district court awarded their attorneys' fees from CMS for achieving a judicial declaration of unitary status for that school system. But a Fourth Circuit majority disallowed those fees over a three-judge dissent, which expressed the following concern:

... Should another case like this arise where the original plaintiffs and the school board are content to let the desegregation order remain in place long after the dual system has been dismantled, parents demanding a return of local control will be helpless. Belk, supra, Docket No. 99-2389R2.P, p.8 (see also 274 F.3d at 817).

But parents in other districts must not let this adverse aspect, of a ruling which invokes Dowell and Freeman as governing these cases, stop the efforts by them and their counsel to return local control.

The author and the Groundswell parents faced the same odds upon the retention of jurisdiction by the Carlin Court, with the support of the school board and original plaintiffs, lasting a total of twenty years. But with each year of continuing court jurisdiction elsewhere, the mandate of Freeman to relinquish jurisdiction becomes stronger, as does the federalism argument asserted in that case.
 

Carlin v. Board of Education, San Diego Unified School District,
San Diego Superior Court No. 303800 (1967-1998)
San Diego, California
 

Green 

Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430 (1968)
New Kent County, Virginia
 

Swann 

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education,
402 U.S. 1, 32 (1971)
Charlotte, North Carolina
 

Milliken I 

Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267 (1977)
Detroit, Michigan
 

Dowell 

Board of Ed. of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237 (1990)
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
 

Freeman 

Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 112 S.Ct. 1430 (1992)
DeKalb County School System (DCSS),
DeKalb County, Georgia
 

Belk 

Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education,
Docket No. 99-2389, U.S. Court of Appeals, 4th Cir.,
269 F.3d 305, 311, 324 (9/21/2001)
Charlotte, North Carolina
 

— Handbook: Challenge Six, pages 75 - 84 —