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March 23, 1979

Dear Ms. O'Leary,

I am responding to your letter dated March 29, 1979 on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Austin. The following figures on the ethnic percentage in our school population were obtained from the Austin Independent School District.

1969-70 No forced movement of children had been attempted at this point. However, all black students in predominately black areas were given the choice of attending any school in the district this year.

1970-71

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Federal judge ordered one black elementary school closed. High school boundaries were changed to shift a white area into the only black high school. Most white students refused to go to the black high school and the judge rescinded the order within a week.

1971-72

The black high school and junior high were ordered closed by the court. One-way busing began.

1972-73

U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to District Court for retrial. This was one year before the desegregation order we are oeprating under today was implemented.

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1973-74 Retrial resulted in the creation of sixth grade centers to desegregate that grade. Almost all students are bused to these centers.

The

1976-77 In May 1976 the 5th Circuit Court remanded the AISD plan back to a local federal judge, in effect calling for further desegregation. school district appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but many people were concerned that more busing of students would be required before the school year

was over.

1978-79

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Austin's case has once again been appealed by the district to the U.S. Supreme Court. Current desegregation plan is the one initiated in 1973-74.

I believe caution should be used in drawing any conclusions from the above information. Factors other than school desegregation, such as inmigration, differing birth rates of ethnic groups, and lower prices and taxes on homes outside the district all contributed to the declining percentage of Anglos in the school district.

I am aware that Austin is the only major school district in Texas that is majority Anglo. One reason for this is that the district is very large and extends beyond the city limits. Most other major districts in Texas are ringed by mostly white suburban districts. In our case, much of the growth is occuring within the district.

I know of no segregation academies in Austin, There are several private schools with very small enrollments. I would categorize these schools as elitest rather than segregation academies. However, several of them did open in the fall of 1977 when many people were concerned that more busing would occur shortly.

I hope this information will be helpful to you.

Sincerely,

Ion Albers

Jan Albers

Member, LWV Austin, Texas

and Austin Alliance

for Smooth Transition

In response to your letter, we have been trying to collect
data about the number of "white flight" schools in our area
and the number of white students who have "fled" desegregated
school districts.

We can find no hard data about so-called segregation acad-
emies, although we think two private schools were statted
at the time of the court order. I am sending some statistics
about the loss of white students in the Houston Independent
School District. There are some 20 odd school districts
in Harris County, so that when the effective court order was
handed down to HISD in 1969-70, most students did not leave
for private schools but rather to the surrounding school
districts. (One complication in reading these charts is that
HISD classified their Hispanic students as white until
1970-71.)

Chart A shows that in 1970-71 the whites constituted 49.9%
of the HISD school population, in 1977-78, only 33.2% (and
this school year they constitute less than 30%). In 1970-71,
the white student population numbered 120,418, in 1977-78,
68,713.

Chart B shows those students who moved out of HISD between
1970 and 1976 a fairly constant loss of 3000 white students
per year to other school districts within the county. While
it also shows a loss of about 775 blacks and 500 Hispanics
per year to outlying school districts, chart A shows the
overall black and Hispanic populations increasing each year
and the white decreasing by about 2% per year.

The reasons given for this decline vary depending upon who
is making the explanation: a lower birth rate for whites
than for other groups; the constant move everywhere of middle
class from the urban center to the suburbs; and certainly,
a lack of replacement. Not only do whites move out in much
larger numbers but clearly they are not being replaced by
other whites moving in.

I hope this helps

Sincerely,
Brenda Gehan

Brenda Gehan

President