The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, after trial, found that the defendants Pulaski County Special School District (PCSSD), the North Little Rock School District (NLRSD) and the Board of Education of the State of Arkansas (State Board) contributed to the continuing segregation of the Little Rock schools, and that an interdistrict remedy was appropriate. The district court ordered consolidation of the three school districts, establishment of a uniform millage rate, elimination of discriminatory practices, and creation of magnet schools to enhance educational opportunities in the new district. It held that the State Board had remedial, financial and oversight responsibilities that would be detailed at a later date. The defendants appeal from the district court's order. In addition, the Joshua intervenors, representing black parents and students, filed a brief in support of the district court's judgment, and the United States filed an amicus curiae brief in general support of the appellants.

We hold that the district court's findings on liability are not clearly erroneous and that intra- and interdistrict relief is appropriate. We find, however, that the violations can be remedied by less intrusive measures than consolidation. These measures, most of which were suggested by the defendant school districts or the Joshua intervenors, include authorizing the district court to make limited adjustments, after a hearing, to the boundaries between Little Rock School District (LRSD) and PCSSD, correcting the segregative practices within each of the individual school districts, improving the quality of any remaining nonintegrated schools in LRSD, providing compensatory and remedial programs for black children in all three school districts, authorizing the district court to establish, after a hearing, a limited number of magnet schools and programs open to all students in Pulaski County, and requiring the State Board to participate in funding the compensatory, remedial and quality education programs, in establishing and maintaining the magnet schools, and in monitoring plan progress. We remand to the district court for action consistent with this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY.

Pulaski County is the most heavily populated metropolitan area in Arkansas, encompassing three independent school districts: LRSD, NLRSD, and PCSSD. The LRSD covers fifty-three square miles and comprises about sixty percent of the City of Little Rock. Although the population of the City of Little Rock is approximately two-thirds white, in the 1983-84 school year, seventy percent of LRSD's 19,052 students were black. Along with NLRSD, LRSD is one of the oldest continuously operating school districts in Arkansas. The NLRSD covers twenty-six square miles and comprises nearly all of the City of North Little Rock. Its 1983-84 student population was 9,051 (36% black, 64% white). The PCSSD surrounds LRSD and NLRSD. Created in 1927 through the consolidation of thirty-eight rural independent school districts, it covers 755 square miles and contains the remainder of the county not included in the other two school districts. In 1983-84, it had 27,839 students (22% black, 78% white). Each of the three districts currently operates under a court-ordered desegregation decree, and none of the districts has achieved unitary status.

On November 30, 1982, LRSD filed this action against PCSSD, NLRSD, the State of Arkansas, and the State Board.1 On April 13, 1983, the district court dismissed the claim against the State of Arkansas but refused to take similar action concerning the State Board, holding that the Board is a proper party in light of its general supervisory relationship with the individual school districts, and the allegations that it has carried out its duties in a manner which increased segregation in Little Rock. The district court concluded that the dismissal of the State of Arkansas had no practical effect on the disposition of the lawsuit. Little Rock School District v. Pulaski County Special School District, 560 F.Supp. 876, 878 (E.D.Ark.1983). The district court separated the liability and remedy phases of the litigation and held liability hearings from January 3-13, 1984.

On April 13, 1984, the district court issued its decision on liability, finding that PCSSD and NLRSD had failed to establish unitary, integrated school districts and had committed unconstitutional and racially discriminatory acts which resulted in "significant and substantial interdistrict segregation." Little Rock School District v. Pulaski County Special School District, 584 F.Supp. 328, 351-53 (E.D.Ark.1984). It concluded that these two school districts had taken actions which had substantial interdistrict segregative effects on education in each of the school districts in the county, and that the districts had failed to redress these segregative effects which they had perpetuated for over a century. The district court also reiterated its holding that the State Board was a "necessary party who must be made subject to the Court's remedial order." 584 F.Supp. at 352-53. It concluded that the only long- or short-term solution to these interdistrict violations is consolidation, and it scheduled hearings to consider the precise means to accomplish that end.

The first remedial hearings took place from April 30 through May 5, 1984. Before these hearings were held, a group of black parents in Little Rock, the Joshua intervenors, sought unsuccessfully to intervene in the proceedings.2 They appealed, and on May 23, 1984, this Court ordered the district court to allow them to intervene and directed it to hear evidence from them concerning remedial alternatives to consolidation. Meanwhile, the defendant school districts had also appealed from the district court's order finding interdistrict violations and ordering consolidation of the three school districts. On May 23, 1984, we dismissed that appeal as premature but suggested that the district court reopen the proceedings to permit PCSSD and NLRSD to advance remedial alternatives to consolidation. Little Rock School District v. Joshua, 738 F.2d 445 (8th Cir.1984) (order); Little Rock School District v. Pulaski County Special School District, 738 F.2d 445 (8th Cir.1984) (order).

The district court held further remedial hearings from July 30 through August 2, 1984, and heard evidence on alternative remedial plans submitted by PCSSD, NLRSD, and the Joshua intervenors.3 On November 19, 1984, it issued its decision on the remedy, reaffirming its view that consolidation of the three school districts was necessary to remedy the constitutional violations. It also entered further findings concerning the State Board's liability and reaffirmed the State Board's remedial responsibilities. 597 F.Supp. at 1227-28. The district court subsequently denied motions by the defendants for reconsideration.

This appeal followed. The issues on appeal are: (1) whether the district court's findings of interdistrict violations are clearly erroneous; (2) whether the district court's remedy exceeds the scope of the constitutional violations; and (3) whether the proceedings before the district court deprived the State Board and PCSSD of due process.

II. THE DISTRICT COURT'S FINDINGS OF INTERDISTRICT VIOLATIONS ARE NOT CLEARLY ERRONEOUS.

A. Legal Background.

1. Legal Standards in Desegregation Cases.

Thirty years ago, the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Id. at 495, 74 S.Ct. at 692. Since Brown, the Supreme Court has affirmed the obligation of school authorities operating segregated schools "to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch." Raney v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 443, 446, 88 S.Ct. 1697, 1698, 20 L.Ed.2d 727 (1968); Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 437-38, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 1693-94, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968). Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that "[e]ach instance of a failure or refusal to fulfill this affirmative duty continues the violation of the Fourteenth Amendment." Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449, 459, 99 S.Ct. 2941, 2947, 61 L.Ed.2d 666 (1979); Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 433 U.S. 406, 413-14, 97 S.Ct. 2766, 2772, 53 L.Ed.2d 851 (1977) (Dayton II ).

Before a court may impose an interdistrict desegregation remedy, it must find an interdistrict constitutional violation. In Milliken I, the Supreme Court explained this prerequisite:

Before the boundaries of separate and autonomous school districts may be set aside by consolidating the separate units for remedial purposes or by imposing a cross-district remedy, it must be shown that there has been a constitutional violation within one district that produces a significant segregative effect in another district. Specifically, it must be shown that racially discriminatory acts of the state or local school districts, or of a single school district have been a substantial cause of interdistrict segregation.

Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 744-45, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 3127-28, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069 (1974) (Milliken I) (emphasis added).

As with any fourteenth amendment violation, a discriminatory purpose must be shown. Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976); Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corporation, 429 U.S. 252, 97 S.Ct. 555, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977); Keyes v. School District No. 1, 413 U.S. 189, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 37 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973). Although the discriminatory impact of state action does not in itself prove a constitutional violation, the "[a]dherence to a particular policy or practice, 'with full knowledge of the predictable effects of such adherence upon racial imbalance in a school system is one factor among many others which may be considered by a court in determining whether an inference of segregative intent should be drawn.' " Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449, 465, 99 S.Ct. 2941, 2950, 61 L.Ed.2d 666 (1979).

Although an evaluation of basic segregative effects is important in determining the scope of a violation and hence the permissible scope of the remedy, a reviewing court is not called upon to quantify the precise segregative effects of each individual act of discrimination. Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. 527, 540, 99 S.Ct. 2971, 2980, 61 L.Ed.2d 720 (1979) (Dayton II ).

This Court has affirmed findings of interdistrict violations and has approved interdistrict desegregation remedies on several occasions. See, e.g., Morrilton School District No. 32 v. United States, 606 F.2d 222, 229 (8th Cir.1979); United States v. State of Missouri, 515 F.2d 1365, 1371 (8th Cir.1975); Haney v. County Board of Education of Sevier County, 429 F.2d 364 (8th Cir.1970). We have also required a state (that had been found to have committed intradistrict violations) to participate in an intradistrict remedy even though that remedy required the state to expend funds in school districts other than the violating district. Liddell v. State of Missouri, 731 F.2d 1294 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 82, 83 L.Ed.2d 30 (1984).

2. Review of Factual Findings.

We will not reverse the district court's factual findings with respect to liability unless we conclude that they are clearly erroneous. Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a); Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985); Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 287-90, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 1789-91, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982); Dayton II, 443 U.S. at 534 n. 8, 99 S.Ct. at 2977 n. 8; Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, 443 U.S. at 468-71, 99 S.Ct. at 2952, 2983 (concurring opinions of Burger, C.J., and Stewart, J.); United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395, 68 S.Ct. 525, 541, 92 L.Ed. 746 (1948). Nor will we reverse such findings when they are based on inferences from other facts unless the rigorous standards of the same rule are met. Anderson, 105 S.Ct. at 1511. The Supreme Court has emphasized the importance of the clearly erroneous rule in civil rights cases, see, e.g., Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. at 287-90, 102 S.Ct. at 1789-91, and, more particularly, in school desegregation cases:

The elimination of the more conspicuous forms of governmentally ordained racial segregation * * * counsels undiminished deference to the factual adjudications of the federal trial judges in cases such as these, uniquely situated as those judges are to appraise the societal forces at work in the communities where they sit.

Columbus, 443 U.S. at 470, 99 S.Ct. at 2983 (Justice Stewart, with whom Chief Justice Burger joins, concurring).

B. The State's Role in the Segregation of the Three Pulaski County School Districts.

The district court detailed the history of state-imposed segregation in the public schools in the State of Arkansas and the steps taken by the state4 to perpetuate a dual school system, particularly in LRSD. The court pointed out that, despite the state's role in mandating and maintaining the dual system until the mid-1960's, the state had done nothing to assist in dismantling the dual system. The court further found that the state's acts had an interdistrict segregative effect with respect to the three school districts in Pulaski County. These findings are not clearly erroneous.

The state's role in the segregation of the public schools of Arkansas began in 1867 when the legislature enacted a law requiring separate public schools for blacks. Act of Feb. 6, 1867, No. 35, Sec. 5, 1866-1867 Ark. Acts 98, 100. In 1931, this legislation was superseded by a law which required the board of school directors in each district of the state to "establish separate schools for white and colored persons." Ark.Stat.Ann. Sec. 80-509(c) (Repl.1980). This statute was repealed on November 1, 1983.

Even though the United States Constitution required that the black and white public schools be equal, Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528, 20 S.Ct. 197, 44 L.Ed. 262 (1899); see also Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256 (1896), black public schools in Arkansas were inferior to white schools. What was true throughout the state was true for NLRSD and PCSSD. Expenditures per pupil for black children in elementary schools in these districts were substantially less than they were for white children, the salaries of black teachers in the black schools were substantially lower than they were for the white teachers in the white schools, and the illiteracy rate of black children was substantially higher than that of white children. Of particular importance in this case, the black elementary schools in these two districts were inferior to the black elementary schools in LRSD. 584 F.Supp. at 330.

The disparities at the high school level were even more pronounced than at the elementary level. Historically, LRSD maintained a high school for black students that was fully accredited by the North Central Association. Id. As late as the mid-1950's, however, no similar facility was maintained by PCSSD. Id. PCSSD paid the tuition and transportation costs for numerous black students who traveled from PCSSD to attend school in LRSD. 584 F.Supp. at 330. The district court credited several studies and the testimony of several witnesses to the effect that LRSD was identified as the school district in the state which provided educational opportunities for black students. Id. This identification tended to draw black students to LRSD from all over the state, and particularly from Pulaski County.5 The state was fully aware of these disparities. Indeed, it had commissioned studies documenting that the disparities existed, and that the disparities were prominent among the factors that drew black families to Little Rock from the county and the rest of the state.

It cannot be seriously denied that the Little Rock School District's maintenance of the only North Central accredited black high school in the County and indeed in the entire area led to a concentration of blacks in this district. For almost half a century it has not only assumed the burden of giving a quality education to blacks in the County and from far corners of the State but has also been the object of racially motivated attacks by certain political and cultural groups.

In 1953, when the Granite Mountain housing project for blacks was being planned, the state, at the behest of the affected school districts, enacted legislation authorizing the transfer of the project site from PCSSD to LRSD. This action insured that a major black housing project would be built in LRSD, and that LRSD would continue to be recognized as the school district in Pulaski County which educated black children. This housing project is discussed more fully infra.

Notwithstanding the state's awareness of the educational disparities between LRSD and the other school districts in the state, it took no remedial action to require adequate educational opportunities for blacks in school districts other than LRSD.7 In summarizing the pre-Brown history of school segregation in Pulaski County, the district court found that, historically, "[a]s far as the education of blacks was concerned, school district boundaries in Pulaski County were ignored." 584 F.Supp. at 330.

Even after the Supreme Court's decisions in Brown I and Brown II, the State of Arkansas took no steps to dismantle the segregated school system in Arkansas or to improve the quality of the black schools in the state generally or in the defendant school districts in particular. To the contrary, it took a series of actions which delayed the elimination of the dual school system in the state for years. These actions were primarily directed against LRSD and heightened the identity of that district as the "black" district of Pulaski County.

On May 20, 1954, three days after Brown I, the Board of Education announced that "[i]t is our responsibility to comply with federal constitutional requirements and we intend to do so when the Supreme Court of the United States outlines the method to be followed." Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 8, 78 S.Ct. 1401, 1404, 3 L.Ed.2d 5 (1958). By the spring of 1955, the Little Rock Board of Education had adopted a plan which would have desegregated the schools by 1963. Id. A large majority of the citizens of Little Rock agreed that the plan was "the best for the interests of all pupils in the District." Id. The plan was approved by the federal district court, Aaron v. Cooper, 143 F.Supp. 855 (E.D.Ark.1956), and this Court, Aaron v. Cooper, 243 F.2d 361 (8th Cir.1957), and review was not sought in the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the state intervened to prevent desegregation of the Little Rock schools. In November, 1956, Arkansas's voters adopted three initiatives sponsored by the state's political leadership. These included:1. An amendment to the state constitution directing the legislature to opposeBrown in every constitutional manner until such time as the federal government ceases from enforcing Brown, and providing that any employee of the state, or any of its subdivisions, who willfully refuses to carry out the mandates of this amendment shall automatically forfeit his office and be subject to prosecution under penal laws to be enacted by the legislature. Ark. Const.Amend. 44. Although this amendment remains on the books, it is recognized by the state authorities as being unconstitutional.

2. A resolution of interposition calling on all states and citizens to adopt a constitutional amendment prohibiting federal involvement in public education, and pledging resistance to school desegregation.

3. A pupil placement law, Ark.Stat. Secs. 80-1519 to -1524, authorizing local boards of education or superintendents to transfer or reassign students or teachers among any schools within their districts, or to "adjoining districts whether in the same or different counties, and for transfer of school funds or other payments by one Board to another for or on account of such attendance." Dove v. Parham, 176 F.Supp. 242, 244 n. 4 (E.D.Ark.1959).

See 584 F.Supp. at 330-32.

In January, 1957, the state legislature enacted, and the Governor signed, legislation implementing the constitutional amendment, including legislation authorizing local school districts to spend school funds to defend integration litigation, and to relieve (or at least to delay) school children from compulsory attendance at racially mixed schools. Governor Orval Faubus also signed legislation creating a state sovereignty commission, with broad powers, to:

1. Perform any and all acts and things deemed necessary and proper to protect the sovereignty of the State of Arkansas, and her sister states from encroachment thereon by the Federal Government or any branch, department or agency thereof, and to resist the usurpation of the rights and powers reserved to this State or our sister states by the Federal Government.

2. Give such advice and provide such legal assistance as the Commission considers necessary or expedient, when requested in writing to do so by resolution adopted by the governing authority of any school district, upon matters, whether involving civil or criminal litigation or otherwise, relating to the commingling of races in the public schools of the State.

3. Study and collect information concerning economic, social and legal development constituting deliberate, palpable and dangerous invasions of or encroachments upon the rights and powers of the State reserved to the State under [the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution].

See 584 F.Supp. at 330-32.

The statute also required prointegration organizations to register and report to the state sovereignty commission. See Aaron v. Cooper, 163 F.Supp. 13, 15 (E.D.Ark.1958).

Notwithstanding these actions, the Little Rock Board of Education took preliminary steps to admit nine black students to Central High School in the fall of 1957. Governor Faubus, however, barred the nine students from entering Central High School by ordering the Arkansas National Guard to stand at the schoolhouse door and to declare the school "off limits" to black students. President Eisenhower responded by dispatching federal troops to guarantee the admittance of the nine black students. They were admitted after the troops arrived and the troops remained in Little Rock for the rest of the school year. Subsequently, the federal district court enjoined Governor Faubus from using the Arkansas National Guard to obstruct or interfere with court orders, Aaron v. Cooper, 156 F.Supp. 220, 226-27 (E.D.Ark.1957), and this Court affirmed, Faubus v. United States, 254 F.2d 797, 806-08 (8th Cir.1958).

In February, 1958, "because of extreme public hostility * * * engendered largely by the official attitudes and actions of the Governor and the Legislature," Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. at 12, 78 S.Ct. at 1407, local officials petitioned the district court to postpone until at least 1961 "the plan of gradual racial integration in the Little Rock public schools" which the Little Rock Board of Education had adopted in 1955 for implementation at the high school level for the 1957-58 school year. Aaron v. Cooper, 163 F.Supp. 13, 14 (E.D.Ark.1958). The district court found that "between the spring and fall of 1957 there was a marked change in public attitude toward [the school desegregation] plan," that persons who had formerly been willing to accept it had changed their minds and had come to the conclusion "that the local School Board had not done all it could do to prevent integration." 163 F.Supp. at 21. The court noted that the state legislature's 1957-58 "enactments had their effect at Little Rock and throughout the State in stiffening opposition to the plan[.]" Id. Because of this state-fostered "opposition * * * to the principle of integration which * * * runs counter to the pattern of southern life which has existed for over three hundred years," id., and the "corresponding damage to the educational program," id. at 26, and the City of Little Rock itself, the court held that a two-and-one-half-year moratorium on desegregation was necessary.

This Court reversed, Aaron v. Cooper, 257 F.2d 33, 40 (8th Cir.1958), and the Supreme Court affirmed our decision on September 12, 1958, quoting with approval a pleading filed by the school board:

The legislative, executive, and judicial departments of the state government opposed the desegregation of Little Rock schools by enacting laws, calling out troops, making statements vilifying federal law and federal courts, and failing to utilize state law enforcement agencies and judicial processes to maintain public peace.

Aaron v. Cooper, 358 U.S. 1, 15, 78 S.Ct. at 1408 (1958).

While the above appeal was pending, opponents of desegregation secured a state court injunction to prevent the opening of the "partially integrated high schools" of Little Rock. Once again, the federal district court set aside the injunction and this Court affirmed. See Thomason v. Cooper, 254 F.2d 808 (8th Cir.1958).

In August, 1958, Governor Faubus called an "emergency session" of the legislature, which enacted three laws aimed at preventing the Little Rock Board of Education from complying with Brown. Act 4 authorized the Governor, by proclamation, to close any or all public schools within any school district pending a referendum "for" or "against" the "racial integration of all schools within the school district;" Act 6 permitted students to transfer to segregated public or private schools across district lines if the schools they ordinarily attended were to be desegregated; and Act 9 authorized the removal by recall of any members of local school district boards. (This Act was aimed at removing from the Little Rock Board of Education those who favored desegregation.)

On September 13, 1958, Governor Faubus issued a proclamation closing the four Little Rock high schools, white and black. They remained closed throughout the 1958-59 school year, with the school board leasing the schools to a private school corporation which intended to operate them on a segregated basis. The federal courts found that such operation would be unconstitutional and enjoined the private corporation from operating the schools, see Aaron v. McKinley, 173 F.Supp. 944, 952 (E.D.Ark.1959), aff'd sub nom. Faubus v. Aaron, 361 U.S. 197, 80 S.Ct. 291, 4 L.Ed.2d 237 (1959) (per curiam). Nevertheless, the Little Rock schools remained closed for the entire school year, and during this period, many white and some black students from Little Rock attended segregated schools in PCSSD. The Arkansas state legislature enacted a statute authorizing the state to pay for the interdistrict transfer of students from desegregated to segregated public and private schools. Ark. Acts 1959 No. 236. See Ark. Acts, Special Session 1958, No. 6. In 1960, an independent study described the number of transfers among the three Pulaski County school districts to preserve segregation as "excessively high." 584 F.Supp. at 339. Significant numbers of interdistrict transfers continued until 1965. PX 10.

Shortly after the school closing act was declared unconstitutional, the Little Rock Board of Education announced that it would reopen the Little Rock high schools for the 1959-60 school year because "we will not abandon free public education in order to avoid desegregation." Norwood v. Tucker, 287 F.2d 798, 805 (8th Cir.1961). The Board also publicly announced, however, that it awaited advice from "Governor Faubus and his attorneys * * * [on] any method whereby we may maintain compulsory segregation and still operate our public high schools." Id.

During the 1959-60 school year, students were assigned to particular schools in accordance with the Arkansas pupil placement laws of 1956 and 1959. Ark.Stat.Ann. Secs. 80-1519 through 1524. In Parham v. Dove, 271 F.2d 132 (8th Cir.1959), and Dove v. Parham, 282 F.2d 256 (8th Cir.1960), we held that the Arkansas pupil placement laws were not facially unconstitutional although we recognized that the laws could in practice be used to perpetuate segregated schools. 271 F.2d at 136.

In Norwood v. Tucker, 287 F.2d 798 (8th Cir.1961), we held that the Little Rock Board of Education was using "the standards and criteria * * * [of the Arkansas pupil placement laws] for the purpose of impeding, thwarting and frustrating integration." Id. at 808. We called the Board's attention to the continuing injunction in the first Aaron case requiring them to " 'take affirmative steps' * * * to facilitate and accomplish operation of the school district on a nondiscriminatory basis." Id. at 809.

Thereafter, the Little Rock Board of Education attempted to use the Arkansas pupil placement law in a nondiscriminatory fashion. However, in 1965, litigation was once again commenced alleging that black children were being denied admittance to predominantly white schools in Little Rock and "assigned to 'Negro' schools near their home." Clark v. Board of Education of Little Rock School District, 369 F.2d 661, 665 (8th Cir.1966).

On April 22, 1965, the Board formally abandoned use of the pupil assignment law and adopted a freedom-of-choice plan. When the litigants in the Clark case, id., alleged that this freedom-of-choice plan failed to meet constitutional standards, the Little Rock School Board advanced "a number of desegregation plans * * * in a good faith effort to provide a solution to continuous litigation." Little Rock School District v. Pulaski County Special School District, 584 F.Supp. at 334. However, the Board "[u]ntil January 1967 * * * was faced with a hostile governor and state administration and an unfriendly legislature," id., which helped stir up a "hysterical political atmosphere," id., that led to the defeat of the several proposals for more effective school desegregation.

Little Rock continued to rely on a freedom-of-choice desegregation plan (as modified in Clark, 369 F.2d 661) until, by 1968, it became clear that this plan was generally ineffective and would not meet the constitutional standards which the Supreme Court had recently spelled out in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 438, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 1694, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968); Raney v. Board of Education of Gould School District, 391 U.S. 443, 88 S.Ct. 1697, 20 L.Ed.2d 727 (1968); and Monroe v. Board of Commissioners of City of Jackson, 391 U.S. 450, 88 S.Ct. 1700, 20 L.Ed.2d 733 (1968). We noted in Clark v. Board of Education of Little Rock School District, 426 F.2d 1035, 1043 (8th Cir.1970), that, despite considerable progress in desegregating several Little Rock schools, "[u]nder 'freedom of choice' in 1968-69 approximately 75% of the Negro students attended schools in which their race constituted 90% or more of the student body."For the 1969-70 school year, the Little Rock Board of Education adopted a plan for pupil assignment based on geographic attendance zones. In Clark, id., we held that this plan's program for student desegregation did not meet the constitutional requirement to eliminate racial discrimination "root and branch." Id. at 1041. We ordered the Little Rock Board of Education to file with the district court an effective desegregation plan for implementation no later than the 1970-71 school year.

Ultimately, it was not until the 1973-74 school year that most Little Rock schools were desegregated. See School Desegregation in Little Rock, U. S. Commission on Civil Rights 7 (June, 1977). Thus, although the Little Rock Board of Education had announced shortly after Brown I that it would begin to desegregate its schools by 1957 and complete the process by 1963, the active intervention of the state was a central factor in delaying desegregation of the Little Rock schools until 1973, and in contributing to the increasing concentration of blacks in LRSD.8 The district court found that throughout this period and to this day, the state has never acknowledged its affirmative duty to assist local school districts in their desegregation efforts and has never promulgated any rules or guidelines which would encourage the local school districts to eliminate discrimination in their school systems. Nor has it taken action to foster racially neutral school siting. Rather, it has approved racially segregative school sitings in violation of district court decrees as recently as 1980. Id. It has fostered impressive programs to improve the quality of education generally, but has made no effort to improve the instruction of educationally deprived and discriminatorily served black students. 597 F.Supp. at 1228. It provides funds for transportation but does not provide specific funds to aid transportation for desegregation. 597 F.Supp. at 1228. It has also failed to seek all federal funds available to aid desegregation efforts. Since the 1950's, it has encouraged consolidation of school districts to promote efficiency and quality of education, but has taken no action to encourage consolidation to end the racial segregation which it required for over a century. 597 F.Supp. at 1228. To this day, the state takes the position that Arkansas law does not permit it to assist local school boards in their desegregation efforts. Brief of Appellant State Board at 6.

C. The Pulaski County Special School District's Role in the Segregation of the Pulaski County School Districts.

The district court set forth in some detail the factors it considered significant to its holding that PCSSD had committed significant interdistrict violations. It further found that these violations are of a continuing nature and justify imposing an interdistrict remedy which would include PCSSD. These findings are not clearly erroneous.

PCSSD was created in 1927 pursuant to Act 152 of the 1927 Arkansas Acts, which gave the residents of Pulaski County outside of the cities of Little Rock and North Little Rock the right to organize a single school district. On July 21, 1927, a consolidated school district was approved by referendum. Pursuant to this referendum, the Pulaski County Board of Education ordered that "all of Pulaski County outside the territory embraced in the cities of Little Rock and North Little Rock be created and organized into a special school district to be named and known as Pulaski County Special School District." 584 F.Supp. at 340. "The historic intention [was] that the boundaries of the cities of Little Rock and North Little Rock remain coterminous with the respective school districts[.]" 584 F.Supp. at 340.

PCSSD maintained inadequate elementary schools for blacks and was without an accredited high school for blacks until 1955. 584 F.Supp. at 329-30. Accordingly, many black elementary students from the county and any black student from the county who wished to attend an accredited high school had no reasonable alternative other than to attend the black schools in Little Rock. 584 F.Supp. at 330 ("As far as the education of blacks were concerned, school district boundaries in Pulaski County were ignored.") Pulaski County paid for many interdistrict transfers. Some black families moved from the county to Little Rock because of the disparities in educational opportunities. J.D.R. at 915-19; 584 F.Supp. at 330-40.

In 1953, PCSSD cooperated with LRSD and the state in a substantial interdistrict segregative act by permitting the annexation of lands for the construction of a black residential housing project, the Granite Mountain project, thus insuring that the black students in the project would attend school in LRSD rather than PCSSD, and enhancing LRSD's position as the school district with the responsibility of educating black children. This housing project is discussed in greater detail infra. When the state closed LRSD for the 1958-59 school year to avoid the desegregation of that school system, PCSSD accepted students from the Little Rock schools into the segregated schools of the county. These interdistrict transfers continued until the mid-1960's.

Until the late 1960's, LRSD generally grew as the City of Little Rock grew, and there is no contention that these annexations, with the significant exception of the Granite Mountain project, were intended to have a segregative effect.9 In 1968, the Supreme Court announced that freedom-of-choice plans were failing to dismantle dual school systems and that "if it cannot be shown that such a plan will further rather than delay conversion to a unitary, nonracial, nondiscriminatory school system, it must be held unacceptable." Monroe, 391 U.S. at 459, 88 S.Ct. at 1705; Raney, 391 U.S. at 446, 88 S.Ct. at 1698; Green, 391 U.S. at 439, 88 S.Ct. at 1694. It required that segregation be eliminated root and branch. The black parents and children of LRSD took immediate action to secure compliance with these decisions. This Court complied with the Supreme Court mandate and required LRSD to implement a comprehensive plan to desegregate the schools of that district. See Clark v. Board of Education of Little Rock School District, 426 F.2d 1035 (8th Cir.1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 952, 91 S.Ct. 1608, 29 L.Ed.2d 122 (1971); Clark v. Board of Education, 449 F.2d 493 (8th Cir.1971), cert. denied, 405 U.S. 936, 92 S.Ct. 954, 30 L.Ed.2d 812 (1972), aff'd, 471 F.2d 656 (8th Cir.1972) (mem.). After the Supreme Court decided the Green trilogy, the concurrent annexation of lands by the City of Little Rock and LRSD ended and, from that point on, the city continued to expand, but the boundaries of LRSD remained relatively static. Little Rock, 584 F.Supp. at 340. The district court found that "Pulaski County Special School District's acts of freezing its boundaries to discontinue the practice of allowing City and Little Rock School District boundaries to remain coterminous springs from an unconstitutional racial motive that has significant interdistrict effects on the Little Rock School District." 584 F.Supp. at 341 (finding 26).10

As a result, by 1984, the City of Little Rock encompassed ninety-one square miles while LRSD covered only fifty-three square miles. Attractive industrial and residential areas in the county were made a part of the City of Little Rock but remained within PCSSD rather than becoming part of LRSD. These areas are residential sections in which many white families either lived or subsequently moved into and, as a result, their children now attend schools in PCSSD. If the boundaries of the City of Little Rock and its school district had remained coterminous, the black-white ratio in the Little Rock schools would now be sixty-forty rather than seventy-thirty.11

The district court found that the boundaries between PCSSD and LRSD had been maintained to keep LRSD predominantly black and PCSSD predominantly white. It further found that these boundary manipulations have had a substantial interdistrict segregative effect. 584 F.Supp. at 351. These findings are not clearly erroneous.12 They were based on the facts recited herein and on the expert testimony of Dr. Robert Dentler who testified that the boundary lines had an interdistrict effect. He went on to state:

* * * The major consequence of the boundary lines established as they were in 1928 at the peak of consolidation efforts initiated by small rural districts of the County and with the support of the State, have by now come to a condition where they keep the Little Rock School District very predominately black and limit the opportunities therein of black students.

The boundaries also have generated consequences with respect to differences in State aid, State aid for instructional and related services generally and State aid for transportation. While the differences which have favored the County over the years have been remedied very recently there are all of the years in which the State aid formulas supported the County to the benefit of non-black higher proportions by far of non-black students and a disadvantage both to Little Rock School District and North Little Rock.

The boundaries also echo with refusals to modify them from within the Boards of Directors, at least since 1968. In other words, after years of conversation about the merits of the boundaries, about mutual assistance especially for purposes that have not to do with race, suddenly these boundaries harden and the Pulaski County Board refuses any further modification of them on the one side, and the Little Rock Board of Directors does not move or press on modifications so far as I can find.

The boundaries also signify to me that under them, under the circumstances of a suburban system what was rural, what once existed as 38 rural counties, now congealed into a modernizing suburban system is such that under these boundary conditions school construction follows real estate development, not educational needs.

T. at 379-80; T. at 69; 584 F.Supp. at 340-41.

During the first two decades of tumultuous desegregation in LRSD, PCSSD schools remained segregated and free from the problems which accompanied state-resisted desegregation in Little Rock. It was not until 1968 that suit was first brought to desegregate the PCSSD schools. Zinnamon v. Board of Education of Pulaski County Special School District, No. LR-68-C-154 (W.D.Ark.1971), slip op. at 1. This suit remained dormant until 1970, while the Department of Health, Education & Welfare negotiated with the PCSSD Board of Education to work out an integration plan. After extensive litigation which led to an order enjoining PCSSD's discriminatory school construction plans, PCSSD consented to the entry of a decree by Judge J. Smith Henley--then Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas--integrating its schools. Zinnamon v. Board of Education of Pulaski County Special School District, No. LR-68-C-154 (W.D.Ark.1973). The district court found that PCSSD had failed to comply with the Henley decree and noted that, at trial, many PCSSD Board of Education members were not even aware of the contents of the decree. Some of the more significant violations found by the court were:

1. After 1973, PCSSD continued to close schools in black neighborhoods and to build new schools in distant suburbs that were the developing areas of white population. 584 F.Supp. at 346. Many of the new schools are over ninety percent white. Id. For example, Northwood Junior High School was opened in 1980 in a remote location far from a black residential area and has a student enrollment which is only eight percent black. North Pulaski was built in 1977, remote from any black residential areas in the furthest reaches of Pulaski County, and in 1983, had a black student population of about six percent. Cato Elementary School was built in 1975, again in a remote area and, in 1983, it had a student population which was less than ten percent black. Robinson Middle School was built in 1981 and, in 1983, had a black student population of slightly over eleven percent. The district court credited the testimony of Dr. Robert Dentler, plaintiffs' expert witness, that "the county took pains not to site new schools where they would be accessible to blacks, and others they dusted off old dilapidated plants and arranged to have them as walk-in schools for black students well out of reach of possible transportation by white students." There has been no new construction in or near the central part of the county, or to the east or southeast, where blacks live. The district court concluded that there were substantial and continuing inter- and intradistrict effects from PCSSD's violation of Zinnamon's specific order that PCSSD must cease and desist now and in the future from building schools in sites which are not equally accessible to blacks and whites. 584 F.Supp. at 346. All of these events are contrary to Swann's admonition against the location of new schools "in the areas of white suburban expansion, farthest from Negro population centers." Swann, 402 U.S. 1, 20-21, 91 S.Ct. 126, 1278-79, 28 L.Ed.2d 554.

2. Student assignments continue to be made on a racially discriminatory basis. Thus, in 1983, of fifty-one schools in PCSSD, sixteen are racially identifiable as black schools and thirteen are racially identifiable as white schools. In some instances, neighboring schools are operated as racially identifiable schools. Thus, Mabelvale Junior High School is close to Cloverdale Junior High School (both are within the City of Little Rock but are part of PCSSD), but Mabelvale's enrollment in 1983 was only 12.7 percent black while the Cloverdale's enrollment was slightly more than thirty-three percent black. 584 F.Supp. at 354-55. PCSSD maintains racially identifiable black schools by not busing in white students and by busing in additional black students. 584 F.Supp. at 348. PCSSD buses black students to Wakefield, Watson, and Cloverdale schools even though these schools have some of the highest enrollments of blacks in PCSSD and are located a short busing distance from identifiably white schools. 584 F.Supp. at 348, 354-55. Racially identifiable white schools are maintained by not busing blacks to schools built in white neighborhoods. 584 F.Supp. at 348.

3. Similarly, PCSSD failed to apportion the burden of busing fairly among white and black students. Thus, a black student enrolled in the PCSSD system is two and one-half times more likely to be bused for desegregative purposes than a white student, 584 F.Supp. at 348, and a disproportionate number of black students in PCSSD are bused long distances, often to schools which are already racially identifiable as black. Id.

4. PCSSD cooperated with the City of Little Rock in the location and building of Fair and Otter Creek Schools in white neighborhoods within the city limits but just outside the boundaries of LRSD. 584 F.Supp. at 346. Both schools are racially identifiable as white schools. Fair High School, which has a thirteen percent black enrollment, is located less than two miles from LRSD's Parkview High School which has a fifty-six percent black enrollment, and is a reasonable busing distance from PCSSD's Mills High School which has an enrollment of over forty percent black. 584 F.Supp. at 356. Otter Creek has a black enrollment of only fourteen percent, but is located near several PCSSD and LRSD elementary schools with significantly higher black enrollments.

5. PCSSD failed to meet the goals for the hiring and promotion of black principals, teachers and administrators. 584 F.Supp. at 347-48. Accordingly, there are fewer employment and promotion opportunities for blacks in PCSSD and the absence of black role models in teaching and administration. Id. These factors have discouraged the growth of a black community in PCSSD. 584 F.Supp. at 347.

6. The chances that a black student will be classified as educably mentally retarded are significantly greater in PCSSD than they are in LRSD. 584 F.Supp. at 350.

7. Unlike LRSD, PCSSD has failed to develop programs to encourage the participation of black students in curricular and extracurricular activities. 584 F.Supp. at 348.

8. PCSSD has failed to comply with requirements that a biracial committee be established and that two black citizens, elected and selected by the black community, serve in ex-officio capacity on its Board of Education. 584 F.Supp. at 347. This failure reduced the input of the PCSSD black community on school site selection and housing project decisions and exacerbated the historical trend of black in-migration to LRSD and white out-migration to PCSSD.

D. North Little Rock's Role in Segregating the Three Districts.

The district court found that NLRSD had committed several significant interdistrict violations. Our review of the record convinces us that the trial court's findings with respect to the violations listed below are not clearly erroneous, and that the current interdistrict impact of these violations justifies an interdistrict remedy which would involve NLRSD. We do, however, take the nature and extent of NLRSD violations into consideration in framing a remedy (which is largely intradistrict with respect to that district).

In the pre-Brown period, NLRSD failed to maintain equal or adequate schools for black students, particularly at the high school level. This failure led to significant transfers of black high school students from NLRSD to LRSD, and contributed to the concentration of blacks in LRSD, 584 F.Supp. at 330, a concentration which has continued to this day.

When the LRSD schools were closed for the 1958-59 school year, NLRSD, along with PCSSD, opened its segregated schools to many white and some black students from LRSD. These transfers continued in significant numbers until the mid-1960's and played a substantial role in delaying desegregation in LRSD. 584 F.Supp. at 339-40.

NLRSD has failed to comply fully with desegregation orders of the district court, Davis v. Board of Education, No. LR-68-C-151 (E.D.Ark.1977), and this Court, Davis v. Board of Education, 635 F.2d 730 (8th Cir.1980), with respect to the desegregation of faculty and staff. 584 F.Supp. at 348. Thus, blacks have a measurably smaller chance of being hired as teachers or administrators in NLRSD than in LRSD.

NLRSD maintains segregation within its school system in part by grossly overclassifying its black pupils into special education and educable mentally retarded (EMR) categories. It classifies over nineteen percent of its black students as retarded or learning disabled, nearly three and one-half times as many as are similarly classified in LRSD. 584 F.Supp. at 348. Moreover, its EMR placement rate for blacks is 8.9 times higher than it is for whites, compared to a national average placement rate of two and one-half times as many black students as white students. Placing children in Special Education: A Strategy for Equity 10 (K. Heller, W. Holtzman, and S. Messick, eds. 1982).

NLRSD argues that the overrepresentation of blacks in its EMR classes can be explained by economic and social factors, as well as differences in IQ between black and white students. The district court rejected this argument after hearing all the expert testimony on the issue. It did not err in so holding. These factors may explain why there may be more black than white EMR students, but they do not explain why the NLRSD experience should be so different than that in the nation, in Arkansas or in LRSD, nor do they explain why black students are not similarly overrepresented in the specific learning disability categories. The appellees' experts attributed this difference in EMR classification to race, and the district court was justified in accepting this opinion and in holding that this difference discouraged black students from attending that district.

E. Interdistrict Housing Violations by the Defendants.

The district court made detailed and extensive findings regarding the existence of segregated housing in the Little Rock metropolitan area and regarding the causal role of the State of Arkansas and PCSSD in creating and perpetuating this condition. After reviewing these findings for clear error, we find none, and conclude that the record amply supports the district court's determination.

The district court found that "[p]ublic housing in Pulaski County has historically been the subject of racial segregation." Little Rock School District v. Pulaski County, 584 F.Supp. 328, 341 (E.D.Ark.1984). As with private housing patterns, this demographic fact is the product of interrelated discriminatory conduct on the part of the state and the county. The state delegated its responsibility in public housing to city and county governments by authorizing them to operate housing authorities upon the adoption by each of an appropriate enabling resolution. Ark.Stat.Ann. Sec. 19-3004. The cities of North Little Rock and Little Rock have adopted these resolutions, but Pulaski County has not done so. Although the resolutions empower the cities to develop and construct public housing projects up to ten miles beyond city limits, neither city housing authority has ever built a project in PCSSD, and the record does not indicate that Pulaski County has constructed such housing. Id. at 341.

Typical of the pattern of development was the 1953 Granite Mountain public housing project. B. Finley Vinson, chairman of the board of the holding company which owns the largest bank in Arkansas and who was an executive with the Little Rock Housing Authority from 1950 to 1954, testified that, in the early 1950's, the state, the Little Rock Housing Authority, LRSD, and PCSSD cooperated in the development of a major all-black housing project which was intended to channel black residential development toward the far southeast boundaries of the City of Little Rock, away from white residential areas. He stated that "[i]t should be made very clear that * * * this was a device to maintain segregation of races. * * * There was no bones made about it." Although this land was part of PCSSD, the decision was also made at the state and local level for LRSD to annex this territory from PCSSD to ensure that this black development was channeled into LRSD, which was the only district capable of providing education for blacks. Mr. Vinson testified that the LRSD "worked out the annexation with the County School District." In order to effect this transfer of land from PCSSD to LRSD, the Arkansas legislature in 1953 passed an act, Ark.Stat.Ann. Sec. 80-436 (Repl.1980), which allowed the land transfer without resort to the standard procedures set forth in Ark.Stat. Sec. 80-456. Mr. Vinson testified that over 500 segregated housing units were constructed at Granite Mountain (with clearance of forty or fifty preexisting units), and that, as was expected, many more segregated housing units were built in this area in the following years. This area is still an essentially segregated black housing area served by several schools which have overwhelmingly high black enrollments ranging from seventy-one percent to one hundred percent black.13 In sum, there is substantial evidence in the record to support the district court's finding that PCSSD cooperated with the state, the Little Rock Housing Authority and LRSD in this intentional and successful attempt to segregate blacks in a nearly all-black neighborhood and in nearly all-black schools within LRSD. 584 F.Supp. at 342.

The district court also found that the Little Rock Housing Authority accentuated segregation in public housing and, thus, in schools, by razing black neighborhoods (which bordered on white areas) and relocating the uprooted blacks in housing projects in eastern Little Rock. White residents, whose neighborhoods were more selectively cleared, were relocated to western Little Rock. The district court found that these decisions were part of "a deliberate policy of the Little Rock Housing Authority and other governmental bodies to maintain a residential racial segregation." Id.

The concurrent acts of governmental bodies, especially the state and county school districts, are also reflected in the racially segregated private housing market in metropolitan Little Rock. The district court cited as especially probative of state liability the example of a black realtor who was disciplined by the state real estate commission. The realtor, who sold a home to a black in a white neighborhood, had violated a commission regulation which forbade realtors from being "instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood." Although the realtor received his license, the state commission warned him about such "misconduct," and he was fired from his job. Id.

PCSSD also contributed to the segregated nature of the private housing market through its decisions in school siting. As Chief Justice Burger has written, "People gravitate toward school facilities, just as schools are located in response to the needs of people. The location of schools may thus influence the pattern of residential development of a metropolitan area and have important impact on the composition of inner city neighborhoods." Swann, 402 U.S. at 20, 91 S.Ct. at 1278. According to the district court's factual findings, PCSSD violated the Zinnamon decree by building nearly a dozen new schools after 1973 in the furthest outlying areas of developing white populations. These schools now have enrollments that are generally over ninety percent white. Id. at 346. As we have noted, supra at 28, 91 S.Ct. at 1282, Dr. Robert Dentler testified about the racially discriminatory nature of these school siting decisions. The district court concluded that decisions on school sites were made "without any consideration given to the impact or effect such selection would have on desegregation and is therefore a constitutional violation." Id. at 346.

The district court's generalized factual findings (which are based on the specific facts we have recounted here) are direct and unequivocal:

36. These housing practices, both public and private, together with the manner in which predominantly black areas were willingly transferred to the Little Rock School District from the Pulaski County Special School District contributed greatly to the disparity in the racial composition of these school districts. * * *

* * *

* * *

66. The magnet factors of relatives, jobs and public housing units have encouraged high proportions of blacks migrating to move to the Little Rock School District.

Id. at 342, 345.

After careful review of the long record compiled below, we conclude that the district court's factual findings are valid and do not embody clear error according to the standard of review we have set forth above.

We also conclude that the district court committed no error of law in examining segregative housing patterns perpetuated by the state and PCSSD. As an aspect of school desegregation cases, the housing issue was first addressed by Justice Stewart, concurring in Milliken I :

Were it to be shown, for example, that state officials had contributed to the separation of the races by drawing or redrawing school district lines, by transfer of school units between districts, or by purposeful, racially discriminatory use of state housing or zoning laws, then a decree calling for transfer of pupils across district lines or for restructuring of district lines might well be appropriate.

418 U.S. at 755, 94 S.Ct. at 3132 (emphasis added).

At least two courts of appeals have acted on Justice Stewart's suggested standard of liability and have held state governments responsible for remedying school segregation which was partially the result of state-authorized local housing authorities.14 In the Indianapolis case, the district court recounted a long history of segregated housing, as a result of which less than one percent of Indianapolis's suburban population was black. United States v. Board of School Commissioners, 332 F.Supp. 655 (S.D.Ind.1971). The court attributed residential segregation (and, hence, school segregation) in part to housing violations committed by the Housing Authority of the City of Indianapolis (HACI). The court found that, from 1957 through 1971, HACI built public housing projects in areas within the Indianapolis Public School District (IPS) inhabited ninety-eight percent by Negroes, but none in the suburban school districts. United States v. Board of School Commissioners, 456 F.Supp. 183, 189 (S.D.Ind.1978), aff'd in part & vacated in part, 637 F.2d 1101 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 838, 101 S.Ct. 114, 66 L.Ed.2d 45 (1980). The district court held that

the action of such official bodies in locating such projects within IPS * * * [was] racially motivated with the invidious purpose to keep the blacks within the pre-Uni-Gov Indianapolis and IPS, and to keep the territory of the added suburban defendants segregated for the use of whites only. * * *

* * * [I]t was obvious that the natural, probable and foreseeable result of erecting public housing projects wholly within IPS territory would be to concentrate poor blacks in such projects and thus to increase or perpetuate public school segregation within IPS.

Id. at 189.

The Court of Appeals held that the district court's findings were amply supported in the record, United States v. Board of School Commissioners, 637 F.2d at 1110, and affirmed the district court's finding "that the decision in the 60's to locate all public housing in Marion County within the boundaries of IPS was the result of segregative intent by the responsible state agencies." Id. at 1111.

Although the district court in the Indianapolis case did not elaborate its reasoning, it found that, along with legislation which discriminatorily reorganized the City of Indianapolis relative to the Indianapolis School District, the state was responsible to some extent for the housing violations which exacerbated the segregation of the schools. The district court referred to HACI as a "state instrumentality," United States v. Board of School Commissioners, 419 F.Supp. 180, 182 (S.D.Ind.1975), and as we have noted above, as a "responsible state agency." As a result, the state was held responsible for funding certain ancillary services as part of the interdistrict remedy, which the Court of Appeals affirmed. United States v. Board of School Commissioners, 637 F.2d at 1116.

The courts reached a similar result in the interdistrict remedy that was adjudicated in the Wilmington, Delaware, case. The Wilmington Housing Authority operated over 2,000 public housing units in the city, but fewer than forty in the predominantly white suburbs, despite a period of "extraordinary population growth" in the suburbs. Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F.Supp. 428, 435 (D.Del.) (three-judge court), aff'd per curiam, 423 U.S. 963, 96 S.Ct. 381, 46 L.Ed.2d 293 (1975). As a result, the district court concluded that "[p]ublic housing policies also contributed to the concentration of minority residents in Wilmington." Id. The state's culpability and partial remedial responsibility in the interdistrict remedy was subsequently affirmed. Evans v. Buchanan, 582 F.2d 750 (3d Cir.1978) (en banc).

The courts have not limited their attention to public housing violations; private housing discrimination has also been the basis for state liability in school desegregation cases. In Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F.Supp. at 434-35, a three-judge panel considered as evidence of state culpability that the Delaware Real Estate Commission, a state licensing agency, enforced a realtor's ethical canon which discriminated in the same regard as the provision cited in the case at bar. The district court reached the same result in Oliver v. Kalamazoo Board of Educ., 368 F.Supp. 143, 183 (W.D.Mich.1973), aff'd sub nom. Oliver v. Michigan State Board of Education, 508 F.2d 178 (6th Cir.1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 963, 95 S.Ct. 1950, 44 L.Ed.2d 449 (1975). That Court concluded that "the State of Michigan should not be allowed to escape constitutional responsibilities by fractionalizing its jurisdiction through many agencies." Id. at 183.

Our review of these precedents, together with the Arkansas statutes and relevant case law, is an additional factor justifying imposition of remedial liability upon the State of Arkansas. First, as regards public housing, we note that the municipal housing authorities implicated here are agencies of the state, which obliges the state to participate in the remedial phase of this litigation. In construing the Housing Authority Act, Ark.Stat.Ann. Sec. 19-3004 et seq., the Arkansas Supreme Court has declared:

A Housing Authority is an agent of the state dealing with public health standards and falls squarely within the traditional police powers of the state. A City Housing Authority does not operate within the scope of "municipal affairs" (i.e., those affecting, germane to or concerning the municipality and its government) as distinguished from those state officers excepted in the Home Rule Act.

Fort Smith v. Housing Authority of the City of Fort Smith, 256 Ark. 254, 506 S.W.2d 534, 536 (1974). See also Arkansas Louisiana Gas Co. v. City of Little Rock, 256 Ark. 112, 506 S.W.2d 555, 558 (city and housing authority do not have a principal-agent relationship).

We believe the structure of the state housing authority law supports this reading. Although the state does not operate the housing authorities per se, the state legislature authorized the housing authorities (Ark.Stat.Ann. Sec. 19-3004), promulgated a finding and declaration of statewide necessity for housing reform (Sec. 19-3002), established standards for the appointment, qualifications and tenure of the housing commissioners (Sec. 19-3005), enumerated the powers of housing authorities (Sec. 19-3011) (including eminent domain (Sec. 19-3015) ), and gave the authorities the power to issue bonds (Secs. 19-3017-3019).

As regards private housing segregation, we believe that the state's role in regulating real estate practices through the Arkansas Real Estate Commission, see Ark.Stat.Ann. Secs. 71-1303, 71-1307, also implicates it in the residential segregation that contributed to the racial segregation of the Little Rock schools.

The housing violations recounted above deeply implicate the state in the constitutional violations found by the district court. Any other finding by this Court would reward the state for dividing and delegating the functions of state government among its many branches and divisions. As the district court declared in the Kalamazoo case:

The State * * * cannot parcel out its jurisdiction and delibertely achieve by bits and pieces what it could not do directly by statute. When such a situation is alleged to exist, the court must look closely at the actions of each agency to determine whether it has met its constitutional responsibilities. To allow each agency to plead constitutional violations of other agencies in exculpation of its own would be to mock the Constitution of the United States[.]

Oliver v. Kalamazoo Board of Education, 368 F.Supp. 143, 185 (W.D.Mich.1973), aff'd sub nom. Oliver v. Michigan State Board of Education, 508 F.2d 178 (6th Cir.1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 963, 95 S.Ct. 1950, 44 L.Ed.2d 449 (1975). See also Note, Housing Discrimination as a Basis for Interdistrict School Desegregation Remedies, 93 Yale L.J. 340 (1983).

As a concurrent actor in the problem of housing discrimination, the PCSSD must also bear its share of the remedial burden. Where school boards have acted with complicity in developing schools in conjunction with discriminatory real estate development, they have been held responsible for their share of the remedy. See, e.g., Oliver, 368 F.Supp. at 171-73.

F. Summary of Violations.

The state's actions which originally segregated LRSD and then forestalled its desegregation for over twenty years are not too remote in time to be relevant for this appeal. Rather, the long history of concurrent actions on the part of the state, PCSSD, and NLRSD exerted an unmistakable interdistrict effect on the schools of the metropolitan area by singling out LRSD as the school district which provided some educational opportunities for black students and by identifying PCSSD and NLRSD as white districts.

The acts which implicate the state as a primary constitutional violator began long before Brown, with a century-old, state-mandated dual school system which provided a markedly inferior education for black students. This dual system was achieved in part through the transfer of black students from NLRSD and PCSSD to LRSD. When the Little Rock Board of Education decided to comply with the Supreme Court's orders and desegregate its schools after Brown, the state intervened and prevented the Board from desegregating for nearly twenty years. The state persisted in opposing desegregation for thirteen years after Brown, and has only taken minimal actions to assist in the desegregation of its schools to this day.

Public and private housing policies exacerbated school segregation. Public housing units were segregated and most projects were built in black residential areas in LRSD or NLRSD to serve black families. No public housing units were built in PCSSD, but the Granite Mountain project was built on land deannexed by PCSSD with state approval with the intention that this all-black project would be located in LRSD and that this would ensure that black students would attend the segregated black schools in Little Rock. The effects of this action persist until this day.

The defendant school districts have acted concurrently and independently to perpetuate the interdistrict problem of school segregation. The long legacy of inferior schools for blacks in PCSSD and NLRSD (which was exemplified by the absence of an accredited black high school until after Brown) induced many blacks to attend school in LRSD, often with a subsidy from PCSSD or NLRSD. PCSSD has continued to signal this attitude by ignoring the Zinnamon decree: it has perpetuated segregation through school siting and student assignment, unequal apportionment of the transportation burden between the races, failure to meet staff hiring goals, overclassification of black pupils in special education programs, and failure to cultivate the full participation of black students in the educational process.

Moreover, by its policies and practices with respect to annexation and deannexation, PCSSD has committed substantial interdistrict violations. Until the Supreme Court's decision in Green and this Court's implementation of that decision, PCSSD willingly consented to LRSD expanding simultaneously as the City of Little Rock expanded. After that year, the City continued to expand but the boundaries of the school district remained constant. There is conflicting evidence as to the reason for this, but the district court found that PCSSD declined to deannex this land for unconstitutionally discriminatory reasons, and we believe there is substantial support in the record for this finding. The effects of these policies and practices continue to be felt today. Nearly 5,000 students, more than eighty-seven percent of whom are white, now live within the city limits but attend PCSSD schools.

NLRSD has also contributed to interdistrict segregation, by failing to maintain adequate schools for blacks before Brown, by opening its segregated schools to LRSD transfers during 1958-59, by failing to comply with the desegregation orders of the district court, by grossly overclassifying its black pupils in EMR programs and by failing to desegregate the faculty and staff of its schools.

We believe it is clear that these actions by the defendants exerted a strong interdistrict influence which polarized the races and, by creating disparities in the availability and quality of black schools, set aside LRSD as the best place for black students to obtain an education. Undoubtedly, a significant percentage of white out-migration and black in-migration is attributable to factors other than racially discriminatory acts of the defendants. (These factors include the historical movement of white middle-class families from the city to the suburbs and the higher fertility rate of black families.15 ) However, plaintiffs introduced substantial evidence demonstrating that a "disproportionate" number of whites, 584 F.Supp. at 347, left LRSD or moved into PCSSD instead of LRSD upon moving from other areas and that substantially more blacks moved into LRSD than would otherwise have done so in the absence of the defendants' discriminatory actions and the resulting racial turmoil in LRSD.16 The district court found, id., that plaintiffs met their burden of proving that the defendants had committed substantial interdistrict constitutional violations with substantial and continuing interdistrict effects. In light of the substantial supporting evidence in the record, we cannot declare these findings clearly erroneous.

The defendants and amicus argue strongly that Milliken I, supra, Lee v. Lee County Board of Education, 639 F.2d 1243 (5th Cir.1981), and Goldsboro City Board of Education v. Wayne County Board of Education, 745 F.2d 324 (4th Cir.1984), dictate a contrary result. We disagree. In Milliken I, there was no history of state-imposed segregation, nor of state opposition to the local school district's attempt to comply with Brown, nor was there a history of interdistrict transfers, boundary changes, housing violations, and violations of desegregation decrees. Moreover, Milliken I involved the consolidation of one city district with fifty-three suburban districts in three counties, where the record was devoid of evidence indicating that the fifty-four districts were closely interrelated geographically, economically, politically and culturally, as the districts are here.

There are some superficial similarities between this case and Lee. In Lee, as here, there were two suburban districts and one city district located in a single county, and there was a history of interdistrict transfers in the pre-Brown period. But in Lee, the district court found that the interdistrict violations that had occurred were neither continuing nor significant, and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit simply held that this finding was not clearly erroneous. Here, as we have already noted, the district court found that the interdistrict violations were significant and continuing, and we simply hold that these findings are not clearly erroneous. Moreover, Lee did not involve segregative interdistrict transfers, segregative boundary changes, or state-imposed residential segregation, and the city district had been previously declared unitary.

Goldsboro is also distinguishable from this case on several grounds. Goldsboro had been declared a unitary school system by the federal district court in 1973, id. at 325-26. Although the Goldsboro district alleged that Wayne County had established "white haven" schools, the district court found that the Wayne County school district built only one school during the period in question, to replace a sixty-year old school building. Here, PCSSD built nearly a dozen schools during the relevant period, and the district court found specifically that "the selection of sites for new schools built after the entry of the Zinnamon decree has been made without any consideration for the impact such selection would have on desegregation." 584 F.Supp. at 336-37. See also id. at 346.

Further, in Goldsboro, there was no showing that any government official or agency had ever opposed the location or construction of public housing within the Wayne County school district. 745 F.2d at 327. Moreover, there was no history of interdistrict transfers for segregative purposes, no district court finding of segregative annexations or boundary changes, nor any evidence of school district failure to comply with desegregation decrees.

III. THE REMEDY.

A. Proposed Remedies.

From July 30, 1984, to August 2, 1984, the district court reopened the hearings to consider the appropriate remedy for interdistrict violations.17 At the hearings, PCSSD and NLRSD each offered an alternative.

1. PCSSD's Alternative.

PCSSD submitted its plan on July 24, 1984, six days before the remedial hearing. The plan preserves the autonomy of the three county school districts and relies on the creation of a substantial number of specialty or magnet schools and "voluntary interdistrict transfers with mandatory backup." 597 F.Supp. at 1222.

PCSSD's plan calls first for the creation of a "substantial number of special schools and special program offerings * * * in each of the three present school districts," in addition to the traditional curriculum offered at "standard schools." J.D.R. at 2497. Suggested themes for specialty schools and programs in elementary schools include a gifted and talented program, a physical development program, a multi-language program, a lab school, a Piaget model school, an extended school day center, a Montessori school, a creative arts school, a personalized education program and a computer/science/math program. Junior high school themes include a gifted and talented program, visual communication, pre-international Baccalaureate program, physical development, arts program, ecology and environmental education, and math/science. Senior high school themes include college prep high school, high school for the performing arts, law enforcement program, engineering, communications, math/science, military academy, computer technology and business, electronics, drafting, ecology and environmental education, and a gifted and talented program.

PCCSD's plan requires all students in the three districts to choose the school they wish to attend, selecting from among any of the schools in the three districts. Students who do not receive their first or second choice of school due to oversubscription are to be "mandatorily assigned [to another school] by an interdistrict administrative committee composed of administrative personnel from each of the three districts."

Enrollments are to be controlled "to racially balance all schools in each of the controlled three districts at proportions approximating that of countywide public school enrollment in the preceding school year. * * * Specialty schools and specialty programs will be racially balanced at the countywide proportion plus or minus five percentage points." J.D.R. at 2506-07. Individual racial balance goals are proposed at "remote schools" with a minimum requirement by 1988-89 so that no less than fifteen percent of the remote school enrollment will be black. To facilitate interdistrict transfers, several policies are proposed, including the "effective schools" model and uniform grade structure including kindergarten, uniform grading, attendance and discipline policies.

PCSSD proposes that the three districts share vehicle capacity, routing and supervision of the transportation system, that they consider the joint contract purchase of a computerized routing and scheduling system, and the purchase of identical vehicles, the joint purchase of fuel and parts, the sharing of repair facilities and enforcement of common regulations. J.D.R. at 2509. Its plan requires that the costs associated with interdistrict assignment of students be shared by all three districts in an equitable manner and that districts receiving students from another district be reimbursed on a per capita basis. J.D.R. at 2511. It notes that, although transportation costs should be shared, financial support from the state must be made available. Id.

PCSSD also proposed the formation of several tri-district committees which would discuss cooperative ventures in several areas such as food preparation and delivery and maintenance service. Under this proposal, the three district controllers would meet in committee to discuss details of cost sharing and to explore other areas of financial cooperation, including establishment of a single millage rate in Pulaski County, coordinated millage campaigns, coordinated marketing of revenue bonds, common audit and accounting procedures, joint proposals for special grant or project funds, and joint bidding and purchasing practices. PCSSD would require the formation of a similar committee to "formulate and suggest criteria for the opening and closing of facilities as well as for renovating or expanding existing schools." Under its proposal, it would appear that the committees would be biracial.

PCSSD proposes that faculty from all three districts be recruited to teach in the specialty schools, and that teachers accepting interdistrict assignments maintain contractual relationships with their home districts but that they be subject "to all other rules and procedures applicable to the schools in which they teach." PCSSD also proposes interdistrict cooperation on a variety of personnel matters.

PCSSD's principal objection to the consolidation remedy ordered by the district court is that it destroys the institutional strengths of an ongoing school district and impedes local control of public schools. See Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267, 280-81, 97 S.Ct. 2749, 2757-58, 53 L.Ed.2d 745 (1977) (Milliken II.)

PCSSD argues that its plan "would represent a strong step forward both in raising the quality of education for all and in improving the prospects for a permanently viable, racially-integrated-system of public schools throughout Pulaski County." J.D.R. at 2517. The district court found, however, that PCSSD's plan places "undue reliance on voluntary transfers * * * [and] fails to adequately address the interdistrict segregative effects found to exist and cannot be approved." 597 F.Supp. at 1223.

2. NLRSD's "Masem/Western Wedge" Alternative.

Shortly before the July 30, 1984, remedial hearing, NLRSD submitted a statement which argued that consolidation of the three districts exceeds the scope of the interdistrict violations found by the court, and, particularly, those attributable to NLRSD, but that "NLRSD believes that the deannexation violation of the Pulaski County School District requires remedy. A fair and equitable remedy would be to adopt a 'western wedge' concept similar to that proposed by Dr. Paul Masem in Intervenor Joshua Exhibit Number 2, Option A." J.D.R. at 1788.

The "Masem/Western Wedge Plan" calls for all three districts to retain their separate and autonomous identities. The boundaries of NLRSD would remain unchanged, but the boundaries between LRSD and PCSSD would be changed to "compensate for the loss of approximately 4,000 white students to the Little Rock School District caused by [PCSSD's] deannexation violation." J.D.R. at 1787-88. PCSSD north and west of Interstate 30 and south of the Arkansas River would become part of LRSD. LRSD east and south of Interstate 30 would become part of PCSSD. As a result of the proposed boundary changes, "the racial composition of the districts, not counting student transfers between districts, will be as follows:

Pulaski County Special School
          District                     69%(W)  31%(B)
        Little Rock School District    46%(W)  54%(B)
        North Little Rock School
          District                     64%(W)  36%(B)

NLRSD proposes an interdistrict magnet school program and an interdistrict majority-to-minority (m-to-m) student transfer program to promote desegregation in the three districts. Ten to twelve magnet schools, which would offer programs such as computers, math and science and back-to-basic fundamental schools, would be located in central Little Rock. The m-to-m program would provide transportation between all Pulaski County schools within some maximum travel time such as thirty to forty-five minutes. Each school in Pulaski County with less than thirty percent black enrollment would set aside seats for transfer students, with priority for Little Rock black students.

An Interdistrict Policy Board, with representatives from each district and from the Joshua intervenors, would be established to administer and coordinate the various provisions of the plan. The Board would receive funding from each of the three school districts, and it would establish a citizens' advisory board to channel community input and participation.

NLRSD's plan also calls for compensatory and remedial programs in all three districts to increase the educational achievement of black students. The Interdistrict Policy Board would hire outside consultants to ensure that all three districts have adequate compensatory programs.

The district court rejected the NLRSD plan on the ground it "places too much reliance upon the voluntary motivations of the county patrons [and] there are insufficient incentives * * * to expect the [interdistrict] transfers * * * to be successful in desegregating[.]" 597 F.Supp. at 1223. The court concluded that "the NLRSD plan fails to adequately address the interdistrict constitutional violations found by the Court[.]" Id.

3. The Joshua Intervenors' Alternative.

The Joshua intervenors did not advance a particular plan but presented a position statement in favor of consolidation but which was critical of several aspects of LRSD's consolidation plan. Their expert witness, Dr. Paul Masem, testified about three plans for remedying the inter- and intradistrict violations short of consolidation. These plans were primarily concerned with alterations in the pre