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U.S. Code as of:
01/19/04
Section 1702. Congressional findings
(a) Dual school systems as denial of equal protection; depletion of
financial resources of local educational agencies; transportation
of students; inadequacy of guidelines
The Congress finds that -
(1) the maintenance of dual school systems in which students
are assigned to schools solely on the basis of race, color, sex,
or national origin denies to those students the equal protection
of the laws guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment;
(2) for the purpose of abolishing dual school systems and
eliminating the vestiges thereof, many local educational agencies
have been required to reorganize their school systems, to
reassign students, and to engage in the extensive transportation
of students;
(3) the implementation of desegregation plans that require
extensive student transportation has, in many cases, required
local educational agencies to expend large amounts of funds,
thereby depleting their financial resources available for the
maintenance or improvement of the quality of educational
facilities and instruction provided;
(4) transportation of students which creates serious risks to
their health and safety, disrupts the educational process carried
out with respect to such students, and impinges significantly on
their educational opportunity, is excessive;
(5) the risks and harms created by excessive transportation are
particularly great for children enrolled in the first six grades;
and
(6) the guidelines provided by the courts for fashioning
remedies to dismantle dual school systems have been, as the
Supreme Court of the United States has said, "incomplete and
imperfect," and have not established, a clear, rational, and
uniform standard for determining the extent to which a local
educational agency is required to reassign and transport its
students in order to eliminate the vestiges of a dual school
system.
(b) Necessity of Congress to specify appropriate remedies for
elimination of dual school systems
For the foregoing reasons, it is necessary and proper that the
Congress, pursuant to the powers granted to it by the Constitution
of the United States, specify appropriate remedies for the
elimination of the vestiges of dual school systems, except that the
provisions of this chapter are not intended to modify or diminish
the authority of the courts of the United States to enforce fully
the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution of the
United States.
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