Excerpt from Report No. 5 to the United States District Court, District of Massachusetts, on Boston School Desegregation, Vol. 1: July 15, 1985

This is the Fifth Monitoring Report on Boston Public School Desegregation filed by the Massachusetts Board of Education and Commissioner of Education under the Orders of Disengagement entered by Federal District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. On December 23, 1982. The report covers Boston Public School operations from December 1984 through May 1985, and is based upon data collected by Massachusetts Department of Education monitors during this period.

A number of factors in addition to the usual time constraints presented impediments to our data collection effort during this monitoring period. Ongoing negotiations among the parties concerning critical unresolved issues, and the anticipation of certain Court orders, left the findings and conclusions in several monitoring areas subject to last ndnute revision. In addition, John R. Coakley, who in his role as Boston's Senior Officer for Implementation has both directed the processing of student assignments and served as primary liaison to the Department of Education, was hospitalized during the month of April. Given these circumstances, an extra measure of appreciation must be expressed for the assistance provided by Superintendent Robert Spillane and members of the Boston School Department, and in particular to Catherine Ellison and her staff at the Department of Implementation.

The format of the present report is similar to that used in Report No. 4, except that the sections on Student Assignments and Special Desegregation Measures have been combined. In addition, the number of monitoring areas has been reduced to seven, the Board and Commissioner of Education having been relieved of monitoring responsibilities (with exceptions, noted below) in the areas of Bilingual Education, School Safety and Security, and Student Discipline by the Court's Further Partial Termination of Jurisdiction, dated May 17, 1985. Our report is once again presented in two volumes, with an executive summary of findings in the seven monitoring areas contained in Volume I, and a more detailed analysis of the findings plus all supporting documentation in volume II. As in the past, the parenthetical page references in Volume I direct the reader to the supporting materials in Volume II. While Volume II is intended for morelimited distribution than Volume I, a Copy of Volume II will again be made available for every school in Boston.

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