But strong opposition has not deterred the school boards in Norfolk, Oklahoma City, and DeKalb County, which have shown that other school districts can similarly move forward with neighborhood school plans. Busing dissenters can lead the way in such efforts, first, by stimulating their board to act toward neighborhood plans; and, second, by supporting, as intervenors, such court action as is needed to implement such plans. Finally, in the event of board refusal to move toward neighborhood plans after the fashion of the above school boards, the Constitution offers busing dissenters recourse.

Chapter Six has demonstrated how busing dissenters have supported a neighborhood school plan in San Diego by their opposition to efforts to impose a mandatory busing segment in that plan, while favoring voluntary non-discriminatory integration efforts. They have been able to do so effectively throughout the period of their intervention since 1980 by invoking their constitutional rights in the court proceedings. Their invocation of their rights, which only they — not the school board — could invoke, added strength to arguments for maintenance of a neighborhood school plan. School boards should recognize the value of such an intervention in bolstering efforts for a neighborhood plan. And busing dissenters are entitled to intervene as a means of invoking rights properly before the court in connection with a neighborhood plan.

Chapter Seven demonstrates the recourse which is available to busing dissenters should boards, under the hypothetical facts set forth, fail to act upon their efforts to gain the option of attending a neighborhood school. City School District, the hypothetical district, has had a population change in which the White "majority" students have become a minority while those classified as "minority" students have become a majority in an increasingly diverse student population. This change is typical of city school districts having had to bus students in accord with a decree, like Boston, Los Angeles and Inglewood, by virtue of the "White flight" it has caused. For example, White enrollment dropped in Boston from 72 percent in 1967 to 20 percent in 1992; in Los Angeles from 53.6 percent in 1970 to 16.9 percent in 1988; and in Inglewood from about 80 percent in 1969 to about 10 percent in 1974.

There generally has been increasing racial diversity in city school districts since Swann was pronounced in 1971. For example, in 1967 in San Diego the enrollment in the school district was 76 percent White,