Appellants timely-filed applications for their children to open enroll out of the 1996-97 school year. All are among the 70 non-minority students denied due to the District's desegregation plan. Each case was looked at on an individual basis.

In the appeals under consideration here, the only operative question is whether these are "non-minority" students who are ineligible because their transfers would adversely affect the District's existing minority/non-minority ratio. (Bd. tr. at 54.) Once that has been determined, the controlling legal princi-ples are applied to determined if the District's denials should be reversed or affirmed.

Although the hearing panel sympathizes with each of the Appellants' reasons for seeking open enrollment and their at-tempts to provide an educational environment which they feel is most supportive for their children's needs, the controlling legal principles for this open enrollment case have already been decided by the Polk County District Court in Des Moines Indepen-dent Community School District v. Iowa Department of Education, AA2432 (June 1, 1995). That case upheld the Des Moines District Board's right to deny timely-filed open enrollment applications that adversely affect the racial composite of the District. The only basis upon which the State Board of Education could overrule any of these open enrollment cases is if the District's policy was not appropriately or correctly applied to the facts of an individual student's case.

Under the facts discovered at the appeal hearing, the District's policy was not appropriately applied in denying the Gerena's applications. Once it is established that the children are minorities, there is no basis to deny their applications for open enrollment. Under the newly designated minority status offered by the Gerenas on appeal, their applications must be granted.

That the decision of the Des Moines Independent Community School District's Board of Directors to deny open enrollment for all the other applicants was affirmed.