All Appellants timely filed applications for their children to open enroll out of the Des Moines District to attend school elsewhere during the 1997-98 school year.The District has a formally adopted open enrollment/desegregation policy and plan. The policy prohibits granting open enrollment when the transfer would adversely impact the District's desegregation plan. The policy contains objective criteria which the District uses to determine whether a request for transfer would adversely affect the desegregation plan.The District determined eligibility or ineligibility of each applicant for open enrollment on a case-by-case basis pursuant to the District's open enrollment and desegregation policies.

The District does not consider parents' reasons for requesting open enrollment. The application form does not provide a place for parents to state reasons, so the District does not know why parents requested open enrollment. If the parents attach information to the form regarding reasons for requesting open enrollment, the District considers those reasons to determine if the applicant meets the hardship exception contained in the Dis-trict's open enrollment/desegregation policy.

All the Appellants are among the group of nonminority students deemed ineligible by the District for open enrollment because their transfer would adversely affect the District's desegregation efforts. The action to deny the applications for open enrollment was taken by the Des Moines Board at their meeting on January 21, 1997.All of the Appellants in this case are on the waiting list, except for those Appellants deemed ineligible because their particular building was closed to open enrollment. The waiting list will be used only for the 1997-98 school year.The District's practice of denying open enrollment applications under this composite ratio portion of its open enrollment/desegregation policy was upheld by Polk County District Court Judge Bergeson in his Ruling on Petition for Judicial Review, AA2432, filed June 1, 1995.

"The District's policy does not prefer one race over another. While the policy may have differing impacts, depending on the number and race of students applying for open enrollment, it does not prefer or advance one race over another." Des Moines Independent School District v. Iowa Department of Education, Ruling on Petition for Judicial Review, June 30, 1995.

With respect to the students involved in this case, the District followed its open enrollment/desegregation policy, and determined that transfers of the students at issue in this case would have an adverse impact on the desegregation policy. We agree with that determination.

That the decision of the Board of Directors of the Des Moines Independent Community School District made on January 21, 1997, which denied the appellants' request for open enrollment for their children for the 1997-98 school year, on the grounds the transfers would adversely impact the District's desegregation plan, was affirmed, with the exception of In re Chelsea Miller, which was remanded to the District for a determination of applicability of the hardship exception.