All Appellants timely filed applications for their children to open enroll out of the Des Moines District to attend kindergarten 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 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. Each child's racial status was verified. Then the ratio of minorities to nonminorities at the child's attendance center was determined. It was then determined whether the child had siblings previously approved for open enrollment.

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 of the Appellants in this case are on the waiting list. The waiting list will be used only for the 1997-98 school year. If other minority students leave the District through open enrollment, the students at the top of the waiting list will be allowed to open enroll in numbers according to the composite ratio.

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. Segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race denies the children of the minority group equal protection of the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, even when the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors are equal. Brown v. Bd. of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483(1954)(Brown I). Race discrimination in public schools is unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 349 U.S. 294(1955)(Brown II). School authorities have the primary re-sponsibility to recognize, assess, and solve these problems. Id. The District's open enrollment/desegregation policy imposes race-conscious remedies to further its desegregation efforts. Use of race in this manner is not prohibited. Des Moines Independent School District v. Iowa Department of Education, Ruling on Petition for Judicial Review, June 30, 1995. The question to be asked is whether the classification "serves important governmental objectives" and is "substantially related to achievement of those objectives". Id. As Judge Bergeson found, the District's "interest in achieving and maintaining a racially integrated, diverse school system is compelling". Id. "The 138District is justified in implementing a desegregation plan given its history and its present inability to meet state nondiscrimination guidelines." Id. "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 ad-vance one race over another."

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 Charles Ashley and In re Connor Gilligan, which were remanded to the District for a determination of applicability of the hardship exception.