The decree's long life · Plan Z, the magnet era, and a committee in 2025

1981 – 2026

Forty-five years under one court order: The consent decree did not retire. In 2002 the corporation's Plan Z — Superintendent Joan Raymond's reorganization of grades and magnet programs, adopted after intense public debate — went back to Judge Sharp for a conformity ruling, over the stated opposition of the NAACP and the LaSalle Group of former LaSalle students, who charged that more Black students than white would be transported, that controlled choice would fail the decree, and that closing LaSalle High School was racially motivated. The court found Plan Z met the decree's legal standards and no evidence of prejudice in the LaSalle closing, while doubting aloud that it was "the best or the wisest solution"; the fifteen-point range was expressly retained for high schools and intermediate centers. The magnet architecture Plan Z generalized became the district's standing answer.

A 2019 study by The 74 Million found the decree still in force, with five of thirty schools outside the compliance threshold that year. On 15 November 2017 a Justice Department attorney, Veronica Percia, had already come to South Bend for a public forum on the corporation's compliance and its "Focus 2018" revision; in April 2021 the school board adopted a "Vision Statement on Racial Equity and Antiracist Policies" written by member Stuart Greene. The Commission's October 2025 figures show the strain the decree now works under: with district Black enrollment at 37.25 percent, the lawful band runs from 22.25 to 52.25 percent — and Dickinson Academy Middle School, Coquillard Elementary and Muessel Elementary (62.34 percent) stood above it, Swanson Traditional below it. On 23 December 2025 the school board announced a committee "to examine data about the Consent Decree that the district has been under for four decades," in a system whose white enrollment has been declining for a generation. The decree of 1980–81, as the record stands at this writing in 2026, remains in force.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend, Final Report of the Reparatory Justice Commission (2026), Part III.C — the Plan Z conformity proceedings of 2002 and the NAACP and LaSalle Group objections; the 2017 Percia forum; the 2021 vision statement; the October 2025 enrollment figures and band; the 23 December 2025 committee announcement.
2. The 74 Million (2019), on the South Bend decree and magnet plan — the decree in force and five of thirty schools outside the threshold in 2019.