Washington Post, The (DC) - August 1, 1997
Deceased Name: U.S. JUDGE FRANK A. KAUFMAN DIES AT 81 ORDERED BUSING OF PR. GEORGE'S STUDENTS
Frank A. Kaufman, 81, a senior judge of the U.S. District Court in Baltimore who oversaw efforts to desegregate the Prince George's County school system until 1994, died of a blood disorder July 31 at his home in Baltimore.
Judge Kaufman's first major ruling in the Prince George's case was in 1973, when he issued a busing order designed to reduce disproportionate numbers of black students in 46 county schools. He acted on a desegregation suit that had been brought by the NAACP the year before.
The NAACP noted that in a county where 80 percent of the students were white, most African American students were attending majority-black schools. The Supreme Court had ordered the nation's schools desegregated in the 1950s in an effort to move toward equality of education.
Judge Kaufman's busing order was designed to reduce black enrollment to no more than 50 percent at an individual school, but changing demographics stood in the way. Prince George's was on its way to becoming a majority-black county, and by 1979 more than half of the county schools were more than 50 percent African American.
In 1983, the NAACP reopened the case. This time, Judge Kaufman's desegregation order, based on the recommendations of an appointed panel, called for increased busing, and he approved a school board plan to create 33 magnet schools. The magnet schools offered special programs designed to attract white students to largely black schools.
That plan failed in its integration goals but was found to have had other positive effects. Those included drawing some private school students into the public school system and raising academic standards and morale.
The plan also called for "compensatory" funding for 14 largely black schools located far from predominantly white neighborhoods.
In a separate case brought by the Justice Department alleging that Prince George's discriminated against white teachers, Judge Kaufman ruled that the school system's practice of transferring teachers from one school to another to achieve racial balance was constitutional.
Judge Kaufman's rulings in the NAACP suit, which made Prince George's the only Washington jurisdiction with court-ordered busing, are still in force. Today, the school enrollment, which was majority-white until the late 1970s, is about 73 percent African American. Last year, 11,000 of the system's nearly 120,000 students were being bused.
A full-scale review of the county's desegregation efforts, to help determine the future of mandatory busing and magnet schools, was completed recently by an independent panel of experts assembled by U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte, who now has jurisdiction over the case.
The panel concluded that court-ordered busing had done little to integrate schools and had made segregation worse in some cases. The group said county school officials had done all that was practical to promote integration.
Messitte is expected to determine in the fall whether to end court supervision of the system.
Because of the demand created by Maryland's burgeoning caseload, Judge Kaufman continued to work as a senior judge after he formally retired in 1986. He was one of eight federal judges in Maryland who had retired and taken on senior status.
"Most judges are working their heads off," Kaufman said in 1989. "Senior judges are performing a tremendous amount of work, and they're doing it because they believe in the system."
Judge Kaufman was known for his attention to detail and lengthy questioning of witnesses. He was a "thorough and conscientious judge who would track down every possible legal argument before reaching a decision," said Shale Stiller, a former law partner. "At times, lawyers would find his exuberance a bit extreme, but he felt he owed it to the litigants."
Among his other cases, Judge Kaufman ruled in 1988 that bankruptcy proceedings should be open to the public. Although creditors' meetings often had been open to the public previously, there had not been a judicial ruling on the question.
He also presided over the 1977 trials of two men accused of tampering with the political corruption case against then-Gov. Marvin Mandel. Charles E. Neiswender and Walter Weikers, suburban Baltimore furniture salesmen, were convicted of offering a bribe to a juror in the first Mandel trial, which ended in a mistrial because of publicity surrounding the bribery allegations. Mandel was later convicted, but the conviction ultimately was overturned.
President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Judge Kaufman, a Baltimore native, to the federal bench in 1966 after he had worked 21 years as lawyer in private practice.
He graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College and received a law degree from Harvard University. He served in the Army during World War II and began his law career with what was then the Baltimore firm of Frank and Oppenheimer.
Survivors include his wife of 52 years, Clementine L. Kaufman of Baltimore; two children, Frank A. Kaufman Jr. and Peggy K. Wolf, both of Baltimore; and four grandchildren.