Cite as: 515 U. S. 70 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
travagant programs based on the hopes that they will succeed in the desegregation effort"). In short, desegregative attractiveness has been used "as the hook on which to hang numerous policy choices about improving the quality of education in general within the KCMSD." Jenkins II, 495 U. S., at 76 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
Nor are there limits to the duration of the District Court's involvement. The expenditures per pupil in the KCMSD currently far exceed those in the neighboring SSD's. 19 F. 3d, at 399 (Beam, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc) (per-pupil costs within the SSD's, excluding capital costs, range from $2,854 to $5,956; per-pupil costs within the KCMSD, excluding capital costs, are $9,412); Brief for Respondent KCMSD et al. 18, n. 5 (arguing that per-pupil costs in the KCMSD, excluding capital costs, are $7,665.18). Sixteen years after this litigation began, the District Court recognized that the KCMSD has yet to offer a viable method of financing the "wonderful school system being built." App. to Pet. for Cert. A-124; cf. Milliken II, supra, at 293 (Powell, J., concurring in judgment) ("Th[e] parties . . . have now joined forces apparently for the purpose of extracting funds from the state treasury"). Each additional program ordered by the District Court—and financed by the State—to increase the "desegregative attractiveness" of the school district makes the KCMSD more and more dependent on additional funding from the State; in turn, the greater the KCMSD's dependence on state funding, the greater its reliance on continued supervision by the District Court. But our cases recognize that local autonomy of school districts is a vital national tradition, Dayton I, 433 U. S., at 410, and that a district court must strive to restore state and local authorities to the control of a school system operating in compliance with the Constitution. See Freeman, 503 U. S., at 489; Dowell, 498 U. S., at 247.
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