This report presents the preliminary findings of a research project designed to investigate the ways local school systems in the North deal with de facto school segregation. The communities chosen for the investigation are those 95 cities in the Permanent Community Sample of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) which are non-Southern and had a black population of at least 3,000 in 1960. NORC interviewers conducted a series of 18 elite interviews with local politicians, government officials, school system personnel, civic leaders, and civil rights leaders. The design and methodology was such that the interviewees were treated as informants giving information about the city rather than as respondents giving information about themselves. The report focuses primarily on the decision-making processes revolving around the first major demand for the improvement of education for Negroes. Descriptive analyses of the demands presented to the school systems and the responses of the latter to these demands are presented. The decision of many school systems to initiate a busing program is further analyzed, and some of the correlates of this decision are discussed. Included among these correlates are the general liberalism of the school board, levels of controversy in a city, and the general level of civil rights activity in a city. (Author/RJ)