The court-ordered desegregation plan under which the St. Louis (Missouri) Public School District has operated since 1983 has had a mixed reception and has suffered from inadequate funding. The desegregation effort began with the filing in 1972 of a class action suit alleging that operation of the schools was unconstitutionally discriminatory. After several court battles at district and appeals court levels, three separate but related plans were developed and approved: the Intradistrict Plan mandated forced integration of all city schools; the Vocational Education Plan allowed voluntary transfer of students among the city's and county's vocational high schools; and the Settlement Plan provided for other voluntary interdistrict transfers, magnet school program expansion, systemwide educational improvement, and special programs to improve all-black schools. All the plans involved monitoring by citizens' committees. This paper discusses the events leading up to the court-ordered plan, problems in implementing the plan, the effects of state actions, the need for and essential components of long-range planning, and the plan's impact. The role of the black superintendent is touched on briefly. (PGD)