South Park ISD included the wealthiest neighborhoods and could also draw on tax funds from the city's petrochemical plants, while Beaumont ISD was relatively poor. This disparity was exacerbated by white flight. Both school districts were the subject of integration efforts in the 1970s, but whereas the majority-black Beaumont ISD showed progress toward integration, the majority-white South Park ISD attracted less attention and both white parents and local federal judge Joe Fisher resisted integration. Redrawn attendance boundaries as mandated by the federal government in 1970 caused white families to abandon affected neighborhoods. A choice program did not result in desegregation, and the district board resisted an order to devise a plan to achieve it. As a result of rulings by federal district judge Robert Parker, that August students through eighth grade were assigned schools by means of a lottery using ping-pong balls, and effective with the 1982–1983 school year Hebert and Forest Park were merged to form a single integrated high school, West Brook Senior High School. (South Park High School was subsequently also merged into West Brook.)