[1] He was one of the leading opponents of the plan to integrate the Boston Public School through busing.
[2][3] Kerrigan was chair of the school committee when, in December 1974, it voted to refuse to comply with the order of Federal District Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr. to desegregate the Boston Public Schools.
Kerrigan argued that sending children on long bus rides from one neighborhood to another would not improve the quality of their education.
[7] In 1974 he and two other committee members defied a court order to implement a busing plan to desegregate Boston schools, resulting in a contempt of court ruling that Kerrigan called "a gun that's held to the head of the people of Boston.
[10] Kerrigan joined the white flight to the suburbs caused by school busing, moving to Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1978.