Almost two-thirds of Louisiana schools still under court-supervised desegregation
Across Louisiana, almost two-thirds of all school districts still fall under federal court supervision to ensure a racial mix in schools, 43 years after the first desegregation case in the state was brought. The courts monitor attendance zones, busing policies, racial breakdowns, and where new schools are built, but settling the lawsuits is up to each school board or plaintiff, in the absence of federal or state oversight. Many of the lingering cases go quiet for decades, as original plaintiffs die off or move elsewhere. Resurrecting and closing the long-standing cases often stirs up dormant racial tensions in communities and is a time-consuming process for school boards. In addition, the track record for resolved cases is patchy: many of the districts declared fully integrated in recent years emerged from the lawsuits only after a painful process in which schools are shuttered and middle-class families flee to private academies. In East Baton Rouge Parish, rigid, crosstown busing policies alienated the community and prevented much-needed tax increases for new schools. State and national research has shown that, despite making great strides in desegregation since the civil rights era, levels of segregation have been on the rise since the mid-1980s. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling outlawing race-based student assignments will raise new questions for school districts that emerge from federal court supervision. Many researchers and lawyers say the legacy of unresolved school desegregation cases points to the inherent challenges of social engineering. "In addressing the problem of desegregation in American society, we came up with the idea that schools were the places we could do that, where we could reweave the fabric of society," says Carl Bankston, a Tulane University sociologist. "Maybe it's not that Louisiana schools have a long way to go, but that schools are a reflection of the greater problems in society."
In some cases, school boards reached settlements with plaintiffs decades in the past, but never officially pursued unitary status. Seeking an end to the cases also calls up memories of the underfinanced, overlooked black schools that existed before the court orders were in place. One proposal last fall to seek unitary status sparked a series of contentious hearings, where black community leaders referred to the desegregation suit as a "sacred" document. In addition, the Lafayette Parish School Board was released from federal court supervision last year, only after the district was forced to close several historically black elementary schools. "The changes forced on school districts to achieve unitary status become emotional issues within the community," says Carl LaCombe, president of the Lafayette Parish School Board. "For districts that haven't tried it yet, I'm sure those board members read the news, also. They're saying to themselves, ‘Do I want to put my community through this?’"
As the clock continues to tick on many desegregation cases, experts warn that they have had an unintended consequence: Middle-class whites and blacks flee integrated public school systems after fears of declining quality of education. New Orleans public schools were among the first to be released from court supervision, after administrators shifted attendance zones to maintain balance in schools. But by the time the district was released, white students were leaving in droves for public schools in surrounding parishes. By the mid-1980s, low-income, black students made up 90% of the district. East Baton Rouge Parish schools were released from federal court supervision a few weeks ago in a case that dated back to 1956. During the intervening 51 years, two parish towns formed their own school districts in protest, schools fell into disrepair, and no new school taxes were passed for nearly three decades. Former Superintendent Gary Mathews says conditions in the schools were "comparable to that of some Third World countries." Until 1981, little was done to integrate the schools, so a federal judge stepped in with a sweeping plan to bus students and combine many schools. The decision caused white families, who at the time made up 60% of the student population, to largely abandon the system.
Jefferson Parish schools still have years to go before they achieve unitary status. In March, the school system revised its federal order to address inequalities has until December to sign off on the plan with plaintiffs' attorneys. The board has employed a community task force to examine minority student and faculty issues and has hired attorney Charles Patin, who worked to achieve unitary status with other school systems across the state. Mr. Patin has encouraged more dialogue between the board and the community to minimize surprises. Jefferson also is considering a federal grant program aimed at transforming poor, largely black campuses into magnet schools aimed at attracting a more diverse student body. But the magnet school proposal has a mixed history. The plan was instrumental in improving deteriorating inner-city schools in Rapides Parish. Yet sometimes the schools are accused of creating a two-tier system, where white and black students remain separated within school walls because they attend different classes. Rapides Parish School Board member Herbert Dixon, who is black, was initially skeptical of abandoning the court order, but he embraced the plan after seeing the federal money transform underperforming schools. "When we made the commitment with these inner-city school concepts, we let the community play a part in the things they wanted to see," he says. "If everybody keeps their word, everybody puts the right foot forward, you're not going to have the plaintiff class kicking and screaming."
New Orleans Times-Picayune
By Chris Kirkham
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: The lengthy article is worth reading in its entirety at the link above. The Supreme Court decision is summarized below. Information on the federal Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) is available at the second link. The U.S. Department of Education (ED) recently revised the implementing regulations for that program to give itself greater flexibility as to the criteria for awarding grants. During the public comment period on the proposed revisions, two commenters expressed fear that the changes would "provide too much flexibility to manipulate the MSAP’s statutory purpose or disregard desegregation-related factors." ED responded that these fears were "misplaced," since the department still is bound by the statutory requirements of the program. See the third link.]
[NSBA School Law pages on Parents Involved in Cmty. Schools v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1]
[ED MSAP information]
[NSBA Federal Regulations pages on MSAP regulations]