A response to numerous U.S. Department of Justice issues with consolidation filed by Starkville School District states identifying and busing students from Sudduth Elementary to a mostly African-American campus could push parents to opt for private school or homeschooling options.
The school district, represented by noted desegregation attorney Holmes Adams, filed its answer Friday to the DOJ’s May 22 report outlining numerous issues — the preservation of a 94 percent African-American East Oktibbeha Elementary School, limited educational opportunities for county sixth graders and the process assigning and retaining faculty and staff — with July 1’s state-mandated SSD-Oktibbeha County School District merger.
Specifically, the district claims identifying 36 white students — the amount needed for EOCHS to hit full capacity next school year — to be transported to the county campus would only reduce the racially imbalanced enrollment numbers there to 84 percent African-American.
Increasing attendance, the district writes, also defeats “efforts to maintain a low pupil-teacher ratio to offer an improved education to county students.”
“But to achieve this racial quota, it would be necessary to … bus them out of the city, practically past the school they currently attend or out of the neighborhood where they live, and lengthen bus rides, all for the sake of achieving a racial quota,” the district’s filling states. “(Mandatory reassignments give) rise to complaints from parents who wish to have their young children close to them, not farther away when they likely work in Starkville. Mandatory reassignments also risk the loss of white and black students who may opt instead for private school or homeschooling, thereby lessening real integration.”
Under the proposed merger plan, East and West Oktibbeha County high schools will close, and all countywide freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors will attend Starkville High School.
County seventh and eighth graders will also transfer to Starkville’s Armstrong Middle School, where city sixth graders will also attend.
The two county elementary schools, located in the eastern and western portions of the county, will remain open and service prekindergarten to sixth grade students residing in outlying Oktibbeha County — their current attendance zones.
Officials, however, did offer a compromise for sixth grade attendance in the district’s filing: SOCSD could utilize portable facilities that would allow AMS to serve all countywide sixth graders at the city campus.
The DOJ previously wrote 54 sixth graders attending county elementary students will not receive the same educational offerings as those attending AMS.
“The district intends to locate elective classes in the portables so that all students will have their regular education classes in the building,” the district’s filing states. “This proposal also has the advantage of eliminating any distinctions between the elective course offerings made to county sixth graders.”
SSD Superintendent Lewis Holloway, who will lead the consolidated school system, confirmed the district hired a music and an art teacher in hopes of expanding elective opportunities for sixth graders.
The DOJ also took the upcoming SOCD merger plan to task over the nonrenewals of many county high school faculty members.
Although the plan allows terminated or nonrenewed employees to reapply for positions within the consolidated school system, the DOJ said it “does not meet (desegregation) obligations because it disproportionately burdens black faculty and staff in Oktibbeha to the advantage of Starkville’s majority white faculty.”
Instead, the school district should have either advertised all grades 7-12 faculty and staff positions in the newly consolidated district and required all employees to reapply for those positions or “assessed all employees in both districts using objective, nondiscriminatory criteria and retained those with the highest rankings while nonrenewing the others,” the DOJ’s filing states.
The government went on to say SOCSD’s plan “could, arguably, result in greater exposure to litigation.”
OCSD Conservator Margie Pulley was charged by the Legislature to create staffing recommendations for Holloway before July 1’s consolidation. Additionally, it is Pulley, not Holloway, who has authority to nonrenew or fire any county employee as OCSD remains under conservatorship until the end of this month.
Starkville’s school board approved a list of staffing recommendations — 39 combined hires — made by the principals of EOCES and West Oktibbeha County Elementary School last month. The art and music hires increases the total to 41.
SSD argued for its own faculty in its filing, saying the school has consistently produced better educational results than its two county counterparts.
SHS earned C accountability ratings in 2012-2014, while the Mississippi Department of Education designated both East and West Oktibbeha County high schools as failing schools in 2012. In 2013 and 2014, the two schools only improved to D designations.
The city campus also maintained graduation rates above 75 percent for two years in the same timeframe, while EOCHS hit the mark only once and WOCHS never eclipsed 65 percent.
State accountability results “support the decision that any burden, if there is one, should be placed on the faculties that have accounted for poor student performance,” the district’s filing states.
The document goes on to say the DOJ’s hiring proposals would disrupt “the entire faculty for both middle and high schools and contravenes state law regarding certified employee’s rights with regard to nonrenewal.”
“The government raises the specter of resulting employment litigation by Oktibbeha employees, but if assessing potential litigation, the government’s proposal would likely ensure litigation if Starkville employees’ contracts were now nonrenewed in contravention of state law.”
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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