Representatives of the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District and U.S. Department of Justice reached an agreement on a desegregation order for the upcoming school year and will jointly file a more-permanent document by mid-February, court documents filed Tuesday state.
Both parties agreed to 2015-2016 reporting requirements, the joint motion states, and SOCSD will submit a mid-year report to the government on Jan. 15, one month before the permanent desegregation order is due.
Once the new order is agreed upon and approved, it will take effect in the 2016-2017 academic year, the filing states.
“The United States and the District intend to confer in good faith with the goal of reaching a mutually agreeable plan that meets the Defendants’ desegregation obligations and can be fully implemented as soon as possible,” the filling states.
Attorneys for the former Starkville School District and DOJ have locked horns over the district’s proposed desegregation order since it was filed in March.
Under the proposed SSD-Oktibbeha County School District consolidation 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 Armstrong Middle School.
The DOJ previously objected to separating former OCSD and SSD sixth graders — students of the former county system were to remain at East and West Oktibbeha County elementary schools — but SOCSD representatives developed a plan to utilize mobile classrooms to increase capacity for a full transfer of sixth graders.
The county’s two elementary schools will remain open and service schoolchildren residing in the former district’s territory up to fifth grade. City elementary schools will also retain their existing attendance zones.
The DOJ’s May 22 objection also took issue with the preservation of a 94 percent African-American enrollment at EOCES and the process officials undertook to assign and retain former OCSD faculty and staff.
SOCSD attorneys argued that identifying 36 white students — the amount needed for EOCES to hit full capacity — for reassignment would only reduce the racial imbalance to an 84 percent African-American enrollment.
Increasing attendance figures, the district wrote, would defeat “efforts to maintain a low pupil-teacher ratio to offer an improved education to county students.”
“(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,” the district’s June 5 response states.
Although the former SSD allowed terminated or non-renewed OCSD employees to reapply for positions within the consolidated school system, the DOJ said the process did not meet desegregation obligations because it favored “Starkville’s majority white faculty” over “Oktibbeha’s … black faculty and staff.”
Instead, SOCSD should have either advertised all grades 7-12 faculty and staff positions 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 non-renewing the others,” the DOJ’s May filing states.
Former OCSD Conservator Margie Pulley was charged by the Legislature to create staffing recommendations for SOCSD Superintendent Lewis Holloway before the city and county districts merged last week. Additionally it was Pulley, not Holloway, who had authority to non-renew or fire any county employee while OCSD remained under conservatorship.
The city school board previously hired 39 former OCSD employees recommended by the two elementary schools’ principals.
SOCSD argued for its own faculty in its response, saying SHS 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 EOCHS and WOCHS as failing schools in 2012. In 2013 and 2014, the two county campuses 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 graduation.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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