U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills approved the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District’s desegregation order Monday after school representatives and Department of Justice officials struck a temporary agreement on a number of guidelines last week.
The agreement solidifies proposed school attendance zones: both East and West Oktibbeha elementary schools will service students up to grade 5 residing in the former county school district; county-wide sixth, seventh and eighth graders will attend Armstrong Middle School; and Starkville High School will house all county freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors.
Other than the addition of county sixth graders at AMS, all other city campuses will continue serving their former attendance zones.
Future site selections for new school construction or the consolidation of campuses — including the location of temporary classrooms — “shall be done in a manner which will prevent the recurrence of the dual school structure,” the order states.
It also creates a bi-racial committee comprised of eight delegates — four white and four black members selected by the seven campuses’ Parent-Teacher Organization and the school board — to “render counsel to the district on the desegregation plan.”
SOCSD Superintendent Lewis Holloway will serve as the group’s chairman but will not be allowed to vote on matters just as with his position with the school board.
Mills’ order also forms a “racially diverse committee of district personnel” to interview former county employees — those faculty and staff non-renewed or terminated by former OCSD Conservator Margie Pulley — and other applicants seeking SOCSD positions for the 2015-2016 school year.
It is unclear how the provision changes previously approved district hires as the former Starkville School District Board of Trustees OK’d numerous personnel moves for the upcoming school year last month before July 1’s state-mandated consolidation date.
Those hires also included about 40 East and West Oktibbeha elementary employees, whose continued tenures were recommended by each school’s principals and Pulley.
It is also unclear how Pulley will serve on an interview committee after she was named Tunica County School District’s conservator last week. A state takeover was initiated there after the Mississippi Department of Education found the district violated 22 of 31 accreditation standards and other state and federal laws.
SOCSD is tasked with filing a mid-year desegregation report to the DOJ and the Northern District court on or before Jan. 15, and subsequent desegregation reports are due on or before June 30 of each year.
Those reports will include a plethora of race-based data, including the total number and percentage of students, teachers and other employees assigned to each campus, grade level and classroom.
DOJ and SOCSD representatives last week agreed to work through numerous issues together and jointly file a more-permanent desegregation order by mid-February.
The DOJ previously objected to operating East Oktibbeha County Elementary School with a forecast 94 percent African-American enrollment — the same percentage operated by OCSD — and separating former county and city school district sixth graders at different campuses.
To solve the sixth-grade issue, school leaders will utilize mobile classrooms at AMS, thereby increasing capacity and allowing for a full transfer of countywide students.
SOCSD attorneys previously 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 would defeat “efforts to maintain a low pupil-teacher ratio to offer an improved education to county students,” the district wrote in a previous filing, and mandatory reassignments would 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.”
A majority-to-minority transfer policy is included in the desegregation order but only where free space in terms of enrollment permits such a move.
Although the former SSD allowed terminated or non-renewed county employees to reapply for positions within the consolidated school system, the DOJ previously 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 others,” the DOJ’s May filing states.
The Legislature charged Pulley to create staffing recommendations for Holloway and SOCSD before the two districts merged, and it was Pulley, not Holloway, who had authority to non-renew or fire any county employee while OCSD remained under conservatorship.
SOCSD argued for its own faculty in previous response to the DOJ’s objection, saying SHS consistently produced better educational results than its two county counterparts.
SHS earned C accountability ratings from 2012-2014, while MDE designated both county high schools as failing campuses in 2012. In 2013 and 2014, they both improved to D designations.
The city campus also maintained graduation rates above 75 percent for two years in the same three-year time frame, while East Oktibbeha County High School hit the mark only once and West Oktibbeha County High School never eclipsed 65 percent graduation.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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