Richland Parish schools will face changes in fall

Richland Parish Schools will face a series of changes stemming from a 50-year-old lawsuit in the fall.

In a 6-3 vote Thursday night, the school board voted to accept a consent order issued by the United States Department of Justice.

School board attorney Bob Hammonds said the changes are the best case scenario for the school system. Hammonds explained that currently 10 of the parish’s 11 public schools are out of compliance with a July 21, 1966 desegregation order by varying more than 20 percent from the average racial makeup of the parish. Richland Parish currently has 3,099 students. Of those, 54 percent are black, 44 percent are white and two percent are other races. To comply with the order, no school should have more than 74 percent black students or less than 34 percent. Currently, only Rayville High School falls within acceptable levels.

“This is a good plan,” Hammonds said, noting he and school board members had been negotiating for months to comes to terms with the justice department. “Where we started from is the justice department’s position that Start should be closed. Holly Ridge should be closed. It would be a single district and Rayville High School would be the only high school.”

The negotiations led to the plan put forth Thursday night which would leave all 11 schools open while redistributing students among Rayville, Delih, Start and Holly Ridge.

Under the plan the school board voted to accept:

• Start Elementary School’s attendance zone will expand slightly to pick up 35 more students who live along Highway 80.

•  Holly Ridge Elementary School’s attendance zone will expand slightly toward Delhi to pick up some students living south of I-20.

• Start and Holly Ridge elementary schools will change from teaching Pre-K through eighth grades to Pre-K through sixth grades.

• Rayville Elementary School will change from teaching Pre-K through fifth grades to Pre-K through sixth grades.

• Rayville Junior High School will change from teaching grades six through eight to teaching seven and eighth grades.

• Students who complete sixth grade at Holly Ridge will advance to Delhi Middle School for grades seven and eight and then to Delhi High School for ninth through 12th grades.

• The school board will try to assign faculty and staff to schools in ways which do not reflect the racial identity of the student enrollment of the schools.

• The school board will enhance its efforts to advertise the availability of majority to minority transfers for students who wish to transfer from a school where their race in the majority to one in which they’d be in the minority.

•  For the 2016-17 school year, the school district  will expand academic enrichment and after school programs at Rayville Elementary, Rayville Junior High, Delhi Elementary and Delhi Junior High schools.

• Delhi Charter School will not accept transfers of any student who has ever enrolled in the Richland Parish School System unless they are children of DCS employees or are transferring from a Richland Parish school in which their race in the majority and they would be in the minority at DCS.

If all these conditions are met and continue to be met through Dec. 15, 2017, the justice department will dismiss the consent decree under which Richland Parish Schools have been operating since 2015.

Hammond added that student who are currently juniors who entered Rayville High School from Holly Ridge and will be seniors next year will be allowed to graduate from RHS rather than having to transfer to Delhi High School.

“They would have allowed us to grandfather in other grades,” Hammonds said. “But for each grade we added, they would extend the order by one year. Hopefully, by accepting this plan, that 50-year-old case will not make it to 51 years.”

School board member Kevin Eppinette, who represents the Start School District, said he recognized that many parents wouldn’t like the plan but that the justice department was firm in its commitment to enforcing the 50-year-old court order aimed solely at racially integrating the schools. Ironically, Eppinette said, in its effort to end segreation the only criteria that mattered to the justice department was the color of a student’s skin.

“Throw test scores out the window,” Eppinette said. “Education is irrelevant. Your child, my child, doesn’t matter. All the justice department sees is dots on a map.”

Eppinette added that as the school board member with the most seniority, he understood the situation and the feelings it stirred up in parents. It was a particularly personal issue for him, he noted.

“Thirty years ago my dad stood at the same spot I’m in and lost Start High School over the same thing I’m dealing with 30 years later,” Eppinette said.

Approximately 25 parents addressed the school board during the period for comments. Most were concerned about their children having to leave Start which is a B-rated school to go to Rayville schools which are D-rated. Others were concerned about their high school students having to transfer from Rayville High School to Delhi to finish out high school. Concerns such as losing extra-curricular activities at Start and Holly Ridge when then schools lose their seventh and eighth grades were also mentioned as well as the hardship of more travel, often in the wrong direction, required of parents who’s children will be shifted.

In the end, Eppinette made a largely symbolic gesture to turn own the justice department’s deal and let the case go to court. The vote failed three to six.

Hammonds said that had the school board turned down the deal, with 10 schools out of compliance, the federal judge would have probably sided with the justice department and ordered the mandatory consolidation of all Richland Parish schools the justice department had orignally asked for.

Another motion was then made to accept the deal and it passed six to three. The changes are slated to take place with the beginning of the new school year in the fall.

“This deal was the best we could hope for,” Hammonds said.