Black and white students in middle and high school in the town of Cleveland, Mississippi, are largely separated. Further, the district will review its existing educational programs and identify new programs for the consolidated schools, address staffing considerations and perform necessary maintenance and upgrades to facilities.
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“This decision serves as a reminder to districts that delaying desegregation obligations is both unacceptable and unconstitutional”, said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, in a statement. The judge concluded that although school consolidation may lead to the departure of some white students to private schools, that possibility is not enough to reject the Justice Department plan, especially when the alternatives proposed by Cleveland would be unconstitutional. The 2010 census estimated that there were more than 12,000 people who live in the town.
The order, passed late Friday by the U.S. District Court, implies that the Cleveland School District must combine its junior high and middle school, bringing together the two levels for the first time in 100 years.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of MS ordered that the two high schools in Cleveland, Miss. should be consolidated into one high school immediately, calling the sustained segregation a decision a “burden” that “deprived generations of students of the constitutionally-guaranteed right of an integrated education”.
“The district is likely to suffer some White enrollment loss as a result of consolidation”, Brown wrote.
Judge Brown, however, ruled against the plan because similar “freedom of choice” measures had not worked to help achieve desegregation.
Brown ordered the district to merge East Side High, where all but one student is Black, with Cleveland High, where 48 percent of students are white and 45 percent are Black.
US District Judge Brown sided with the Justice Department, saying the only way to achieve full desegregation was to consolidate the middle and high schools.
The Cleveland School District enrolls about 3,600 students, about 67% of who are black and 29% are white. The Cleveland School District hasn’t publicly responded to the court’s decision. Margaret Green Middle School enrolled more than twice as many students; 51 percent of them were African American and 43 percent were white.
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The other two schools were virtually all black, officials said. “And we could create a new culture in our school system that’s going to unite us and unite our whole city”.
