After nearly 60 years, the Rankin County School District has been released from a federal desegregation order put in place to curb racial discrimination.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Kristi Johnson declared that racial segregation no longer exists in how students are zoned or transferred to district schools and classes or how staff and faculty are assigned to schools. The court also found that students of all races are subjected to equitable discipline practices and have access to extracurricular activities in the district.
“The Court finds that the District’s current policies and practices are race-neutral and comply in good faith with the Court’s orders and the District has done everything practicable to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination,” Johnson wrote.
The court will no longer monitor whether the district is discriminating against Black students and staff. The district no longer discriminates against Black students or operates a dual school system, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
At a September hearing, attorneys for the plaintiffs, some of whom were in attendance, argued school desegregation persists in Rankin County schools. Erica Frankenberg, an education professor at Penn State who researches racial desegregation, found in an investigative report that the district missed between 20 and 30 opportunities to diversify its staff, passing on qualified Black applicants in favor of white ones.
Attorneys remarked the district had one Black teacher in the gifted and talented program.
John Hooks, an attorney for Rankin County schools, reminded the court at the September hearing that Brandon Elementary was designated a National Blue Ribbon School for closing the achievement gap for Black students in 2021.
Black students post higher graduation grades and lower drop-out rates in the district, he added.
Rankin County schools join the Copiah County School District, which was released from its desegregation order in August. In Mississippi, 28 school districts remain under desegregation orders.
Only two other southern states, Alabama and Georgia, have more districts that are monitored for vestiges of segregation by a federal judge.
The federal monitoring of Rankin County schools came about as a result of a lawsuit brought by local Black students. In 1967, Kenneth Adams and other Black children sued the district for discriminating against Black students and operating a dual school system for them. The court ordered a freedom of choice plan for students within the district, and later, in 1970, ordered the district to desegregate its schools across six metrics, ranging from how students are zoned to district schools to staff assignments to schools.
Thad Cochran US Courthouse in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, July 19, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayFor the subsequent decades, district officials provided the court with annual reports on the racial composition of staff assignments and student enrollment, among other data. District officials were tasked with ensuring no schools in the district had a student population that was overwhelmingly Black or white. White student populations at schools had to be between 46.59% and 86.59% in the 2023-24 school year.
The goal was that each school roughly represented the diversity districtwide. Rankin County schools are approximately 27% Black and 62% white.
The court ensured compliance through district data. Since the September hearing, the court received at least five reports from the district detailing the racial demographics of students at each school and among student transfers between schools. The district also gave the court the racial breakdown of its teachers and administrators.
Twelve schools fell outside of the range set by the court to determine racially identifiable schools over the past five years.
In October 2019, the court stopped monitoring whether new construction and building closures disproportionately disadvantaged Black students or staff. That year, the court also stopped monitoring the race of all district bus drivers. Both decisions came after the court ruled that district leaders no longer discriminated in decisions related to district expansion, school construction and abandonment of buildings and supplies.
Rankin County’s release from its desegregation order has followed several others in the region. The Department of Justice under President Donald Trump has signaled willingness to release more school districts from desegregation orders. More school districts were released from desegregation orders during Trump’s first administration than under the past four presidents.
“From the very first, federal supervision of local school systems was intended as a temporary measure to remedy past discrimination,” Johnson cited a prior ruling. “Now, after almost 60 years, the Court concludes its supervision.
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