Gilbert v. Webster Parish School Board

382 F. Supp. 8, 1974 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7531
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Louisiana
DecidedJuly 19, 1974
DocketCiv. A. 11501
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 382 F. Supp. 8 (Gilbert v. Webster Parish School Board) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gilbert v. Webster Parish School Board, 382 F. Supp. 8, 1974 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7531 (W.D. La. 1974).

Opinion

I.

BACKGROUND

STAGG, District Judge.

This case originated December 8, 1965, when a petition to desegregate the Webster Parish schools was filed. Between the end of 1965 and the beginning of 1970, the Court issued several decrees directed to the School Board in an attempt to eliminate the dual system of education in Webster Parish. On February 2, 1970, this Court issued an order delineating how the Webster Parish School Board was to achieve desegregation. The plan contained in the 1970 order utilized both pairing and zoning as desegregation tools.

At the end of the 1972 school year, it was apparent that racially identifiable schools continued to persist in the Webster Parish school system. As a result of the existence of such schools, the plaintiffs filed a petition for further relief on June 16, 1972. On August 28, 1973, this Court entered a supplemental order clarifying the February 2, 1970, order.

On January 9, 1974, this Court created a Bi-Raeial Citizens Committée. This Committee was ordered to devise a plan for desegregation and submit the plan to the Court and to the Webster Parish School Board. The order contemplated that the plan would be submitted to the School Board for its consideration and response. In that same order, the School Board was ordered either to submit a partial or total adoption of the Committee’s plan, or one of its own. It was further ordered that the School Board submit a faculty desegre *10 gation plan in full compliance with Singleton.

A majority of the Bi-Racial Committee has submitted a plan (Joint Exhibit 1) , a minority of the Bi-Racial Committee has submitted a plan (Joint Exhibit 2) and the Webster Parish School Board has submitted a plan (Joint Exhibit 3). Two citizens intervened as defendants and submitted yet another plan (Joint Exhibit 4), only for the schools in the Minden attendance district.

Prior to the hearing in this matter on July 1, 1974, the Court inspected every school facility in Webster Parish except Shongaloo and Union Elementary in Doyline. (There is no controversy concerning these two facilities.) It was felt that the locations and physical plants were, to a considerable degree, a part of the problems presented by the petition for further relief.

With the exception of the Minden attendance district, all plans submitted were in compliance with the Supreme Court’s mandate to achieve a system-wide unitary status. For reasons which will be outlined below, this Court has chosen to approve the School Board’s plan for the attendance districts other than Minden.

Webster Parish encompasses approximately 620 square miles. It is roughly rectangular in shape, some 42 miles from its northern boundary to its southern boundary, and approximately 15 miles wide. Within the Parish, there are seven attendance districts, each being a separate bonding district. Within these districts, there are 23 schools. For the 1973-74 school year, there were 5,989 white students and 4,026 black students. The teachers and principals numbered 340 whites and 197 blacks. 1

In the six attendance districts outside Minden, there were only slight variations between the plan proposed by the Bi-Racial Committee and the plan proposed by the Webster Parish School Board. These variations involved a difference of opinion on the assignment of grade levels to particular school facilities.

This Court, in its approach to a resolution of the conflicting plans, is guided by the following language from the Supreme Court’s decision in Green: 2

“The obligation of the district courts, as it always has been, is to assess the effectiveness of a proposed plan in achieving desegregation. There is no universal answer to complex problems of desegregation; there is obviously no one plan that will do the job in every case. The matter must be assessed in light of the circumstances present and the options available in each instance. * * * ”

II.

A UNITARY SYSTEM HAS BEEN ACHIEVED IN FOUR OF THE WEBSTER PARISH ATTENDANCE DISTRICTS.

Preliminary to a discussion of the merits of the various plans before the Court, it should be noted that the Webster Parish School Board plan and the Bi-Racial Committee plan are the only plans concerned with the attendance districts outside of Minden. There is no controversy with regard to the Sarepta, Cotton Valley and Shongaloo attendance districts, therefore, discussion of these will be minimal. Full desegregation in these attendance districts has been achieved. Schools in these attendance districts have been “paired”, the system in these attendance districts thereby becoming a unitary system as mandated by Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 1971, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554. (See Appendix B-2.) The Webster Parish School Board and the Bi-Racial Committee join in submitting the plan for these districts. The Court approves the joint *11 submission. It is further noted that the School Board has amended its proposed plan for the Doyline attendance district. Schools in the Doyline attendance district will be paired with K-5 at Union Elementary and 6-12 at Doyline. This amendment has been brought about by a shifting of a number of students from the Doyline attendance district to the Minden attendance district. 3 The end result of this change will be a unitary system acceptable to plaintiffs and defendants.

III.

THE WEBSTER PARISH SCHOOL BOARD PLAN FOR SPRINGHILL IS THE BEST PLAN FOR THAT ATTENDANCE DISTRICT.

With the exception of the Minden attendance district, the Springhill and the Sibley-Central-Dubberly-Heflin districts are the only remaining areas of dispute. Only two plans, the School Board plan and the Committee’s majority plan are addressed to these attendance districts. Both plans would achieve the same degree of integration. There is only a difference of opinion as to which grades should be assigned to which facilities.

The Board’s plan for the Springhill district would place grades 9-12 in the Springhill High School, grades 7-8 in the Springhill Jr. High facility, grades 5-6 in the Brown School, grades 3-4 in the Howell School, and grades K-2 in Browning.

The Bi-Racial Committee’s plan would differ in that grades 10-12 would be placed in the Springhill High School, grades 8-9 would be placed in Brown, grades 6-7 would be placed in the Springhill Jr. High facility, and grades 3-5 would be placed in the Howell School.

The major difference between the two plans concerns the relative roles of the Brown School and the Springhill Jr. High School. The School Board has chosen the Springhill Jr. High School to house grades 8-9, because it is contiguous to the high school complex, and would lend itself to joint use of the athletic facilities, counselling personnel and teaching personnel, as well as to the continuation of the L.A.P. instructional program. 4 The School Board noted also that the physical plant at Springhill Jr.

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382 F. Supp. 8, 1974 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7531, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gilbert-v-webster-parish-school-board-lawd-1974.