Board rejects Justice plan

• By BOB ARDOIN
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Jul 4, 2008 - Page: 1BA - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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OPELOUSAS — The St. Landry Parish School Board voted 11-1 Thursday to reject a proposed U.S. Justice Department student desegregation plan that aims to consolidate or close many of the district’s schools.

Several board members who spoke Thursday said they want the parish to develop its own desegregation plan with the help of demographer Mike Heffner.

Legal adviser Gerard Caswell said he spoke with U.S. District Judge Tucker Melancon prior to the meeting and after it became obvious there was enough support to refuse the federal plan.

Caswell said Melancon indicated to him that St. Landry’s plan of busing students to schools where they are in a racial minority is not sufficient if the parish plans to erase all vestiges of desegregation.

The board’s vote also does not violate a federal court order that mandates the parish to end its 42-year-old desegregation case, Caswell said.

Board members Anthony Standberry, Roger Young, Dillard Deville, Huey Wyble, Kyle Boss and Marx Budden, who voted in favor of rejecting the plan, took turns explaining their feelings.

Deville said consolidating Plaisance, Washington and Grand Prairie elementary schools in the district he represents would destroy the community school concept.

Under the Justice Department plan, the three schools would become part of a single attendance zone, where students in kindergarten through fourth grade would attend Washington, while those in grades five-six would be sent to Plaisance. The seventh- and eighth-graders in the zone would go to Grand Prairie.

“You will have some families that have a child at four different schools,” Deville said.

Wyble questioned the increased costs he said would be associated with busing students longer distances.

He said it’s unfair the Justice Department relied on a committee of five anonymous people to help develop the plan presented in May.

“Until the day I die I will find out who these five people are and I will go public with it,” Wyble said.

Young and Wyble said the plan St. Landry implemented of allowing students to cross attendance zones to attend schools where they are in a racial minority seems to be working.