Officials: Plans may not hurt Independence

• By VIC COUVILLION
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Jul 31, 2008 - Page: 2B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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INDEPENDENCE — Independence-area schools have the most racially balanced ratio of students in Tangipahoa Parish and any eventual plan to further integrate parish schools probably would not affect the immediate area, officials suggested Tuesday night.

School Board members Al Link, Leonard “Tank” Genco, Sandra Bailey-Simmons and Ann Smith spoke during a meeting called to address school desegregation issues. About three dozen people attended.

John Polito Jr., an Independence resident who organized the meeting, said the session was designed to keep residents informed about possible changes in school attendance zones in light of an ongoing federal court effort to racially balance parish schools on a 60/40 white-black ratio.

“There are many rumors going around about proposed desegregation plans and we want our residents to be brought up to date on what we can expect from any future plan,” Genco said.

Link, who opened the session by giving a detailed history of desegregation efforts in Tangipahoa Parish dating back to a lawsuit filed in the 1960s, assured the audience that no changes would be made during the coming 2008-09 school year.

Link said that the any plan to strike a better racial balance is an “ongoing process” that would take time, detailed planning and eventually input from the public. Parish residents would ultimately not be able to vote on whatever plan is adopted, however.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Link said, “the courts will eventually decide what will take place with our schools in the future.”

The four School Board members repeatedly emphasized that a final desegregation plan has not been adopted. Link said several times that attorneys for the School Board and for the plaintiffs in the case are meeting on a regular basis and seeking to design a plan that would better align racial balance in parish schools.

While the Independence schools are about evenly balanced on a racial basis, Loranger High School has a very high percentage of white students, Bailey-Simmons said. She added that the Loranger school, which handles students in kindergarten through 12th grade, could lose as many as 600 students as attempts are made to better racially balance Amite and Kentwood high schools, which have predominately black enrollments.

She said that as many as 200 students could be sent to Amite and 400 to Hammond-area schools.

Bailey-Simmons said she has never advocated closure of any schools and that her earlier proposal to build a new school in the Loranger-Independence-Amite areas was not meant as a replacement school.

Rather, she said, her suggestion called for a new school that would combine vocational-technical training, classes for the learning disabled and others whose educational needs are not now being met by the parish school system.

Genco supported Bailey-Simmons’s remarks, saying he wanted to emphasize that none of the nine School Board members favor closing any schools.