Feds oppose Evangeline school delay

• By RICHARD BURGESS
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: Dec 2, 2008 - Page: 1B -- Acadiana Edition - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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LAFAYETTE — The U.S. Justice Department is opposing a request from the Evangeline Parish School Board for more time to resolve desegregation concerns at Ville Platte High School.

A hearing is set for Dec. 15 on whether the high school should be closed and its students bused to other schools in the parish.

The 1930s-era facilities at Ville Platte High have long been at the center of the parish’s desegregation case.

The Justice Department argues the School Board has failed to meet desegregation mandates to improve the buildings and academic programs for the predominantly black student body.

U.S. District Judge Tucker Melancon is expected to decide at the Dec. 15 hearing whether to close the school, but the School Board wants to push back the decision on what should happen next.

School Board attorney Robert Hammonds wrote in court filings that splitting the issues would allow “alternative remedial plans based not on speculation but on a determination of specific liability.”

Justice Department attorneys responded that the judge ordered the board in July to draft a plan for reassigning Ville Platte High students so the plan would be ready should he decide to close the school at the hearing this month.

“The district must end its protestations and excuses regarding Ville Platte High and address the longstanding issue of Ville Platte High,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in court filings.

The School Board is preparing to argue that Ville Platte High should remain open because the school system has worked diligently to improve the campus and academic programs there.

As part of a 2004 desegregation plan, the school system spent nearly $3 million on upgrading Ville Platte High and developed a science magnet program to attract other students.

But the facilities remain in poor shape, and academics still suffer.

If the judge closes the school, the next legal battle between the Justice Department and the School Board will be over what to do with the students.

The School Board’s reassignment plan would split Ville Platte High students between Pine Prairie High School and Mamou High School, a move that would maintain most feeder patterns.