Judge to decide Kentwood High’s fate

• By DAVID J. MITCHELL
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Mar 27, 2009 - Page: 5B

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KENTWOOD — Plaintiffs’ attorneys in a longstanding Tangipahoa Parish school desegregation case do not want to see Kentwood High School closed as part of a new  attempt to fully integrate the school district, one of the attorneys said Wednesday.

But he told a community meeting audience of more than 200 mostly black parents, teachers, administrators and former graduates inside Kentwood High’s cafeteria that the final decision lies with a federal judge in New Orleans.

U.S. District Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle will consider whether a school with Kentwood High School’s declining enrollment can effectively be a good and viable school as schools are desegregated parishwide, plaintiffs’ attorney James Gray II said.

“We are not proposing any changes to Kentwood,” Gray said, “but you need to know you have Kentwood High and Sumner High in fairly close proximity to each other and there is probably going to be a question about whether or not they both can exist as viable ... desegregated institutions in this parish.”

Kentwood High’s 312 seventh- to 12th-graders are nearly 95 percent black; Sumner High’s 864 sixth- to 12th-graders are nearly 75 percent white.