School Board, NAACP clash on hiring

• By DAVID J. MITCHELL
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Apr 1, 2009 - Page: 3B

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AMITE — The head of Tangipahoa Parish’s NAACP chapter called on the parish School Board on Tuesday to fill two head football coaching vacancies with black candidates as a “good faith effort” to comply with a federal court order.

But school officials had a different version of events in the longstanding school desegregation case and asserted a previously court-ordered, white-black 60/40 ratio was met in the late 1970s and a new hiring criteria without racial mandates can now be used.

Patricia Morris, president of the Greater Tangipahoa Parish chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, suggested the board might be filling openings at Hammond and Sumner high schools Tuesday night.

Morris said a 27-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Ivan L. R. Lemelle in April 2008 says that the district must hire black coaches in all areas until the 60/40, black-white ratio is met. Morris said that means black head coaches at three of seven high schools.

The board, which Lemelle ordered last year to hire a black candidate for the head football coach job at Amite High School, never considered those openings Tuesday. Per board policy, the board also typically does not respond to public comment.

But after a closed session to discuss the desegregation case and other litigation and after most of the public left, including Morris, board attorney Alton Lewis Jr. disputed her version of the facts.

He said plaintiffs’ attorneys in the school desegregation case “were totally unable to rebut” school records that Lewis said showed the system met the 60/40 hiring ratio for coaches in the late 1970s.

He said the attorneys signed a joint stipulation to that effect last year.

According to court records, all three plaintiffs’ attorneys did sign the stipulation, saying that they could not dispute records showing the ratio was met in the 1977-78 and 1978-79 school years.

But the plaintiffs, according to the document filed June 25, did not stipulate to the school records’ admissibility in court.

Also, Lemelle never granted the joint motion, but dismissed it in September as moot “without prejudice to re-urge.”

Contacted later, Morris continued to assert the April 2008 order stands and the 60-40 ratio must be met.

“This was the perfect opportunity, the perfect opportunity for them to do something voluntarily,” she said.