Loranger parents rap school plan

• By DAVID J. MITCHELL
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Jun 18, 2008 - Page: 3B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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LORANGER — Several hundred residents turned out Tuesday at an outdoor community meeting to hear from organizers who oppose a rumored, still-developing public school desegregation plan that would split up the Loranger-area attendance zone.

Community organizers and School Board member Sandra Bailey-Simmons, who represents the Loranger area, emphasized that the opposition to that aspect of the parishwide plan, which has not be made public, is not racially oriented but is about keeping the Loranger schools intact.

“We are not against desegregation and are not motivated by the irrational fear that is the root of racism,” said Trent Campbell, who emceed the event at a baseball park off Milk Plant Road and serves on an ad hoc citizens committee behind the meeting.

“Let us not be distracted from the issue at hand, which is where our children and grandchildren will go to school.”

Campbell and Bailey-Simmons also floated another plan. The Loranger district should be expanded and a new regional high school be built east of Loranger to add the students needed for a culturally  diverse school with added offerings, such as vo-tech education.

Bailey-Simmons, who said later that she verified her information with school officials, said the current proposed plan would pull about 570 students from the north and south ends of the Loranger district and send them to Amite schools or a new kindergarten through eighth-grade school to the south.

Loranger’s three schools’ enrollments range between 79 percent and 85 percent white, but are near capacity on space.

School officials are trying to comply with longstanding school desegregation orders. Their attorneys have said forced busing across attendance zones is not in their plans, but changes to attendance zones, which determine where children go to school, are being considered.

School Board President Al  Link told the crowd that school populations must be within 15 percent of the system’s racial makeup, about 52 percent white and 47 percent black.

Eventually, the plan will be made public and presented to U.S. District Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle, who oversees the desegregation case. The school system has never been declared unitary, or desegregated, although the case dates from 1965.

During the meeting, Campbell and others circulated a petition for Lemelle that drew 750 signatures and also passed out a form letter for board members. Campbell called for large numbers to show up at a School Board meeting June 24.

Many of those who attended the rally, though not all, are  white. Several interviewed agreed with expanding the district and adding a new school to desegregate.

Dorothy Hinton, 87, of Loranger, drew rounds of applause when she spoke out against forced busing.