Monteilh v. St. Landry Parish School Bd., s. 87-4224
| Decision Date | 01 July 1988 |
| Docket Number | 87-4651,Nos. 87-4224,s. 87-4224 |
| Parties | , 47 Ed. Law Rep. 78 Marilyn Marie MONTEILH, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. ST. LANDRY PARISH SCHOOL BOARD, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Marion Overton White, Opelousas, La., Norman J. Chachkin, Julius L. Chambers, Theodore M. Shaw, New York City, for plaintiffs-appellants.
I. Jackson Burson, Jr., Asst. Dist. Atty., Eunice, La., for defendants-appellees.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
Before TIMBERS, * KING, and HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges.
These two consolidated cases present challenges to desegregation efforts of the St. Landry Parish School Board. In one case, appellants attack the district court's dismissal of their action after finding that the school system previously had been declared unitary. In the other, appellants challenge the Board's adoption of a high school construction and consolidation plan. We reverse the dismissal because the district court erred in deciding that the school system already had been declared unitary. We affirm the district court's approval of the construction plan, finding that the Board fulfilled its constitutional obligations in choosing construction sites and setting attendance zones.
Nearly twenty years ago, we found the St. Landry Parish school system's freedom-of-choice plans to be ineffective in fostering desegregation. 1 On August 9, 1969, the district court ordered implementation of a desegregation plan drafted by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The district court later approved modifications of the plan. Plaintiffs appealed and the panel remanded with instructions for the district court to implement a student assignment plan complying with Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. 2
On remand the district court approved various modifications to zone lines and grade structure. The court also ordered semiannual reports by the School Board and required the Board "specifically [to] assign personnel in the positions of the principal, assistant principal, guidance counselor, and head coach in each school so that the race of these does not indicate that the school was intended for Negro students or for white students." At the end of the order the court declared the St. Landry Parish school system "to be unitary in its entirety." The court retained jurisdiction to preserve the unitary system.
A panel of this circuit affirmed the order on appeal, stating that the district court correctly retained jurisdiction and should continue to do so for at least three years. Moreover,
[i]n no event should the district court dismiss this action without notice to the plaintiffs below and a hearing providing opportunity to plaintiffs to show that deliberate action by school authorities or some other agency of the State has affected the unitary status of this system so that further intervention of the district court is required. 3
No further proceedings occurred until 1979 when the School Board closed Washington High School after racial fights erupted. A consent decree, which included a provision reassigning most of the staff, eventually was entered to govern the school's reopening.
The history of this litigation demonstrates the progress the Parish has made in desegregating its schools. The district court's opinion of July 2, 1970, details the then tense situation. When the Supreme Court decided that freedom-of-choice no longer was sufficient,
citizen groups favoring freedom of choice were organized, mass meetings were held, and public sentiment inflamed by opponents of desegregation from within and without the parish. The defendant Board was subjected to continuous public pressure, as a result of which it failed to propose any plan of operation on its own initiative, but instead declined to do so, maintaining that "freedom of choice" was the only acceptable method to accomplish the transition. 4
Marshals and FBI agents were needed to prevent violence and ensure children's safety. Racial incidents on campus were frequent. Private white academies flourished and many public teachers resigned to accept positions at the academies. As the district court opinion also explained, after it became clear that freedom-of-choice was dead the Board began "acting in good faith with the best interests of all children in the school system, black and white, as its primary concern." 5
That spirit of cooperation and progress has continued. In 1969, there was one black high school principal under the H.E.W. plan; there now are five. The Board's figures show that in 1969-70, there were fifteen black principals (34%) and twenty-nine white principals (66%); in 1986-87 there were nineteen black principals (43%) and twenty-five white principals (57%). Six schools with a majority white population have black principals, and five majority black schools have white principals. The school system had thirteen black head coaches (37%) and twenty-two white head coaches (63%) in 1969-70. In 1986-87, there were thirty-three black head coaches (58%) and twenty-four white head coaches (42%).
The political scene in St. Landry Parish also has changed. There now are three black school board members. Indeed, one of these members, Joshua Pitre, has served as the Board's Vice-President.
The St. Landry Parish School Board closed the South Street Elementary School in Opelousas at the end of the 1983-84 school year, reassigning the students to other Opelousas schools. However, on May 21, 1987, the Board decided to reopen the facility and, on June 23, 1987, Superintendent Henry DeMay requested approval from the district court to reopen the school.
Plaintiffs opposed the reopening, arguing that the Board had not considered the desegregation effects of the action and alleging that the reopening was "designed to perpetuate their quasi racially-dual system." The court scheduled a hearing to consider opposition to the reopening for August 31. On the same day it scheduled the hearing, the court declared that it "plan[ned] to dismiss this action based on the fact that the St. Landry Parish School System was found to be unitary on August 12, 1971."
After the hearing, the district court issued a ruling on September 1st, approving the school's reopening as being necessary to alleviate overcrowding at Park Vista and Grolee Elementary Schools, where classes were being conducted in portable buildings. The court also found that the school system had been declared "unitary" in 1971 and dismissed the case with prejudice.
The district court erred in dismissing the suit based on the 1971 declaration that St. Landry Parish was a unitary school district, which we have defined as "a district in which schools are not identifiable by race and students and faculty are assigned in a manner that eliminates the vestiges of past segregation." 6 This circuit has established procedures that must be followed before a district court can declare a school system unitary. For at least three years, the school board must report to the district court. The court then must hold a hearing to consider whether the district should be considered unitary; plaintiffs must receive notice of the hearing and an opportunity to show why the system is not unitary and why continued judicial supervision is necessary. Only after these procedures are followed may a district court be sufficiently certain that a school system is unitary and dismiss the case. 7
In declaring St. Landry unitary in 1971, the district court did not follow this circuit's procedures; indeed, in affirming the order, the panel directed the lower court to maintain jurisdiction over the case for at least three years, after which the case should be dismissed only after the plaintiffs had been afforded a hearing "to show that deliberate action by school authorities ... ha[d] affected the unitary status of [the] system." The panel would not have required compliance with these procedures had it believed the district court had found St. Landry to be unitary. 8 Indeed, if the lower court had done so, "the retention of jurisdiction would have been anomalous." 9 Thus, because our procedures had not been followed before the court in 1971 declared St. Landry to be unitary, we find that neither the district court nor the panel affirming its order intended to declare that the district was unitary, in the sense of having eliminated all vestiges of past discrimination. Consequently, we reverse the lower court's dismissal of this case.
St. Landry operated twelve high schools 10 when a high school construction and consolidation plan was presented to the school board on February 13, 1986. Dudley Auzenne and Hilman Boudreaux, 11 two supervisors of child welfare and attendance, had drawn up the plan, which then had gone to...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Brown v. Board of Educ. of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kan.
...achieve an ideal racial balance." [Lee v. Tuscaloosa City School System, 576 F.2d 39, 41 (5th Cir.1978).]. Monteilh v. St. Landry Parish School Bd., 848 F.2d 625, 632 (5th Cir.1988) (footnotes omitted); accord Morgan, 831 F.2d at 325 ("Both the Supreme Court and this court have repeatedly s......
-
Hull v. Quitman County Bd. of Educ.
...of desegregation decrees under the global inquiry whether the school district had achieved "unitary" status. See, e.g., Monteilh, 848 F.2d at 629 and n. 7 (citing cases). Freeman and Dowell make clear, however, that there is no longer magic in the phrase unitary status, which had spawned mu......
-
Thomas v. St. Martin Parish Sch. Bd.
...a finding that the school district has eliminated the “vestiges of a segregated system.” 7 The Fifth Circuit has so held in Monteilh v. St. Landry Parish Sch. Bd., a case involving a district court judgment dismissing a desegregation suit on the grounds that a finding of unitary status more......
-
Flax v. Potts, 89-7006
...and students and faculty are assigned in a manner that eliminates the vestiges of past segregation." Monteilh v. St. Landry Parish School Bd., 848 F.2d 625, 629 (5th Cir.1988) (quoting United States v. Lawrence County School Dist., 799 F.2d 1031, 1034 (5th Cir.1986)). A district court in th......