Simpson County Schools are out from under a decades-long federal decree demanding changes in the way the district treats African American students, employees and prospective workers.
Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William H. Barbour Jr. dismissed the case, writing that the district “has eliminated the vestiges” of prior segregation “to the extent practicable.”
“We’re ecstatic,” said Superintendent Greg Paes late Tuesday about his district’s release from federal supervision.
“It’s like a breath of fresh air for our school system, but we will continue to do the right thing.”
One important change will be the district’s ability to make hiring decisions immediately, instead of having to wait on federal approval for any hires.
“We’ve lost so many top applicants across the years because they just couldn’t wait two or three weeks for a decision,” he said, noting it feels good to be on the same legal footing as so many of the state’s other school districts.
In 1970, the Simpson County School District, along with many other Mississippi school districts, went under federal court scrutiny for wide-ranging racial discrimination allegations and began working through a plan to remedy problems. In 1982, three students enrolled in district schools filed a class-action complaint on behalf of all “present and future” black children in the county, claiming the district continued racial discrimination.
In Barbour’s order today, he notes that the U.S. Supreme Court intended federal supervision of local schools to be a “temporary measure” and that the district “has complied, in good faith” with the order.
“Is it time to rule and let these aggrieved applicants for employment positions at the school, because of their race, go to more familiar courts and use actions that address those that have arisen years after this was filed?” he said rhetorically from the bench at the end of May’s hearings.
Tuesday, Barbour ruled that the district “should be released from further supervision by the court and the government and the burdensome expense thereof.
“The tremendous expense of complying can be better used by hiring more teachers,” Barbour said.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.