
CLEVELAND – U.S. District Judge Debra Brown entered an order Monday finalizing her May 13, 2016, desegregation order for the Cleveland schools with one change affecting sixth grade students.
Under the order, Brown granted a modification of her original order by allowing the district to have sixth grade students return to attending elementary schools in the district. That request was made in affidavits filed by Cleveland Schools Superintendent Jacquelyn Thigpen.
Under Brown’s original order, sixth through eighth grade students (except for those attending Bell Academy and Hayes Cooper) would have been taught at the East Side High facility, which was being converted into a consolidated middle school.
The new order means students will complete their sixth grade year at Cypress Parks, Pearman and Parks elementary schools.
Last Wednesday, the school district filed a motion to dismiss its appeal of Brown’s original desegregation order with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court dismissed the appeal the following day.
Brown’s order brings to an end a tumultuous 10-month period in which the district initially pledged to fight the desegregation order and filed an appeal requesting a stay, proposed several alternatives and finally agreed to abide by the order with the modification involving sixth grade students.
Beginning this fall, the consolidated high school, Cleveland Central High, will house ninth through 12th graders at the former Cleveland High and Margaret Green Junior High facilities. The campus of the district’s other high school facility, East Side High, will serve as the new consolidated middle school, renamed Cleveland Central Middle, for seventh and eighth graders.
Lenden Sanders, a plaintiff in the Cowan and United States of America v Bolivar Board of Education case, said she thinks every child can get afforded the same education at one school under the plan.
“I think this is a good thing,” said Sanders. “Its good for the kids, it’s good for the community and the people.”
Sanders said this is what the plaintiffs have been pushing for, but “it’ll take time for the people to come together” and work everything out.
At a Jan. 30 meeting, the Cleveland school board announced that it was dropping its appeals of the federal judge’s desegregation order and would proceed under the judge’s desegregation plan. During the same meeting, the school board said that it would seek to have its appeals dismissed and it would no longer pursue alternative plans.
The decision came after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ordered hearings on the district’s appeal of the original desegregation order.
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.
Henry Ford once said “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” The Cleveland School District has a long way to go to get to success! The Stakeholders still lack a seat at the decision-making table! Consolidation without reconciliation will never work!