District Desegregation Case Settled,
New Costs Unclear

HATTIESBURG , Miss. - A settlement was reached in early March in a desegregation lawsuit against Covington County School District in Mississippi, and increasing student transportation costs in the process.

Just how much remains to be seen.

The case was originally filed in 1966 alleging that the district failed to integrate its schools, specifically Seminary Attendance Center and the local Hopewell attendance zone, said Holmes Adams, attorney for the school district. Approximately 90 percent of Seminary (K-12) students are white, and the student population at Hopewell Elementary (K-6) is 96 percent black.

The lawsuit was made inactive in 1976 and was reactivated by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2001.

"Essentially the complaint was that one school was almost all black and another school was largely white in a district that was 50/50 in terms of total student population," Adams said.

As specified by the consent decree filed March 8 in the Hattiesburg Division of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, beginning with the 2006-07 school year, Hopewell students will be bused to Seminary to attend seventh through 12 th grade. If the school district complies with the terms of the settlement, which also includes the addition of enrichment programs and construction at Seminary to accommodate the inclusion of Hopewell students, the lawsuit will be dismissed after three years.

The first incoming class from Hopewell to Seminary has 45 students spread out over the northeast portion of the county, said assistant superintendent Larry Tripp. Covington School District will accommodate transportation with the addition of two new school buses costing $110,000 each and two drivers, with salaries of $7,500 each per year.

Covington currently transports 2,400 students in 52 school buses across 385,000 miles of regular routes annually.

The settlement also mandates that transportation be provided for majority to minority (M-to-M) transfers, in which any student whose race is a majority in his or her assigned school can elect to attend a school in the district where his or her race is the minority.

Covington School District currently has seven or eight students doing M-to-M transfers, said assistant superintendent Larry Tripp, but they are providing their own transportation. Busing costs will be dependent not only on the number of students requesting M-to-M transfers, but their proximity to the school they wish to attend, which will factor into maintenance and fuel costs.

Students have until July 1 to apply for M-to-M transfers, so school officials don't yet know what transportation costs the district will incur.

"We really don't have any idea," Tripp said. "If they are spread out throughout the county, it will be rather expensive."

Source: School Transportation News, May 2006. All rights reserved.