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Apr 23, 2009 6:21 pm US/Central
RISD Seeks To Remove Court-Mandated Desegregation
RICHARDSON (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
Hamilton Park Elementary School teacher Lori Deckard moved her kindergarten students through a round of reading and language exercises before the lunch period began. The five and six-year-olds in her class marched toward the cafeteria, past a hallway trophy case that holds photographs and mementos of a period long gone. A picture of an all-black football team represented the pride of a community now half a century old.
Hamilton Park is a Dallas subdivision just east of Highway 75 near Forest Lane. It was a neighborhood built specifically for African Americans, who struggled to find quality housing in the era of Jim Crow. The all-black community had its own businesses, park and school. In fact, Hamilton Park was the only school black students attended in the Richardson Independent School District for decades.
In 1970, a lawsuit claimed the district operated under a dual system: one for blacks and one for whites. For the past 39 years, the school district has operated under a federal court order to implement programs to desegregate the school system.
The primary plan to dismantle the vestiges of separate and unequal is the same plan found in Hamilton Park's campus today. The Hamilton Park Pacesetter School is a magnet program with a racially diverse student population.
RISD is now a minority-majority school district, and officials say the time has come to shake off the label of federal court oversight. "As far as we're concerned, we have a unified school district and have had one for years," said RISD Trustee Lanet Greenhaw. "There's no need for a court order to mandate that."
Greenhaw and other trustees could give the district the go ahead to begin the legal process to attain unitary status for the school district. But how far has the district come in achieving requirements of the court order?
Most RISD schools have a racial and ethnic mix of students, but when it comes to teachers in the classroom, the numbers tell a different story. Eighty three percent all teachers for RISD are white.
The court order requires indicators of racial discrimination be cleared before a district is declared "unitary." Greenhaw said the district has worked hard to diversify its teacher ranks. "We recruit without regard to race," she said.
Eight of 40 RISD campuses are still racially identifiable, meaning they are either overwhelmingly one race or another.
Forty years ago, every school in the district fit that description. It was a description of a school district operating separate and unequal systems. Today, Richardson ISD officials say that distinction no longer applies.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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