INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Two members of the local NAACP and a school board member feel the Indian River County School District isn’t addressing a desegregation order that has been in effect since 1967 and was amended in 1994.
They cited the absence of a plan to close the achievement gap between black and white students. Black students ranked lowest at all grade levels on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in reading and math in 2013.
Jacqueline Warrior and Michelle Scott are local NAACP members on the education committee. In the 1994 desegregation amendment the judge gave the NAACP oversight authority.
Warrior discovered about a year ago that the case was never assigned to another judge in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida after Judge C. Clyde Atkins died around 1995. Therefore the case has not been monitored in many years.
Another judge has not been assigned yet, but will be, Warrior said.
Last November the ACLU filed a complaint with the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, claiming the school district was not complying with the desegregation order, spurring the current scrutiny. The Office of Civil Rights did not confirm whether it will take the case or investigate the allegations on Tuesday. There is a question whether it has jurisdiction, since the case originated in the South District Court.
During the Tuesday School Board work session, Warrior and Scott said two prior meetings determined a separate academic achievement plan just for black students was agreed upon. But in a subsequent meeting, with two staff assigned by Superintendent Dr. Mark Rendell, they were told a multicultural plan including all minorities would be drafted.
School Board member Claudia Jimenez said a separate plan focusing on black student achievement needed to be put in place to address the desegregation order. She asked the other school board members to consider directing Rendell to put two plans in place.
Jimenez said she was disappointed with the draft plan so far that largely duplicates the 1994 amendment and doesn’t address academics.
School Board member Shawn Frost said he would support a separate chapter dedicated to black students within the larger multicultural plan, but would not support a separate document that appears to value one minority over another.
School Board attorney Suzanne D’Agresta said if the case were to again be heard by a judge, they would be asked to produce a multicultural plan that specifically addresses black students and employees, but it wouldn’t matter if it were a chapter or separate document.
Rendell asked the School Board to hold judgment until the final plan is done.
