Pitt County School Faces Issues with Segregation

GREENVILLE, N.C. — The UNC Center for Civil Rights (CCR) is representing a group of African American parents and the Pitt County Coalition for Educating Black Children in a case concerning racial segregation in a North Carolina school district. This district — Pitt County Schools (PCS) — put a plan into action in 2011 that redistributed students throughout the district for 2012. This redistribution left many schools with a disproportionately high number of minority students. Many parents believe that this plan re-segregated schools in the district, and are asking the Eastern District Federal Courthouse in Greenville to have it overturned.

Of the district’s 23,000 students in 2010, 34 percent were black. The Associated Press reported that that figure rose to approximately 50 percent this year, with the number of white students hovering around 38 percent.

PCS will request unitary status from the court and an end to more than four decades of federal judicial oversight. PCS can only be considered unitary when it has eradicated the effects of past segregation as much as possible. The school board is responsible for enforcing the school district’s unity. The board is comprised of 12 members, three of whom are African American, according to the Associated Press.

Segregation issues have plagued PCS for decades. The 1960s saw the beginning of Everett et. al. v. Pitt County Schools, a case in which it was determined that PCS was a racially segregated district violating students’ constitutional rights. A plan in 1970 laid out a path to desegregation, but the court retained jurisdiction over PCS’s desegregation, rather than the school board.

The case lay untouched for four decades, until a group of white parents in 2008 felt that their children were being discriminated against. The case was closed again in 2009, however, when the court decided that the school district was still effectively working towards racial unity with the court’s desegregation plan.

PCS is under scrutiny yet again for the plan passed in 2011. Parents believe that the plan only served to increase segregation, rather than eliminate it. One newly opened elementary school in Greenville has less than 10 percent white students, while white students in other schools make up an overwhelming majority of the demographic.

“These districts can’t just rely on the passage of time and wait out these orders; they must develop and implement policies that remedy the continuing legacy of racial disparities in all aspects of their schools,” Mark Dorosin, managing attorney for the UNC CCR, said in a statement. “Once a district is declared unitary and the desegregation order is lifted — although school administrators can still utilize race conscious measures to ensure diverse schools — few are willing to do so. The sad reality is that, as a result, many districts quickly re-segregate.”

The PCS school board released a statement countering accusations of segregation last week: “The board no longer operates any school that could be accurately labeled a ‘one race’ school. New school construction and renovations have been distributed throughout the county so that minority students have benefited equally from modern, functional facilities.”

Racial segregation continues to affect over 100 school districts in the south, which are being closely monitored by the federal court.

The PCS trial is expected to last up to two weeks.