DOJ School Report Based On False Data

We finally received a copy of the (now almost infamous) Department of Justice (DOJ) report (titled Desegregation Planning Analysis of the Bertie County School District) which has caused our county so much grief. It does not say what many have attributed to it, and it says a great number of things that are not true. It is reasonable to say the report proves the DOJ lawyers do not care about Bertie County students, either black or white.

In talking about a side issue, the report has some interesting facts that acknowledge Askewville Elementary was 43% black before the latest redrawing of the lines, which have now made it 58% black. The report says "To some extent this makes the non-black elementary school look better (43% Black) than its zone would reflect (31% Black)." This sentence proves the DOJ is really haggling over minutiae and always has been. The huge public debate that accompanied the threat to close the Askewville School in order to attain a 15% increase in black attendance was acrimonious and accusatory. Now that we have redrawn the lines, no one is suggesting we go back.

However we are now being forced into another debate where the Board of Education attorney claims that the Department of Justice is still not satisfied with that percentage. How can any rational person argue that the black students in Merry Hill must lose their school so that the black majority of students in Askewville's Elementary school can attend a school with 13% more blacks in it? That is the claimed goal of the closure of these two schools. Over an opinion that Askewville is not “black enough” even after a change they and the court approved, the DOJ is supposedly still demanding the closing of J.P. Law.

The DOJ report touts the consolidation argument "Nationally it is recognized that a good size for elementary schools is not less that about 350 students." This is an arrogant statement that is totally refuted by most modern educators. Though there is still a component of the education establishment that touts the large school mantra, these are the people who have led the disaster in public education over the last 60 years. No one who truly cares about educating our children still promotes this argument. So why is it being used by the Department of Justice to pressure Bertie County to consolidate? Could it have more do to with their desires than the interests of Bertie County?

The DOJ report goes on "J.P. Law has a similar enrollment capacity (referring to Askewville), and under no conditions should that building be renovated, both due to its condition and due to diminishing returns when the building is so small and the cost per student is so large." What an unsubstantiated bunch of non-sense. This is exactly the problem when you allow some attorneys in Washington to use the power of the federal courts to play games with people’s lives. J.P. Law is in excellent shape. It has been maintained quite well. When the sanitary system is fixed, which will cost a fraction of what the DOJ and Heery reports have claimed, it will be as good as any school in the county, for at least another generation.

There is an old adage that no two experts ever agree on anything. The Heery Report of the BOE refutes the argument that Askewville has a school in great condition, and Merry Hill’s J.P. Law is so bad that “under no conditions should that building be renovated.” Heery rates Askewville and Aulander as worse than J.P. Law! Thus the statement in the DOJ report, "However, when the two buildings - J.P. Law with an 86% black zone and Askewville with a 69% non-black zone are taken together, the strong disparity in facilities condition does reflect unequal treatment of black students and should be remedied from a facilities equity view" is simply not true. The DOJ claims one building is in bad shape and the other is in good shape and uses this to “prove” Bertie County is discriminating because it serves their purpose, not because it is true. Heery says it is not true. It proves that the DOJ will twist facts and promote arguable opinions as facts to get what they want. Why did our BOE allow them to make such an easily refutable argument? Why has the BOE not taken the Heery report and made the DOJ acknowledge their main argument is wrong?

Even still, the Department of Justice never recommends a new school. Their own expert recommends that we use Southwestern as the new elementary school for the county. "The scheduling for implementing the plan should be taken in the context of construction of the new consolidated middle school, which frees up a middle school to make this plan work." That means that the implication of the Board of Education that a new school was the desire of the Department of Justice was always in error.

A real dichotomy is created by a statement of the lawyers for the DOJ as compared to the words of the DOJ report (most lawyers involved in desegregation cases support the words in the report on this issue). The report says, "..it is incumbent upon all school districts to work towards unitary status with respect to all issues of equity for black students."

The reality is that every school in our county is now black majority and our elementary school facilities are in excellent shape. We are running a system that in no way directs discrimination against any black student. Could the insistence of continued oversight have more to do with the statement by the lawyers that they DO NOT REPRESENT black students of Bertie County, but REPRESENT the United States Government’s interests?

They have no right to control our schools to prohibit what they feel MIGHT result in some school in the future not having an “adequate” percentage of black students, as measured by the DOJ fascination with minutiae. All recent Supreme Court rulings have denied this as a goal that can keep a desegregation case open. Bertie County deserves Unitary Status NOW. It is being denied, and the black majority of students in both Merry Hill and Askewville will be damaged, at the insistence of lawyers who clearly do not understand their own commitments.