Education
Justice Department offers to lift school oversight after 52 years
The U.S. Department of Justice has offered the Georgetown County School District an option to move away from a desegregation order that has provided more than 50 years of federal oversight.
Dave Duff, the attorney representing the district, told the school board this week that he received a call from two attorneys with the DOJ before the government shutdown in October.
Duff said a Trump administration directive had the department review school districts under desegregation orders to determine if those districts would move forward with an application for unitary status “jointly” with the DOJ.
“In general, it’s something that most school districts would like to see occur,” he said.
The school district and DOJ filed a motion with the federal court in Charleston in 2017 seeking partial unitary status. The court granted partial unitary status in three areas; transportation, extracurricular activities and facilities. Those areas are commonly referred to as “Green factors,” originating from the Supreme Court case Green v. County School Board of New Kent County.
The two remaining Green factors are student assignment and teacher and staff assignment. Those still require federal oversight.
“The court’s saying that you have, to the greatest extent possible, given your particular circumstances as they exist today, you have eliminated the remnants of the prior dual system to the extent that is satisfactory to the court,” Duff said.
Under a 1997 consent decree that stems from the original 1969 complaint, the district was required to create Carvers Bay Middle and High schools by combining Choppee and Pleasant Hill attendance zones. Duff said the decree also required the district to seek approval from the DOJ for school openings, school closures, magnet programs, attendance zones and facility improvement. It received approval in 2022 for its magnet program.
Duff said the district would no longer be required to seek approval from the DOJ or to have oversight from federal courts.
However he said the absence of the desegregation order would mean the district is still bound by other laws to continue efforts to offer equal educational opportunity such as the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“I don’t want anyone to think that somehow there’s going to be a return to the old days because that’s not going to happen,” he said. “The law will not allow that.”
