Miller: Local schools are more diverse but have lots left to do

By The Rev. Bernie Miller

New Covenant Fellowship Church

Our community has made significant progress over the past 40 years in bringing diversity to public schools. All who have sought to make a difference are to be applauded. But despite an impending report from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, it would be taking the report out of context to use it to say schools in Hamilton County are desegregated.

The Tennessee Advisory Committee to the Commission on Civil Rights, which I am honored to chair, met earlier this year to examine the racial diversity of school systems in Tennessee. As a committee, one of the first issues we agreed on was whether or not all 136 school districts in Tennessee had achieved “Unitary Status,” which is the term the report will apply to Hamilton County.

“Unitary Status” is a legal term that describes a school system that has made the transition from a segregated, or “racially dual” system, to a desegregated, or “unitary” system. In Tennessee, all school districts at the time of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision were deemed segregated.

By 1964, a decade after the Brown decision, less than 2 percent of formerly segregated school districts had experienced any desegregation. Over the course of the next several decades, the federal government, parents, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other parties took legal action to ensure compliance with the Brown decision by local school districts.

In response, a common strategy adopted by many school systems to comply with the Brown decision was “freedom of choice” plans. In 1968, however, the U.S. Supreme Court in Green v. New Kent County School Board ruled that such attendance plans were ineffective for producing integration in the schools and mandated that federal courts must to the extent practicable look not only at student assignment, but to every facet of school operations. These factors have come to be commonly referred to as the Green factors, and include (1) student assignment, (2) faculty assignment, (3) staff assignment, (4) transportation, (5) extracurricular activities and (6) facilities.

In addition, in the Green decision the Supreme Court established the term “unitary status” to describe a school system that has made the transition from a segregated system to a desegregated or “unitary” system. Under the Green decision, for a school district to receive a declaration of unitary status from the courts, the district was required to present to the court persuasive evidence that all vestiges of segregation for each Green factor had been eliminated from a system-wide point of view, and were unlikely to be resurrected.

Our advisory committee wanted to provide a report to the Civil Rights Commission and public regarding: (1) a definitive listing of all school districts in Tennessee that had ever been subject to judicial intervention, along with the initial court action and the date of that action; (2) a definitive listing of all school districts in the state with unitary status, the year unitary status was granted, and the court order; (3) a summary statement from each district still subject to court jurisdiction as to its intent to achieve unitary status; and (4) an analysis of integration patterns of school districts that have recently attained unitary status, one them being the Hamilton County school system.

The Civil Rights Commission report will look at achievement of program outcomes based on the Green factors. The committee members hope our work will encourage school districts to seek unitary status and provide policy-makers and the public with reliable information about the status of school desegregation litigation in the state.

Residents of Hamilton County know we have schools where racial diversity does not exist, just as we have schools where racial diversity exists today that were not present prior to the merger of schools in 1996. The correct view of our school system achieving unitary status is that it is a significantly positive achievement and statement for our community, but not the end of efforts to create greater diversity in our schools.

The Rev. Bernie Miller is pastor of New Covenant Fellowship Church in Chattanooga.