Catahoula Elementary to stay open

By a dramatic 5-4 vote Monday night the St. Martin School Board refused to close Catahoula Elementary School, saying it is prepared to fight efforts of plaintiffs in a decades-old desegregation case in federal court.
The decision came after a public hearing in a packed meeting room and a 30-minute executive (secret) session during which board members huddled with attorneys who have represented the board during lengthy negotiations with the plaintiffs in the case.
The decision to keep the grade preK-8 school open was met with sustained applause from parents and faculty members who were in attendance at the special meeting.
Voting for a motion by District 7 representative Richard Potier of breaux Bridge to keep the school open were board president Mark Hebert, Burton Dupuis, Steve Fuselier and Catahoula area representative Russell Foti, a former principal of the school, and Potier.
Opposed were Jimmy Blanchard, Aaron Fleageance, Floyd Knott and Wanda B. Vital.
Frederic Stelly was absent.
During a 1¾-hour public hearing attorneys Bob Hammonds and Pam W. Dill, with the Baton Rouge firm of Hammonds, Sills, Adkins & Guice LLP, explained in detail the history of the desegregation case that dates back to 1965. Although parish officials thought the matter had been resolved in 1974 when a federal court judge apparently agreed that the parish was operating a unitary school system.
But a legal glitch kept the case open and the plaintiffs, represented by attorneys with the New York-based NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund Inc. convinced the courts to reopen the suit. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) joined the suit as an intervenor with the plaintiffs.
Hammonds, who said his firm has represented numerous boards in desegregation matters, told the crowd that “these are the most difficult legal cases because they affect children, parents and teachers.”
Both he and Dill also said that the plaintiffs’ attorneys, from the very start of the negotiations, have pushed for the closure of the Catahoula school, where only 16 of the current 236 students are black.
Generally, desegregation guidelines require that the racial makeup of each school generally reflect the overall racial makeup of an entire district.
In St. Martin’s case, 50.7 percent of the parish’s 8,422 students are white and 46.2 percent are black.
At Catahoula, only 6.8 percent of the students are black.
The ratio is even more skewed at Stephensville Elementary, another preK-8 school in lower St. Martin, where just two of the school’s 133 students are black.
But Dill said the plaintiffs have agreed “not to touch it” because of the school’s “geographic isolation.”
Hammonds explained that the desegregation case covers six areas – extracurricular activities, facilities, faculty assignment, staff assignment, transportation, and student assignment – the most complicated of the six areas.
The plaintiffs, and the court, have agreed that the parish already complies with desegregation guidelines in extracurricular activities and will comply in the area of facilities once renovations are completed at Breaux Bridge Jr. High.
“After weeks of negotiations,” Hammonds said, “with not all of the sessions voluntary, the plaintiffs and the court agreed that the parish could meet the student assignment criteria if either 1) the Catahoula school was closed, or 2) the school was converted to a preK-grade 1 school, with Catahoula students shifted to schools in St. Martinville.
Hammonds warned the board that if it refused to implement one of these options, a trial on the suit would begin next month. “And the plaintiffs initially wanted to redo the attendance zones for every school in the parish,” he said. In a trial that possibility could again be raised.