Louisiana school board and federal government end 61 years of segregation monitoring

Audio By Carbonatix

BOSSIER CITY, La. (AP) — A Louisiana school board and the federal government have agreed to end more than 60 years of oversight meant to end segregation.

The agreement was announced Thursday on the first day of classes for Bossier Parish Schools near Shreveport.

“Dismissal of the case allows us the freedom to make our own decisions that are in the best interest of all students, staff and our community, while keeping in mind the history of the past 61 years,” Bossier Schools Superintendent Jason Rowland said in a statement.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced the settlement. Last month she announced she had helped lift a desegregation mandate for the rural Concordia Parish School Board along the Mississippi River.

“It’s long past time for these old consent decrees to come to an end. These decades-old cases are expensive, ineffective, and they take power away from local communities,” Murrill said on social media.

The U.S. Justice Department spent decades fighting for such cases but reversed course under Trump. Officials in his administration have framed the remaining segregation orders as federal intrusion into local school systems. Louisiana officials agree they’re no longer needed and describe them as relics of a time when Black students were forbidden from attending some schools.

The Bossier Parish Schools order said the parents who filed the original suit in 1964 that led to the oversight agreement are dead and that their children, who were part of the original court proceedings, couldn't be contacted.

The school system said it worked for decades with the Department of Justice, collaborating with its lawyers over “every new school, classroom wing addition and attendance zone change.”

Rowland thanked past board members and employees for doing everything the system needed to do to get out from the intense federal monitoring.

The superintendent said he trusts district leadership to make sure everyone in the system is treated fairly.