AN EXAMINATION OF THE IMPACT OF THE FEDERAL HEAD START PROGRAM ON DISCIPLINARY BEHAVIORS IN EARLY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL YEARS
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write a summary for the pages you previously wrote. I added the History of the School District that you can also use in the summary.
History of the Southeast Texas School District
In an attempt to provide background statistics regarding the foundation of this Southeast Texas School District, Sims (1963) specified the school system began in 1898. She further stated the first school for Black children was created in 1905.
According to Sims (1963), the school system began to grow significantly in enrollment in 1914. She states that the school system operated separate educational facilities for Black and White students. Kibbe (2006) supported that fact in 1954 that this Southeast Texas School District operated a dual system of education for students in the community. She emphasized the dual system continued until the school board was pressured to eliminate this practice.
Desegregation of District Schools
The Board of Trustees of this Southeast Texas School District was under immense pressure to quicken the pace of integration, being that the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) invalidated the practice of separate but equal education for Black students and mandated that school districts across the country desegregate all schools. The Board devised a plan that called for elementary grades to be integrated based on a single non-racial pattern of the attendance zones and the implementation of a freedom of choice plan for Grades 9 through 13 (Kibbe, 2006).
According to Kibbe (2006), the freedom-of-choice plan was the Southeast Texas School District plan for integration until the Region VII Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) sent the first of two review teams to the district. HEW voiced strong concerns in regards to the school district, noting its noncompliance with standards of the decree. The noncompliance of standards caused HEW, in May 1970, to refer the matter to the Department of Justice for litigation. In August 1970, the Department of Justice entered into a lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency (TEA) as well as many other Texas School Districts including this Southeast Texas School District for continuing the operations of a dual-race basis school system and requested an immediate halt to such practice.
The Southeast Texas School District remained under a desegregation court order for the next 36 years. During this period, the Southeast Texas School District implemented different grade configurations, consolidated schools and established a magnet program in an effort to comply with the desegregation order (Kibbe, 2006).
The Department of Justice continued to monitor the practices of this Southeast Texas School District, and during one of its monitoring visits discovered the District still had failed to adhere to the court-order of closing one high school when the total high school enrollment reached 2,800. As a result of this noncompliance issue coupled with other concerns of the desegregation order, the Department of Justice refused to grant unitary status to the District. The declaring of the District as unitary would have granted relief from the court-order (Kibbe, 2006).
Consolidation of District High Schools
According to Kibbe (2006), a Citizens TASK Force provided the findings from its study regarding the Districts’ efforts to have the desegregation court-order removed and for the District to gain unitary status. She goes on to say in order to gain release from the court-order, the Citizens TASK Force recommended: one high school, two middle schools, one combination elementary/middle school, two intermediate schools and five elementary schools.
The consolidation plan that moved the District from three high schools to one was approved by the Board of Trustees on July 30, 2001. The Justice Department reviewed and accepted the high school consolidation plan in October 2001 (Kibbe, 2006).
The one high school concept was executed during the 2002-2003 school year. The district’s total student enrollment in 2003 was 10,657 and the high school student enrollment for the same year was 2,702. The student ethnic breakdown for that same year was 57% Black, 27.2% Hispanic, 8.1% Asian, 7.6% White, and 0.1% Native American. In 2003, the overall student completion rate for the district was 90.7%. The state of Texas’ goal for student attendance was 96% or better. This Southeast Texas School District’s attendance rate was 93.2% in 2003 (Southeast Texas Historical PEIMS Data, 2015).
The one high school plan was comprised of a comprehensive high school that included Grades 9 through 12. Due to the building size of the high school that housed the students, the ninth-grade students were lodged at the site of one of the closed high school campuses until a new high school was opened in the fall of 2009.