'White flight' from Hearne ruled illegal

Craig Kapitan:

Hundreds of students who have transferred from Hearne to the Mumford Independent School District will have to go home to reverse an illegal "white flight" trend that has segregated the districts, according to a ruling delivered out of a federal court in Tyler last week.

In the 110-page document, Senior U.S. District Court Judge William Wayne Justice described Mumford as maintaining a "pattern of fraudulent conduct" in past years as it solicited transfers from Hearne, increasing its enrollment of white students over a 10-year period by 3,540 percent.

The lawsuit was filed by the Hearne school district and three of its students in July 2003. It was based, in part, on the argument that Mumford's actions have been in direct contrast to "No. 5821" - shorthand for a 1970 civil case that stated "no student in Texas will be effectively excluded from equal educational opportunities based on race, color or national origin."

"Mumford has shown consistent and persistent willingness to circumvent the requirements of No. 5281 whenever possible," Justice wrote in the Thursday ruling.

The judge's ruling permanently bars the Texas Education Agency from funding transfers to Mumford that "reduce or impeded racial desegregation at Hearne Independent School District." Districts receive about $5,500 funding from the agency for each student.

Mumford also was ordered to no longer host Hearne students currently attending its schools.

In addition, Justice ordered the TEA to assign a monitor to Mumford to ensure compliance with the ruling from now until the end of the 2007-08 school year.

In response to the accusations, Mumford had argued that "it cannot be determined that [the district's] acceptance of transfers has had a segregative effect on Hearne," according to court documents.

However, Justice sternly dismissed the contention, accusing the school district of apparently having a "misunderstanding of basic arithmetic."

By arguing the transfers out of Hearne affected white enrollment there by -2.82 percent, Mumford "misuses the data and confuses 'percent' with 'percentage points.' This is not just semantics. These two terms have very different meanings."

Hearne desegregated its schools in the 1970s as a result of No.5281, but white families remained reluctant to send their children to a formerly all-black school in a predominantly black area of town, the judge wrote, citing testimony from Morris McDaniel, who retired in 2002 as the town's first black superintendent.

In response, he continued, the school district began an "ability grouping" plan where students were divided among two elementary schools separated into lower ability and higher ability classes. The result was a resegregation of the schools.

After an accreditation by the TEA in 1990, however, the district dropped the plan. Hearne's overall enrollment of white students began declining each year after, while Mumford's population began a steady ascent.

"Hearne parents started transferring their children in earnest around 1991 or 1992," Justice wrote. "Even Hearne school board members transferred their children out of [formerly all black] Blackshear [Elementary School].

"As the leaders of Hearne, these members' decisions to transfer their children raised serious questions in the community about their school district and exacerbated the transfer problem for Hearne."

Between 1990 and 2000 Hearne's white enrollment decreased by 68 percent. Meanwhile, Mumford's population of white students grew by 3,540 percent during that same time period.

Before 1991, Mumford had 57 students - five of whom were white - and served only kindergarten through eighth grade. High schoolers were sent to Hearne. But by the 2002-03 school year, it had ballooned to 500 students and included high school classes. Only 102 of those students actually lived in Mumford.

And by the 2004-2005 school year, all five of Mumford's busses were driving into Hearne to pick up students.

In the ruling, Justice specifically scolded Mumford Superintendent Pete Bienski. The district illegally didn't report transfers at all until 1998, and after that point, Bienski began fraudulently using narrow exemptions to continue the exodus, the ruling states.

As recently as the 2000-01 school year, the school district inaccurately reported its transfers - pegging the number at 200 then later revising it to 348.

Bienski couldn't be reached for comment late Monday afternoon.

"One of the chief purposes of No. 5281 is to prevent the phenomenon of 'white flight,' i.e., the efforts of white parents to keep their children from attending desegregated schools by transferring them." Justice wrote.

However, he later added, "the undisputed facts from the evidence shows that transfers are reducing desegregation in Hearne ... and that the TEA continues to provide Mumford with funding for them."

As a result, he wrote, Hearne now is perceived as a black school district, creating negative and unsubstantiated stereotypes concerning the safety of students.

"All the Hearne educators clearly explained that this makes it harder for Hearne to attract new students because parents hear about Hearne's reputation and are aware of the large numbers of transfers leaving," he said.

The judgment also states that Mumford has only solicited the highest achieving students, leaving a void in Hearne when it comes to ranking against other districts with test scores. And because activities in small towns often revolve around their schools, the segregation also has added to the overall racial division in Hearne, the judge noted.

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