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“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.
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