Desegregation Decrees
We Must Stop Living in the Past
By Daniel Muniz

There are some minorities who don’t realize that the world has dramatically changed in the last 30 years. Yet, they are still willing to file frivolous lawsuits to keep outdated desegregation decrees in place even though schools have already been completely integrated but most importantly, times have changed.

When Wendell Brown became the superintendent of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, which is located in south Texas just west of San Antonio, he wanted to improve efficiency wherever possible and slash wasteful spending. The savings would result in more money for the school district.

Taking a look at the tiny Batesville School, it was a no-brainer to shut down the seventh and eighth grades and transfer all the students to the much larger Uvalde Junior High located twenty miles away in the town of Uvalde. After all, there were only 40 kids in both of those grades. Going to a much bigger school would allow the students the opportunity to take a wider variety of classes and participate in many more extracurricular activities.
 

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Incidentally, the entire district only has 5,100 students which serve all of Uvalde county and portions of two neighboring counties. So many of the students who live outside the county seat of Uvalde are already accustomed to traveling long distances to get to school, especially since ranching and farming is prevalent there.

And since Batesville is a very small rural community, such a move was not unprecedented. In 1973, the entire Batesville High School was transferred to Uvalde which only left the kindergarten though eighth grade. So to Wendell Brown, it just made good economic sense to close down those two grades.

In fact, it is evitable that the entire Batesville School will eventually be closed down due to its small size.

Unfortunately, there is one problem.

The Batesville School operates under a desegregation decree so any kind of logistics decision has to get the approval of a federal judge. As for much of the South before the civil rights movement, white kids went to one school while the minorities, namely Hispanics in this case, went somewhere else. It was an ugly turbulent time in our history and many civil rights activists fought bitter battles to put an end to racial discrimination. The result was that schools were finally integrated or special provisions were made for schools like the one in Batesville.

But times change and people change.

In fact, the superintendent Wendell Brown is black and he of all people happens to know a little bit about segregation because as a kid he had to attend segregated schools while growing up in Florida.

As for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, it too has changed.

Hispanics, who have always been the majority ethnicity in the county, are now much better represented as teachers and in the school board. In fact, having a superintendent who is African-American is perhaps the most revolutionary change for a rural community in south Texas.

Sadly, the Hispanics living in Batesville don’t see it that way.

Instead, they want the school district to spend a lot more money on their tiny campus instead of having their children go to a much better school. This kind of stubbornness only hurts their children.

Moreover, many residents of Batesville have dredged up all the horrible incidents of prejudice and racial discrimination that happened over three decades ago. As a result, they see this school closure as another dramatic civil rights battle unfolding right in front of their eyes. The problem is that the people in Batesville are living in the past and fighting battles that have already been won. There is no need to fight them again.

Regrettably, civil rights organizations like the Mexican Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) are hungry for another pointless lawsuit. They don’t have any more real crusades to fight so imaginary ones like the transfer of the Batesville students to Uvalde is the next best thing.

What many school districts like Uvalde really want is to reach “unitary status” which means that all the desegregation decrees are over with no more involvement from the federal courts. That has already happened throughout much of the South because so much progress has already been made.

Myself as a Hispanic, I say that it is time to let go of the past.

Yes, there will always be exceptions but it is time to look at the world as it is right now instead of what it was thirty years ago. It is time to change with the world instead of living in the past. Racial arsonists like MALDEF want to reopen all those old wounds and instigate a crisis that doesn’t exist.

And for schools across the South who are fighting similar battles, they need to put the opportunity for a better education for their children as a higher priority instead of pursuing pointless lawsuits.

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