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Segregation Found at Covington School -- Justice Department Recommends Closing Highly Rated Seminary

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 October 2005, 12:02 CDT

By The Associated Press

JACKSON - The U.S. Justice Department has recommended that one of the best high schools in the state should be closed because of lingering segregation issues within the Covington County School District.

Seminary Attendance Center garnered a Level 5, or superior, ranking for its students' performance, but the Justice Department wants students to be redistributed to Collins High School, classified at Level 3, or successful.

The Justice Department is reactivating a civil rights era case against the Covington County School district that found that Seminary had an enrollment of more than 90 percent white students, while the Hopewell Attendance Center had an enrollment of more than 90 percent black students.

The three Collins schools currently have a majority of black students.

If all high school students are shifted to Collins, the county districts would be redrawn to allow for diversity among the students.

The case will be presented before U.S. District Court Judge Keith Starrett in January, unless the school district consultant and the department can find an alternative solution.

Members of the Covington County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said that students at Seminary receive excellent teachers and sufficient funding at the expense of Collins, Hopewell and Mount Olive schools.

"We at the NAACP feel that the teachers train at Mount Olive and Collins," said Charles Magee, chapter president. "And the best go to Seminary."

Ike Sanford, Covington County school superintendent, said Seminary does not receive better teachers than other schools, but private donations from the community have contributed to the campus buildings and athletic complex.

"There's a lot of talk out there, but it's not all facts," Sanford said.

Black teachers who worked within the district have said that Seminary traditionally received the best teachers and that blacks were denied administrative positions that were eventually awarded to whites.

"There are inequities in the curriculum, money not being spent where it should be," former teacher Gwendolyn Lindsey-Ginn said. "And everything they have at Seminary is not throughout the district. When I was there, the best teachers at Mount Olive and Hopewell were sent to Seminary."

Source: Commercial Appeal, The

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