After Months Of Debate, Robertson County Votes To Desegregate Schools

The Robertson County school board has reluctantly accepted a federally imposed rezoning plan after months of heated debate. The panel voted unanimously Monday night at a special-called meeting.

Federal authorities accused the system of promoting segregation by adding portable classrooms to overcrowded, high-minority schools instead of rezoning some students to the virtually all-white schools that had room to spare.

School board members who had threatened to reject the settlement — even if it meant losing federal money — ultimately signed off without discussion, calling the rezoning “tolerable” after the brief meeting.

“I hate it for all those that are going to have to go to another school,” school board vice-chair Jeff White said. “But as progress goes, progress goes.”

White previously called the rezoning plan “racist” because it would have meant making some black families leave what he considered better schools to attend white schools simply for the sake of integration.

This agreement does not address middle and high schools, which will be taken up separately. It only deals with elementary schools for now. It means Mary Miller’s kids — who are white — will be scattered to three different schools to promote diversity. She says it’s not ideal, but something had to be done.

“I think it’s a problem that Robertson County should have dealt with 50 years ago and didn’t,” Miller said.

But it’s not as though African American families have been begging to be bussed across the county to white schools.

“It’s not easy for either side,” says Darrell Woodard, an African American community leader. “For instance, all the black families don’t necessarily look forward to going to a Greenbrier school.”

But Woodard says it’s worth the discomfort of attempting desegregation for a second time. He grew up going to an all-black school in Springfield and says he knows “for a fact that separate is not equal.”