[2/27/04]Informal talks with the U.S. Justice Department will begin next week now that the community school plan has majority approval of Vicksburg Warren School District trustees.

“We’ll begin with an informal exchange of information, and once questions are answered, we’ll prepare a motion to amend our desegregation plan,” said Jim Chaney, attorney for the district since consolidation in 1987. He also worked with the Justice Department in the 1999 School Choice Program.

The motion to amend the plan will be filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, Western Division in Jackson. Then it will be up to the Justice Department to respond, and a judge will make a final decision.

If approved, the community school plan without a planned new elementary could be in place here in August.

Since proposed by Superintendent James Price in December, the plan won the favor of nearly 90 percent of about 4,000 people who turned in citizen forms, unanimous support from principals, and nearly 90 percent of teachers and faculty who expressed a preference.

The plan won approval Tuesday from the Board of Trustees by a 3-2 vote, split along racial lines although the reconfigured elementaries would have the same racial ratios as exist today.

“It will be a very intense time for us over the next few weeks as we prepare documentation to justify the proposal,” Price said. “We’re looking forward to working through the process and hope for a favorable outcome.”

The plan includes:

Building a school inside city limits or renovating the former Carr Central High School property on Cherry Street.

Reopening Bovina Elementary as a school.

Making all elementaries K-6. All fifth- and sixth-grade students in the district now attend one of two megaschools.

Redrawing district lines to accommodate neighborhood schools to ensure racial balance.

Until the 1987 consolidation of the area’s two separate school districts, Vicksburg Municipal Separate School District and the Warren County Public Schools, the two districts had been operating under separate desegregation orders from the 1960s.

The consolidated district was required to come up with its own attendance zone plan that created a racial balance reflecting the area’s total population.

In 1997, the approval of the Justice Department was again sought to change from community schools to the School Choice Program.

Under the plan, five community elementaries were closed and K-4 students began attending one of three elementary schools in north and south zones with the exception of Bowmar Avenue, which draws students from both zones. All fifth- and sixth-graders attend one of the two schools built for the choice-based plan, Sherman Avenue or Dana Road.