Justice Department is roadblock to Peach charter school

The path is far from clear for Byron Peach Charter High School to open this fall, with a Department of Justice legal filing the latest hurdle to clear.

The filing came in response to a U.S. District Court order for Peach County and the Justice Department to sort out the county’s status as a unitary -- or a fully integrated -- district.

According to documents in the case, the two sides agreed that the district had achieved that status in 1989, but it still had to go through a federal court hearing for final approval.

“In the years since the 1989 Order, the District has not sought to demonstrate through the required process (nor has the United States asserted) that the District has achieved unitary status,” the filing reads. “Moreover, the United States has received complaints and has identified a number of specific concerns related to the Green factors that prevent it from concluding, without more, that the District has achieved unitary status.”

“Green factors” are based on a 1968 case in the U.S. Supreme Court, Green v. New Kent County School Board. Because of that decision, school districts must show that there has been no intentional segregation in such areas as student or faculty assignments, transportation and more.

Peach County school board Chairman Ben McDaniel said that while the board has not been active in pursuing unitary status lately, he would like to see the day that the county is no longer under the desegregation order first placed on it in 1974.

“We haven’t looked into it,” McDaniel said. “I would like to be out from under it because I don’t want to have to run to the Justice Department every time we want to do something.”

Most recently, such an encounter took place when the county was building Hunt and Kay Road elementary schools in 2008.

Multiple calls to Peach County school board attorney Buddy Welch were not returned.

The Department of Justice filing seems to get worse for the charter school. It says the charter school itself has drawn complaints.

“In fact, ... the United States has received multiple phone calls and letters from individuals expressing their concern that approval of the Charter will bring the District’s schools back to the days of ‘separate but equal,’ but not equal,” the filing reads. “Specifically, these individuals express concern that the Charter is an attempt to draw wealthier white students and District resources away from Peach County High School, so that white children from the Byron neighborhood no longer have to attend school with black children from the Fort Valley neighborhood.”

Rob Fortson, the charter school’s attorney, said the school has been working with the Justice Department to find a compromise on several issues.

“They’d indicated they are not satisfied yet with what we had offered,” he said.

One of those issues is a lack of transportation for the school, which would be located in the northern part of the county. Even though the school would be open for students across the county, the concern is that lack of school-provided transportation would hamper students from the south end around Fort Valley.

The school has proposed drop-off locations where parents could leave their children to be picked up by vans or buses, said Roy Lewis, chairman of the school’s board of directors.

“We’re trying to find an area where we can compromise,” he said. “We actually don’t think that’s a problem. We think the Justice Department is making that bigger than it actually is.”

The school’s lottery process has also come into question, but Lewis said it would follow state law.

He said that while the court proceedings, which will include another hearing in district court March 31, might draw out long enough to delay the opening of Byron Peach Charter High School, it will still open.

“I don’t see them having a chance to stop us from opening,” Lewis said.

For now, though, the Department of Justice was clear on its stance regarding the school’s status in its filing with the district court.

“However, at this time, the Charter has not demonstrated to the United States or to this Court that its operation will not impede the desegregation process of the District as required by applicable federal case law. The United States therefore respectfully requests that this Court exercise its jurisdiction to decline to authorize the operation of the Charter until a proper assessment of the impact of the Charter on desegregation is conducted.”

To contact writer Jeremy Timmerman, call 744-4331.

This story was originally published March 18, 2015 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Justice Department is roadblock to Peach charter school ."