Maury County Public Schools

Last updated

Maury County Department of Education
Location
Maury County, Tennessee
United States
District information
Type Public
Established1873
Director of SchoolsLisa Ventura
Schools21
Budget88 million (USD) [1] [2] [3]
Students and staff
Students12,259
Teachers825
Other information
Teachers' unions Tennessee Education Association
Website www.mauryk12.org

Maury County Public Schools (MCPS) is a school district headquartered in Columbia, Tennessee. It serves Maury County, the sole school district doing so. [4]

Contents

The Maury County Board of Education is an 11-member school board governing the district. According to the Tennessee Code Annotated, the local board of education is a policy-making legislative body, and its members are classified as officials of the state. Except during an official meeting, a board member has no more power, authority or jurisdiction over school matters than any other citizen in the community.

Schools

Unit schools

High schools

Junior/Middle Schools

Elementary schools

Controversy

Hatton v. County Board of Education of Maury County, Tennessee (1970)

In 1968 Florence Ella Hatton was a tenured African-American elementary school teacher at Macedonia Negro School; she had been working for the school system for about six years and had an undergraduate degree from Tennessee State University and state certification. Employed by Maury County Board of Education, she had received tenure in 1966. In a position funded by Title One money from the federal government, intended to aid lower income students, Hatton served as fourth-grade homeroom teacher, instructor of health and physical education, and social studies, and as a part-time librarian at the school. [5] Two days before the start of school in 1968, she was discharged, told that the district had lost Title I funds and had to cut her position. [5]

Learning that the Board had hired non-tenured white teachers for other positions after she was discharged, Hatton filed a suit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee for protection under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, seeking reinstatement and back pay. In this court proceeding, the District Court learned that the Maury County Board of Education had not fully implemented desegregation, as required by Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) in 1954. The court found that the Board's "freedom of choice" plan had not achieved sufficient desegregation and in 1969 ordered the Board of Education to create a plan to achieve that. [5] The school district's plan had to be approved by the District Court and was submitted to the Appeals Court when the County School Board appealed the lower court's decision. The District Court ruled that Hatton was not discharged because of race, accepting the Board's statement that she was discharged because she was incompetent, but the [5] Appeals Court reversed this decision, as Hatton had been employed for six years and had earned tenure without any objections. It found that the Board had never filed papers to support the claim of incompetence. In addition, white non-tenured teachers had been hired after Hatton was discharged, although the District had claimed not to have funds for any position that she might fill. Under the state's tenure policy, tenured teachers have preference for open positions before non-tenured ones. [5]

In February 1970 the United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit ruled against the Maury County Board of Education. It awarded Hatton with reinstatement of employment with the county, as well as back-pay for the time off, and costs of court proceedings. [5] This case was important to civil rights in Tennessee, as it brought a secretly noncompliant school district into the public spotlight, forcing it to desegregate 16 years after the Supreme Court had ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.

Cases cited in decision

  • Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968)
  • Hobson v. Hansen, 44 F.R.D. 18 (D.D.C. 1968)
  • Raney v. Board of Education of Gould School District, 391 U.S. 443, 88 S.Ct. 1697, 20 L.Ed.2d 727 (1968)
  • Monroe v. Board of Commissioners of Jackson, Tenn., 391 U.S. 450, 88 S.Ct. 1700, 20 L.Ed.2d 733 (1968)
  • Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954)
  • Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955)
  • Stell v. Savannah-Chatham County Board of Education, 333 F.2d 55, 60 (5th Cir.) 379 U.S. 933, 85 S.Ct. 332, 13 L.Ed.2d 344 (1964)
  • St. Helena Parish School Board v. Hall, 287 F.2d 376 (5th Cir.), 368 U.S. 830, 82 S.Ct. 52, 7 L.Ed.2d 33 (1961)

See also

Related Research Articles

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Court's unanimous decision in Brown, and its related cases, paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.

Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974), was a significant United States Supreme Court case dealing with the planned desegregation busing of public school students across district lines among 53 school districts in metropolitan Detroit. It concerned the plans to integrate public schools in the United States following the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision.

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case dealing with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools. The Court held that busing was an appropriate remedy for the problem of racial imbalance in schools, even when the imbalance resulted from the selection of students based on geographic proximity to the school rather than from deliberate assignment based on race. This was done to ensure the schools would be "properly" integrated and that all students would receive equal educational opportunities regardless of their race.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desegregation busing</span> Failed attempt to racially diversify American public schools

Desegregation busing was a failed attempt to diversify the racial make-up of schools in the United States by sending students to school districts other than their own. While the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, many American schools continued to remain largely racially homogeneous. In an effort to address the ongoing de facto segregation in schools, the 1971 Supreme Court decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, ruled that the federal courts could use busing as a further integration tool to achieve racial balance.

Massive resistance was a strategy declared by U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. of Virginia and his son Harry Jr.'s brother-in-law, James M. Thomson, who represented Alexandria in the Virginia General Assembly, to get the state's white politicians to pass laws and policies to prevent public school desegregation, particularly after Brown v. Board of Education.

<i>Mendez v. Westminster</i> 1947 US appeals court case

Mendez, et al v. Westminister [sic] School District of Orange County, et al, 64 F.Supp. 544, aff'd, 161 F.2d 774, was a 1947 federal court case that challenged Mexican remedial schools in four districts in Orange County, California. In its ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in an en banc decision, held that the forced segregation of Mexican American students into separate "Mexican schools" was unconstitutional because as US District Court Judge Paul J. McCormick stated, "The evidence clearly shows that Spanish-speaking children are retarded in learning English by lack of exposure to its use because of segregation, and that commingling of the entire student body instills and develops a common cultural attitude among the school children which is imperative for the perpetuation of American institutions and ideals."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexandria City Public Schools</span> School district in Virginia, USA

Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) is a school division which is funded by the government of Alexandria, Virginia, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alachua County Public Schools</span> Public school district in Florida, US

Alachua County Public Schools is a public school district serving all of Alachua County in North Central Florida. It serves approximately 29,845 students in 64 schools and centers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlanta Public Schools</span> Education organization in Atlanta, United States

Atlanta Public Schools (APS) is a school district based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is run by the Atlanta Board of Education with Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson. The system has an active enrollment of 54,956 students, attending a total of 103 school sites: 50 elementary schools, 15 middle schools, 21 high schools, four single-gender academies and 13 charter schools. The school system also supports two alternative schools for middle and/or high school students, two community schools, and an adult learning center.

Pulaski County Special School District No. 1 (PCSSD) is one of four public school districts in Pulaski County, Arkansas—along with the Little Rock School District, the North Little Rock School District, and the Jacksonville North Pulaski School District—accredited by the Arkansas Department of Education. PCSSD has its headquarters in Sweet Home, an unincorporated area near southeastern Little Rock; the headquarters has a Little Rock postal address.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hillsborough County Public Schools</span> School district of Hillsborough County, Florida, U.S.

Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) is a school district that runs the public school system of Hillsborough County in west central Florida and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, United States. It is frequently referred to as the School District of Hillsborough County (SDHC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beaumont Independent School District</span> School district in Texas

Beaumont Independent School District is a U.S. public school district serving Beaumont in Southeast Texas. The district originated in the annexation of the former Beaumont ISD by the South Park Independent School District after its trustees voted in 1983 to dissolve it as the culmination of a struggle over desegregation of both districts. The original Beaumont ISD had previously absorbed the smaller French ISD.

Hamshire-Fannett Independent School District is a public school district based in unincorporated Jefferson County, Texas, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Durham Public Schools</span> School district in North Carolina, United States

The Durham Public Schools district is a public school district in Durham, North Carolina. Formed in 1992 with the merger of Durham's previous two school districts, it is 8th largest school system in North Carolina as of November 2020. There are 55 public schools in the system, consisting of 31 elementary (K-5), 9 middle (6–8), 2 secondary (6–12), 11 high (9–12), 1 alternative, 1 hospital school, and 1 virtual academy (K-12). Durham's schools are traditionally named after notable members of the local community.

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007), also known as the PICS case, is a United States Supreme Court case which found it unconstitutional for a school district to use race as a factor in assigning students to schools in order to bring its racial composition in line with the composition of the district as a whole, unless it was remedying a prior history of de jure segregation. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his plurality opinion that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430 (1968), was an important United States Supreme Court case involving school desegregation. Specifically, the Court dealt with the freedom of choice plans created to avoid compliance with the Supreme Court's mandate in Brown II in 1955. The Court held unanimously that New Kent County's freedom of choice plan did not adequately comply with the school board's responsibility to determine a system of admission to public schools on a non-racial basis. The Supreme Court mandated that the school board must formulate new plans and steps towards realistically converting to a desegregated system. Green v. County School Board of New Kent County was a follow-up of Brown v. Board of Education.

Daniel Holcombe Thomas was a United States district judge who served nearly five decades on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

<i>National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education</i> United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit case

National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education of the City of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 729 F.2d 1270, is a decision by the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that upheld in part, and struck down in part, a law allowing schools to fire teachers for public homosexual conduct. It was the first federal appellate court decision to deny that sexual orientation is a suspect classification. It was affirmed by an equally divided vote in the United States Supreme Court.

Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District, 439 U.S. 410 (1979), is a United States Supreme Court decision on the free speech rights of public employees. The Court held unanimously in favor of a schoolteacher fired for her critical remarks in conversations with her principal. Justice William Rehnquist wrote the opinion, with a short concurrence by John Paul Stevens.

The Kirkwood R-7 School District is a public school district headquartered in Kirkwood, Missouri.

References

  1. ↑ Maury County Board of Education/General Fund Budget, Maury County Board of Education, 2011-2012
  2. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 1, 2011. Retrieved August 20, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 1, 2011. Retrieved August 20, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. ↑ "2020 CENSUS - SCHOOL DISTRICT REFERENCE MAP: Maury County, TN" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau . Retrieved August 27, 2022. - Text
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Hatton v. County Board of Education of Maury County, Tennessee, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit. - 422 F.2d 457 ¶5, Open Jurist
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.