Judge Removes Texas Schools from Court Supervision

TYLER (AP) — A federal judge has lifted a 39-year-old statewide school desegregation order from all but nine rural Texas public school systems in what is now largely a symbolic move.

U.S. District Judge Michael H. Schneider of Tyler found that all but nine of the school systems have either been released from desegregation orders by other federal judges, or are under separate desegregation orders issued in different cases, or weren’t parties to the 1970 suit that spawned the statewide order.

In a four-page order issued this week, Schneider noted that he has neither examined nor determined whether the freed districts are fully desegregated. The districts remaining under the order are mostly small-town districts in east Texas. They are the Buffalo, Colmesneil, Daingerfield, Fairfield, Malakoff, Nacogdoches, Oakwood, Smithville and Whitewright school districts.