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The St. John the Baptist Parish public school district in Louisiana has instituted a system to "color code" teaching positions to track the transfer of teachers from one school to another.
The coding program is part of the district's new effort to comply with a federal court order to desegregate its faculty. It comes at a time when the nation is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which overturned laws enacting racial segregation in public schools. (See related stories, Page 1, this page, and next.)
Located in southeastern Louisiana, on the Mississippi River, the St. John the Baptist district has been under a federal court order to desegregate its schools-including its teaching force-since the early 1960s.
But like many other districts in Louisiana and elsewhere around the country, the 6,200-student school system is still trying to meet the mandates set forth in the court order.
"We are not working to get out of the desegregation...