Cleveland School District

The Cleveland School District (CSD) is a public school district based in Cleveland, Mississippi (USA).

In addition to Cleveland, the district also serves the towns of Boyle, Renova, and Merigold.

In the post-Brown v. Board of Education era, the district received its desegregation lawsuit in 1965, filed by black parents, on behalf of 131 children protesting racial segregation in the district. The case took over 62 years to resolve, and unlike many Southern school districts, the Cleveland School District never consolidated its white and black schools, which until then were actually segregated by law. In 1969 Cleveland High School, historically a White school, opened admission to black students. About 1,000 white people protested at the time Black students were legally allowed to enroll in White schools.

Up to 2016 there were racial demographic differences remaining in the district's schools, with those west of the former railroad tracks having a whiter student body. The district had two sets of secondary schools: a middle school and a high school that were historically white, and a middle school and a high school that were all-black. Margaret Green Junior High School and Cleveland High were historically White, and by 2015 had populations evenly divided between Black and White students. D.M. Smith Middle School and East Side High School had all black student populations. Sharon Lerner of The Atlantic wrote that "As a result, Cleveland has some of the most integrated —and some of the most segregated—public schools in the region." Beginning in 1990 the district made many failed attempts, including a freedom of choice enrollment program allowing any student to enroll in any school with his/her grade level, International Baccalaureate programs, and magnet programs, to encourage White students to enroll in almost all-black schools, but these plans did not work.

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