This news footage captures scenes of an interview with an Ector County Independent School District board member regarding the district’s attempts to create and implement a desegregation plan for Odessa schools. Although legally desegregated by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, in 1970, ECISD came to the attention of the Supreme Court for noncompliance with that decision. The court ordered ECISD to submit a desegregation plan to allow access to bilingual education for students of immigrant families, integrate faculty and staff, provide transportation in a nondiscriminatory and non-segregative basis, ensure that transfers in and out of the district were allowed on a nondiscriminatory basis without reinforcing the dual school system, and desegregate in classroom, non-classroom and extracurricular activities. In 1980, ECISD continued to work with the Justice Department to develop a desegregation program. The board member in this footage discusses ECISD’s efforts to find a plan that works for their community, their deadline for the plan, and their relationship with the Justice Department.
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