PORT ARTHUR — After 37 years, Port Arthur ISD is finally out from under the microscopic scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Tuesday night, officials with the district were notified by Eastern District of Texas Judge Thad Heartfield that the long standing desegregation order was lifted.

Superintendent Johnny Brown and administrators held a press conference to share the news Wednesday.

Brown said the release from the desegregation order will allow the district to operate in the best interest of all students. While under the order, PAISD had to report their intentions and decisions to the Department of Justice at every corner.

The desegregation order, filed in 1970, was the driving force behind the controversial consolidation of the district's three high schools into Memorial High in 2002, dispensing with the concept of racially identifiable schools.

Board President Willie Mae Elmore said while the board was aware of the order, they did not actively began working to be released from the order until around 1999 when the John Sharp report came out. The Sharp Report advised the district to work towards unitary status among other issues.

Former PAISD Interim Superintendent Louis Reed, who currently serves in the Department of Educational Leadership at McNeese University, was pleased to hear the news.

“I think it is a great milestone for the district and represents the culmination of a lot of hard work by a number of people,” he said via telephone. “This shows the district worked in good faith and one of the goals we had as a board was to achieve unitary status.”

Reed served as assistant superintendent from 1980 to 2001 and interim superintendent from 2001 to 2003. During his time as assistant superintendent, part of Reed’s responsibilities was to be liaison with the school district attorney. He first worked with attorney Banker Phares and later attorney Melody Chappell.

“The Department of Justice’s shadow was always in the background,” he said. “And at one time it interfered with everything.”

Chappell said the desegregation order is a fight she has been waging since she came to the district years ago. Now, the district is free to operate without having to get issues cleared from the Department of Justice.

The problem of the racial composition of a campus is no where near the same caliber as it was back in the 1970s when black students attended all-black schools. Used text books were passed down from the white schools, a year or more later, Elmore said.

Elmore, having attended PAISD schools in the 1960s during segregation, is sensitive to the issue and wants to make sure it will not happen again to the children of the district.

“But it’s not the ‘60’s anymore,” she said. “People have choices and move to different areas.”

Heartfield’s report shows the racial composition of student assignments for the 2006-2007 school year with 51 percent black, 28 percent Hispanic, 4.7 percent white and 8 percent other for a total of 9,479 students.

While Beaumont ISD was released from its desegregation order 25 years ago, Galveston ISD remains under the Department of Justice’s watchful eye.