KC deseg case officially ends after 26 years

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- After 26 years of costly litigation, the Kansas City School District's $2 billion federal desegregation case ended Friday.

Arthur A. Benson II, attorney for the plaintiff schoolchildren, withdrew his appeal of an August ruling that said the district had met all the legal requirements to rid the district of federal court oversight.

Benson declined to say why he chose to drop the appeal.

On Aug. 13, U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple ruled that the district should be released from court control. The only remaining goal in the case was the narrowing of the achievement gap between black and white students that had been attributed to decades of segregation.

Whipple had ruled that test scores showed the district had met the constitutional threshold for closing the gap. Within hours of that decision, Benson filed an appeal with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis and asked for an expedited hearing, which the district opposed. On Sept. 16, a three-judge panel denied Benson's request.

On Friday, the appeals court received Benson's motion voluntarily withdrawing his appeal "with prejudice," meaning the case cannot be refiled.

Superintendent Bernard Taylor issued a statement saying he was confident the district had proved it met court obligations for reducing the achievement gap.

"The desegregation case is now, once and for all, over," Taylor said.

Legal experts had believed Benson's appeal ultimately would fail, in part because the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 expressed exasperation that the case had lasted so long.

Charles McClain, who had monitored the case for Whipple until last month, has said once the state was released as a defendant in 1998, court oversight was no longer crucial. Without state involvement, the district lost an important source of court-ordered funding.

"The court can't save the district," McClain said last month. "The court's big role initially was to provide the money."

He said it is now up to the state education agency to make sure the district provides a quality education for all its students.

Legal expenses

The only remaining issue in the desegregation case is Benson's request that Whipple approve about $108,000 in legal bills for his law firm related to the district's motion to end the case. The district opposes the fees.

Missouri spent almost $11 million on legal bills in the case, including about $6.5 million to Benson through 1998. After that, the district paid an additional $1 million to Benson through this spring.

District officials estimated that the district's legal bills for the desegregation case averaged about $1 million a year. The district's total legal bills weren't available.

Board president Al Mauro said the annual savings on the legal fees could go toward other costs, possibly to air-condition schools.

"I am looking forward to the district being able to proceed with education as its primary mission, rather than investing a lot of time with litigation," he said. "It has to be a great sigh of relief."