Pitt County Schools In Court

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will hear arguments today in a case involving desegregation in Pitt County, the district that includes Greenville.

Dave DeWitt: Pitt County is one of just a few school districts in North Carolina still under a federal desegregation order from the 1970s. Because of that, the district must consider race when assigning students and teachers. Mark Dorosin is an attorney with the UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Civil Rights. He says Pitt County's latest student assignment plan did not do that.

Mark Dorosin: What they ended up with was a reassignment plan that increases segregation in a number of schools and fails to address continuing segregation in a number of schools that were specifically omitted from the plan.

This past August, the U.S. District Court in Eastern North Carolina sided with Pitt County Schools and denied the motion from civil rights groups to halt the plan. A decision from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals is likely within two months.