Earlier this week the Cleveland School District and the United States entered a joint request to Senior Judge Glen H. Davidson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi to extend the deadline of the United States to file objections to the district's proposal, submitted on May 15, 2012, to "further integrate East Side High and D.M. Smith Middle schools by achieving racial balance among the faculties."

This is the latest action in a lawsuit that began in 1965 when numerous individual plaintiffs sued the Bolivar County Board of Education, including the Cleveland School District, which was known at the time as Bolivar County School District Number 4.

The suit was based on the plaintiffs' complaints that the board had white-only and black-only schools.

In the school district's proposal that was submitted to Davidson's court on May 15th, the district proposed to introduce "magnet" programs at both schools to help attract white students from Cleveland High School and Margaret Green Jr. High.

In the current motion, filed on behalf of the United States' unopposed motion for the deadline extension, U.S. Attorney Felicia Adams said that the U.S. "lacks confidence" in the district's proposal."

"The United States has asserted in this litigation that magnet programs alone are inadequate means of desegregating these all-black school and lacks confidence that that this new initiative will succeed where similar efforts have failed," said Adams in the motion.

"However, the district has requested that the United States reserve final judgment on this question until the district can produce enrollment data reflecting the number of white students who voluntarily choose to enroll in the magnet classes at East Side and D.M. Smith," she continued.

Under the terms of this extension the district has committed to providing all data and enrollment figures to the U.S. no later than Aug. 20.

The U.S. will in turn file any objections to the proposed plan to the court no later than Aug. 30.