Beaumont Independent School District

[6] Since April 2014, it has been under direct state control, with a superintendent and board of managers appointed by the Texas Education Agency.

[8][9] South Park Independent School District was founded in 1891[3][10] but was shaped by the aftermath of the discovery of oil at Spindletop in 1901; it took its name from the neighborhood at the south end of the city that grew up to house oil-field workers in the resulting boom.

[11][12] Redrawn attendance boundaries as mandated by the federal government in 1970 caused white families to abandon affected neighborhoods.

[8] A choice program did not result in desegregation, and the district board resisted an order to devise a plan to achieve it.

[9][11][12] (South Park High School was subsequently also merged into West Brook.)

In the aftermath of the court-ordered integration and after West Brook won the state football championship in its first year, South Park voters declined to re-elect the one black member of the school board, a Lamar University mathematics professor, and defeated a proposal to merge with the Beaumont ISD; black voters in that school district helped defeat the measure because the district had allowed them considerable autonomy in administering the segregated black schools.

[11][13][14] Lawsuits by blacks in both districts followed: by Beaumont ISD voters to nullify the dissolution because they now had no representation on the school board, and by South Park ISD voters against the school board, the Jefferson County Commissioners Court and the Beaumont City Council over lack of representation.

[11] Racially charged political struggles over representation on the school board continued during his tenure.

[11][20] A conservator was appointed to manage the district and on July 14, 2014, Vern Butler, former interim superintendent of the El Paso Independent School District, was named interim superintendent at Beaumont, with a seven-member board of managers temporarily replacing the elected board of trustees.