Judge: Mostly white Southern city may secede from school district despite racial motive

whatevathehell
whatevathehell Members Posts: 4,015 ✭✭✭✭✭
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/judge-mostly-white-southern-city-may-secede-from-school-district-despite-racial-motive/ar-BBAqWEr?li=BBnbfcL

A federal judge’s ruling this week that allows a predominantly white Alabama city to separate from its more diverse school district is stoking new debate about the fate of desegregation initiatives after decades of efforts to promote racial balance in public education.

Judge Madeline Haikala of the U.S. District Court in Birmingham ruled that the city of Gardendale’s effort to break away was motivated by race and sent messages of racial inferiority and exclusion that “assail the dignity of black schoolchildren.”

She also found that Gardendale failed to meet its legal burden to prove that its separation would not hinder desegregation in Jefferson County, which has been struggling to integrate its schools since black parents first sued for an equal education for their children in the 1960s.


Still, Haikala ruled Monday that Gardendale may move forward with the secession, basing her decision in part on sympathy for some parents who want local control over schools and in part on concern for black students caught in the middle. The judge wrote that she feared they would bear the blame if she blocked the city’s bid.

U.W. Clemon, who represents black plaintiffs in the case, said the ruling undermines more than half a century of integration efforts. “If this decision stands, it will have a tremendous adverse impact,” Clemon said.


(Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)
Other majority-white communities in Jefferson County are already considering setting up their own school systems, said Clemon, who is a retired federal judge.

Haikala’s ruling says to them that “if Gardendale can do it, with its history of racism . . . then any other city would have the right to do what Gardendale has done,” Clemon said.

Backers of secession have said that they are seeking local control over schools, not racial segregation.

“We know that the community is anxious and ready to achieve its goal of a locally led public school system. We are, too,” Chris Segroves, president of the Gardendale Board of Education, said in a statement. “While the court’s order is progress and represents a significant development in that process, we must ask for your continued patience and prayers in the coming days as we work through this together for the betterment of our community.”


The Justice Department, which under the Obama administration had opposed the separation, declined to comment this week on the ruling.

Gardendale, a bedroom community outside Birmingham, has been pushing for years to leave the predominantly black school system in Jefferson County and form its own small district.

Haikala’s finding of a racial motivation in Gardendale’s separation, and her defense of the ongoing need for federal oversight of school desegregation cases, made her decision all the more perplexing to civil rights advocates.

Federal judges have over the years allowed a succession of majority-white cities to pull their schools out of the Jefferson system, leaving the county schools with a smaller tax base and a growing proportion of low-income and black students. But until now, no judge has so closely examined whether efforts to draw new school-district boundaries here were racially motivated — much less concluded that they were.

Comments

  • whatevathehell
    whatevathehell Members Posts: 4,015 ✭✭✭✭✭
    “It’s hard to square,” said Monique Lin-Luse, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund who also represents black parents in the case. The court’s acknowledgment that race played a factor in the secession effort was a vindication “even beyond what we had hoped for,” Lin-Luse said, but the notion that the city of Gardendale can take steps toward forming its own system anyway is “of deep concern.”



    Clemon said the parents whom he and Lin-Luse represent are likely to ask Haikala to reconsider her opinion.

    Haikala’s 190-page decision recounts the decades-long battle over school desegregation in Jefferson County.

    The judge offered a blistering critique of those who organized Gardendale’s effort to split from the county system. Pointing to Facebook posts and public statements, Haikala concluded that they clearly saw secession as a way to control the demographics of city schools, erecting a barrier to black students who transferred from other parts of the county.

    Related: GOP lawmakers seek to dismantle one of nation’s most robust school desegregation efforts

    “Nonresident students are increasing at [an] alarming rate in our schools,” one organizer wrote on Facebook. “Those students do not contribute financially. They consume the resources of our schools, our teachers and our resident students, then go home.”

    Such sentiments send a clear message to black students — many of whom live miles away in a community called North Smithfield and attend Gardendale’s middle and high schools under a decades-old desegregation plan — that “these schools are not yours, and you are not welcome here,” Haikala wrote.

    A flier distributed to Gardendale residents before a vote on whether to secede delivered “an unambiguous message of inferiority” to black students, Haikala wrote. The flier, bearing an image of a white child, asked, “Which path will Gardendale choose?” It presented a choice: a list of racially integrated or predominantly black cities whose schools remain part of the Jefferson County system; or a list of predominantly white cities — “some of the best places to live in the country,” the flier said — whose schools have broken away over the years.

    Haikala decided that although she could opt to block the secession, given that it is likely impair the desegregation of county schools, she would allow it.



    Black children from North Smithfield who are bused to Gardendale are in a “Catch-22,” the judge wrote, and without a concerted effort by the city’s leaders are likely to feel unwelcome no matter who runs the city’s schools. Gardendale proposed including North Smithfield students in its new school system only after leaders of the secession effort concluded that doing so was essential to winning court approval. “This is a tragic consequence of the way in which the Gardendale Board attempted to separate,” Haikala wrote.

    Under Haikala’s decision, Gardendale may begin operating the two elementary schools within its boundaries this fall. If the city shows good faith in carrying out desegregation efforts at those schools over the next three years — including by allowing and paying for transfer students and appointing a black member to the all-white city school board — it may be allowed to take over the middle and high schools within its boundaries.

    Even then, Gardendale would have to pay Jefferson County for the high school building that sits at the center of town, which cost the county more than $50 million to build. The high school plays a key role in the county’s efforts to integrate, using career and technical education programs to attract students from far-more-segregated areas.

    Related: Path to a new life takes these minority high school graduates back to preschool

    Under Alabama law, cities of more than 5,000 residents can form independent school systems, and Gardendale had argued that the federal court should have no say over its separation. “Things have changed” since the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions on school segregation, Gardendale argued in a brief, and federal courts must “open their eyes to the condition of the present.”

    Haikala forcefully rebutted that argument, writing that Gardendale’s message to black students that they are unwanted has been “unmistakable” and “intolerable.”

    “The Court may not turn a blind eye to that message,” the judge wrote.

    Pennsylvania State University professor Erica Frankenberg, who studies school segregation, said that the decision by Haikala — who was appointed by President Barack Obama and is relatively new to the Jefferson County case — is a significant departure from previous court decisions that allowed majority-white cities to break away from larger school systems without publicly explaining or grappling with the consequences. And Haikala has clearly signaled that she reserves the right to change course if Gardendale fails to meet its desegregation obligations.

    Frankenberg said the decision also is an important defense of the federal government’s role in monitoring and overseeing school desegregation. “You can’t just say that the passage of time has gotten rid of the prior segregation,” she said.


  • ghostdog56
    ghostdog56 Members Posts: 2,947 ✭✭✭✭✭
    It seems like black people were doing better in education during segregation and I wouldn't want my kids around a bunch of racist
  • gns
    gns Members Posts: 21,285 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited April 2017
    ghostdog56 wrote: »
    It seems like black people were doing better in education during segregation and I wouldn't want my kids around a bunch of racist

    Thats cool and all but i believe integrating schools was instituted because these crackas kept hogging all the better facilities, teachers, resources etc...
    Theres no reason those peckerwoods should be benefiting solely off of everybody's tax dollars
  • 5th Letter
    5th Letter Members, Moderators, Writer Posts: 37,068 Regulator
    gns wrote: »
    ghostdog56 wrote: »
    It seems like black people were doing better in education during segregation and I wouldn't want my kids around a bunch of racist

    Thats cool and all but i believe integrating schools was instituted because these crackas kept hogging all the better facilities, teachers, resources etc...
    Theres no reason those peckerwoods should be benefiting solely off of everybody's tax dollars

    That and also black people for some reason wanted acceptance from whites and also those white supremacists kept bombing black communities.
  • thegreatunknown
    thegreatunknown Members Posts: 1,474 ✭✭✭✭✭
    They don't wanna be there let them go.

    Just bar employment of any residents of the new separate city from the original city as government workers including the police force.

    Good idea. Another thing they could do is isolate them from athletic competition, especially football. High school sports are everything in those little southern towns. Banning competition against schools that openly flaunt Federal laws in this manner or call for a boycott by not scheduling games against that town's high school...
  • caddo man
    caddo man Members Posts: 22,476 ✭✭✭✭✭
    You have understand but @gns said it best.
    gns wrote: »
    ghostdog56 wrote: »
    It seems like black people were doing better in education during segregation and I wouldn't want my kids around a bunch of racist

    Thats cool and all but i believe integrating schools was instituted because these crackas kept hogging all the better facilities, teachers, resources etc...
    Theres no reason those peckerwoods should be benefiting solely off of everybody's tax dollars

    There resource base is better. Really affluent parents (black or white) attitude on how education works is different.
    Me and my wife had a very informative convo with her friend a couple of weeks ago. Both of our kids had some problems in school. I employ a tutor for my kids. My kids were behind in Language arts and reading. Now they are both excelling. WE pay extra but that is needed. My wife is involved in the PTA. WE support the school and teachers financially.

    My wife's friend had the same problem but she went to the school demanding they give her child extra help. There are programs for that but she wanted more. For example, She asked the school if her child can stay after school with her teacher. She school declined and suggested paid tutors. She put in a complaint to the school district. The district moved her child to a development class and suggested that she is academically gifted. In the end, they never gave her any extra free tutoring. She is literally at square one. WE suggested just get a tutor and go volunteer at the school. She can foster a relationship with the teachers. She declined that saying why should I have to go out of my way to get them to do there job. WE told her sometimes you have to do extra to get things done.

    Good school districts have one thing that is separating them from others. Very involved parents. You can not have a good school district without parents that are giving their time or money. Problem is poor parents cant afford to give neither. Cant give money because you are barely scraping by. You cant give time because you may have two jobs. We saw for years that just throwing money at the problem doesn't work.

    Well then what else is the solution...................It was integrate poor students into good schools. That works until the parents start to move their kids out. They either do what this school district is doing or they move them into private schools. Killing the tax and financial base of county schools.

    The solution is to train parents how their child can be better equipped to be ready for school. Send your child to school ready to learn. Don't send a child that is ? off already before school. If he is hungry, they have food. If he has disabilities, they have programs to help them. But school cant do ? with a violent child. If the parents are mentally handicapping the child before they walk in the door. A teacher can not work with that.

    So now you have a school that doesn't have financial resources. No support from the parents of the children. On top of that the kids they are sending to school aren't ready to learn. No human being wants to work in that kind of environment. Especially given that you are working with people children. Nah ? that!
  • 2stepz_ahead
    2stepz_ahead Guests, Members, Writer, Content Producer Posts: 32,324 ✭✭✭✭✭
    if they can prove the kids grades are pulling down the local average inturn effecting the funding....they will win.

    I learned something moving to the burbs. the schools try to persuade kids to drop out if it's a good chance they won't graduate. the do this in the 11th grade...so the graduating class can have a high percentage an get higher funding.

  • rickmogul
    rickmogul Members Posts: 1,961 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Good and take they ? smell and racism with em! Our kids will excel with this. Let the white teachers go 2 with all their inherent racists vitriol they spew!
  • NoCompetition
    NoCompetition Members Posts: 3,661 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2017
    gns wrote: »
    ghostdog56 wrote: »
    It seems like black people were doing better in education during segregation and I wouldn't want my kids around a bunch of racist

    Thats cool and all but i believe integrating schools was instituted because these crackas kept hogging all the better facilities, teachers, resources etc...
    Theres no reason those peckerwoods should be benefiting solely off of everybody's tax dollars

    Yeah Dont know why some may miss the part about legalized subpar education and accomodations...and being barred from eating places and...all kinds of places. And legalized discrimination for employment. The truths about segregation. Its unfathomable people now would even try to say "they shoulda stayed in what they were in". Its awhole different thing when its legalized and there are no checks and balances. Kinda makes you wonder about the "Cultural segment" of someone with that attitude. "shoulda stayed there, legal second class (or worse) citizen"