Huntsville City Schools approved 294 student transfers for the coming school year under federal and state law. All 294 are black students. All are leaving a majority black school and going to a majority white school.
Skin color is a factor because almost all were approved under a 43-year-old federal desegregation order. That court order dating back to the Civil Rights era still mandates the system consider race in deciding which students get to go where.
Meanwhile, Huntsville granted only six transfers under the new Alabama Accountability Act. All were black students, as system officials say they must be to comply with the desegregation order.
Superintendent Casey Wardynski said that's all the Huntsville system had space for after handling the federal transfers.
That's despite 502 requests to flee the nine "failing" schools in Huntsville.
And Huntsville, realizing it was out of space, cut off the "failing" school requests about a week early, said Wardynski.
Letters are going out now and parents will learn who received a transfer by next week. School officials say transfers are based on space available and on who applied first.
White students, under the court order, are eligible to request a transfer out of a majority white school and into a majority black school. None did this year, according to school officials.
But white students were not eligible to leave Alabama's newly labeled "failing" schools. That's because all nine "failing" schools in Huntsville are majority black.
More @ AL
No comments:
Post a Comment