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“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.
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.
