Huntsville Sitty Schools Ignore the Feds to Ignore the Feds Redux

According to Huntsville City Schools Superintendent Casey Wardynski the Feds instructed Huntsville City Schools to ignore the Alabama Accountability Act in favor of the Desegregation Order, which they are also ignoring. 

Despite Alabama law allowing all students to flee “failing” schools, Huntsville will not allow hundreds of requested transfers.
“Under the Alabama Accountability Act,” said Superintendent Casey Wardynski, “we don’t have to do any.”
In fact, district officials say Huntsville will grant just eight Accountability Act transfers this year, or one fewer than the number of “failing” schools in the city.

 Initially, Wardynski said Huntsville City Schools were expecting a couple of handfuls of transfers under the Alabama Accountability Act, but  the system rreceived 502 transfer requests under the Alabama Accountability Act and granted just eight.

Questions:  If "we don't have to do any transfers under the Alabama Accountability Act", why were  eight Accountability Act transfers granted this year?  Are you going to ignore the AAA, or not?

Let's recap:  The red, republican controlled, Alabama State Legislature, with all their infinite sleaziness, passed the so called Alabama Accountability Act under the guise it helped parents flee so called failing schools.  School Board President, Laurie McCaulley said, and I quote:

“We have a lot of parents who bought into the Alabama Accountability Act, and thought they had guaranteed rights that don’t exist,”

 Now why would parents/tax payers think they had rights that don't exist?  It's not like the state legislature passed a bill that became law or something.

Here's the rub, Huntsville still operates under a desegregation order that HCS has been ignoring for over 43 years. That order, based on constitutional claims, requires transfers based on student race.

“We’ve had to be very careful with respect to AAA transfers,” said school board attorney J.R. Brooks. “We can’t take any action which is resegregative.”

 There is only one problem with the school board attorney's statement...the HCS system is re segregated  and African American students aren't being allowed  to transfer on basis of race either.

Wardynski today estimated the system has granted about 200 majority-to-minority transfers for the coming school year, although figures aren’t final yet

 Two hundred granted, over a thousand denied.

In past years, Huntsville typically received 1,000 to 1,500 transfer requests under the desegregation order and other guidelines. The vast majority of requests came from black students in north Huntsville. The system usually granted around 500 transfers a year and rejected the rest.
Wardynski said this year some schools, such as Huntsville High, began the year over capacity and did not accept a single transfer. He said a longer list of south Huntsville schools, including Grissom High and Mountain Gap and Whitesburg, were able to take a small number.
For example, he said Grissom High had space for 10 children. The system allowed nine transfers based on the desegregation order and had space left for one based on the new state law.

Frustrated parents, who believe they have rights the school system has determined they don't have, are being told  if they haven't received written notification of a transfer request by the time school starts to take their students to their home school.

The court order does not say a student may transfer from a school where they are in the majority to a school where they are in the minority if there is space available, HCS added the if space is available.  That's how they ignore the court order and maintain a "resegregative" (sic) school system.

A dual school system is re-emerging in Huntsville, marked by race, separated by geography and sorted by income.

For the first time, blacks account for 43 percent of the students in Huntsville. That's an increase of four percentage points in five years. But what sounds like a high-water mark for integration is just the opposite.

Despite rising numbers, black students here increasingly attend school among themselves. In 1997, Huntsville had five schools where more than 90 percent of the students were black. There are 10 such schools now.

The racial divide is similar among teachers, principals, even janitors and lunch ladies.

 Attack Machine commentator  George has the solution to the problem;

 Why not consolidate the schools. HSV saw peak enrollment in about 1983 at 35k. Current enrolled is about 24k, and we about many more schools now.
It would be an order of magnitude cheaper than building another $50million high school.

 JOJ (J.O. Johnson High School) is at about 50% capacity, so there is no need for a new GHS (Grissom High School).  Buses are cheap and plentiful. Include BHS (Butler High School) and eliminate one school entirely and sell the property (and the other empty buildings) to get rid of the maintenance and utilities cost.
This could have included LHS (Lee High School) too, but that was really a urban renewal project and not a school issue.

This is a great idea, but of course it won't be done because then Huntsville City Schools would be integrated, and all students, regardless of race, gender, income, or zip code, would have equal access to a quality public school education, and parents wouldn't be forced to keep their students in schools they want to get them out of.  According to this commenter at AL.com Wardinsky is doing the job he was hired to do. Keep the public schools segregated and go around the tenure laws.

Casey you have to break the mold and prove you're not afraid of minorities, democrats, liberals, aclu types and the entire entitlement crowd! Do that, and you'll be doing the job you were hired to do! Oh yeah, not to mention striking down all racial transfers. And that includes allowing not allowing whites to racially transfer either. If you don't like where your child goes to school, move to where they can be zoned into a school of your preference, that's what I had to do!

 There is no right (pun intended) way, to do the wrong thing, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result.

What George said;

 The question is, do you want busing, or to be under a federal court desegregation order in perpetuity? Or is there some other way to integrate HSV practically all white and all black schools?

There is another way, which I will discuss in another post.