#TBT Blocking the School House Door Today, Blocking the School House Door Tomorrow, Blocking the School House Door Forever? #hsvboe

57 Years Ago Today - Arkansas Governor calls National Guard to block 9 Black students from attending Little Rock H.S. pic.twitter.com/7kb3BEVsQU
— Khaled Bey (@KhaledBeydoun) September 4, 2014

"Whose side are they on?"  On this day in 1957, the Governor of Arkansas used tax dollars to block African American taxpayers from entering Central High School in Little Rock. Fast forward 57 years later, Huntsville City Schools is still using tax dollars to prevent African American Students from having access to a quality public education, enabled by the United States Department Justice.

In a letter sent to parents with students enrolled in grades 3-12 HCS claims they have invited the Department Justice to meet with students in order to gain information related to the long standing desegregation order, which they are bound and determined to be released from, by hook or by crook.


A couple of points of interest:

1. If you do not return the form by September 4, 2014, your child will be entered into a potential pool of students to be interviewed by the Department of Justice SEEMINGLY WITHOUT PARENTS PRESENT FOR THE INTERVIEW. The interviews will take place after school at Boys and Girls Club locations across the city. Not every child will be chosen. This is an “opt-out” procedure. If you don’t opt-out, and your child is at a Boys and Girls Club location during the week of September 8th through the 12th, your child will be interviewed without a parent being present.

2. If parents wish to participate in similar Parents Meetings being held on Saturday, September 14, and Sunday, September 15, there is a separate form to sign and return to Barbara Cobbs of Huntsville City Schools. They will then chose which parents they wish to interview with the stipulation that parents agree to the following: "I understand that participation in the parent focus groups is confidential. I shall not disclose the fact of my participation or any information or discussion from the focus group meeting."

There is just one thing wrong with their little plan, it is unconstitutional for HCS to conduct an investigation or interview a child on private property without the parent present.  I can understand HCS ignoring the constitution because they've been doing it for years, but you would think the United States Department of Justice would know better by now.

The U.S. Department of Justice, a party to the case, objected to the assignment plan and in February the dispute landed before Haikala, who'd been appointed to the bench by President Obama in 2012.
In the judge's 107-page ruling, she blasted school officials for failing to provide required reports on the district's integration progress for two decades. She also criticized the Justice Department for failing to be "proactive" and to "keep an eye on" the marked disparities in schools serving mostly white children and those serving mostly black ones.

Opt in or to Opt Out? That is the question.  At the June 17, 2014 BOE meeting HCS approved policy 6.28- Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)

EXCERPT:

Schools may disclose, without consent, "directory" information such as a student's name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance. However, schools must tell parents and eligible students about directory information and allow parents and eligible students a reasonable amount of time to request that the school not disclose directory information about them. Schools must notify parents and eligible students annually of their rights under FERPA. The actual means of notification (special letter, inclusion in a PTA bulletin, student handbook, or newspaper article) is left to the discretion of each school.

Translation: if parents don't notify the school district they don't want their students information printed in the hand book, or  their image/ names to be used,  and they don't Opt OUT, their child is automatically IN. This change requires parents to take action when they otherwise would not have been required to. Under the old policy, they had to give written consent for their student to be INCLUDED in the directory. The difference is not subtle.  It's the old silence gives consent Idiom. 

Oh what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive.  I'm beginning to think neither side wants a solution, which plays right into the segregationist strategy of segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever?

Time will tell the truth.  Sigh

"For more information contact your school board member or Huntsville Council of PTA's" Yeah, right.

I'm back! Before I get into the meat the potatoes of this post I must extend a sincere thank you to Chip for filling in during the void due to someone(s) cutting off the Internet to my home.  I HOPE Chip will continue to post on a daily basis.  We like and encourage diversity here at RedEye's page.  If anyone else interested in being a contributor grab a moniker and send me a writing sample c/o redeyeblog.alabama@yahoo.com.   I would also like to thank all of the readers/lurkers for your continued support. I continue to be amazed and humbled, it is why I blog, and why I am eternally grateful to mooncat and countrycat for encouraging me to blog,  for encouraging me to start my own blog.   ~RedEye

So, I return to find the Huntsville City Schools up to their old tricks in an attempt to keep the school system segregated by race/class, ironically at the same time the University of Alabama Student Government Association votes for integrating the Greek system.

We are constantly being told the NAACP Legal Defense Fund agrees with the Huntsville City Schools rezoning plan,  but clearly that is a lie.

Enabled by the media,  HCS keeps repeating The NAACP Legal Defense Fund did not oppose the Huntsville City Schools rezoning plan meme, counting on the public to infer the NAACP LDF supports the plan.

What they don't count on is the public having enough sense to read the motion for themselves.  The special counsel for the plaintiffs (Norman J. Chachkin) is not opposed to the new school construction plan because of penalties the BOE would incur if they don't start construction of the new Grissom and the new Johnson High Schools by a certain date due to Arbitrage (Page 6-7 and footnotes page 6). The Plaintiffs attorney reserved the right to oppose the rezoning plan and further litigate whatever issues he deems are in the best interest of the class.

 In other words, the LDF has not dismissed this lawsuit.

The motion filed by HCS BOE request the courts approval, and DOJ agreement, to build a new Johnson High School and a new Grissom High School (footnotes page 4). The court did not approve, and the DOJ did not agree to closing Johnson, renaming Johnson, or closing and combining Butler High School with Johnson High School. The closing of Butler is part of the rezoning plan which the LDF reserved the right to oppose.

"For more information contact your school board member or Huntsville Council of PTA's."  Again, the public is supposed to believe their school board member will answer their questions and not know the Huntsville Cluster of PTA's is a racket, I mean,  an arm of the superintendent and the BOA.

Just in case the school board rep will answer questions that aren't written down here are a few:

1. Who is the owner of the Bulk Mail permit?
2. Who generated the distribution list? 
3. Who composed the copy? 
4. Was this approved by the BOE?
5. If it was approved by the BOE when and where was it voted on?

Wonder why the media isn't investigating this?
Strike that.
We know why.

RedEye Roll

What black folks still live with continued

It is a brazen, right wing, media enabled, LIE most black students don't want to learn. It is a historical FACT blacks were prohibited from learning.

The most oppressive limits on slave education were a reaction to Nat Turner's Revolt in Southampton County, Virginia during the summer of 1831. This event not only caused shock waves across the slaveholding South, but it had a particularly far-reaching impact on education over the next three decades. The fears of slave insurrections and the spread of abolitionist materials and ideology led to radical restrictions on gatherings, travel, and—of course—literacy. The ignorance of the slaves was considered necessary to the security of the slaveholders (Albanese 1976). Not only did owners fear the spread of specifically abolitionist materials, they did not want slaves to question their lot; thus, reading and reflection were to be prevented at any cost.

African Americans recognize the power and the importance of education hence the formation of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, which to this day are full of black student who not only want to learn, but are learning.

HBCUs actually were "invented" in 1837, 26 years before the end of slavery. Richard Humphreys, a Quaker philanthropist, founded the Institute for Colored Youth to train free blacks to become teachers.

The school had moved from Philadelphia to Cheyney, where it eventually became Cheyney University, and by 1902 at least 85 schools were set up by white philanthropists, free blacks, states or churches to educate sons and daughters of former slaves.

Until 1954 and the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, which ended "separate but equal" school systems, HBCUs were the number 1 option for most blacks interested in attending college.

The Brown v Topeka Board of Education decision gave us Ruby Bridges and the Little Rock Nine. Brave, black students who volunteered to integrate the public school system.

Let us not forget what Vivian Malone Jones lived through when she integrated The University of Alabama despite then Governor George C. Wallaces' infamous stand in the school house door.

Fast forward to 2011 when an Arkansas school district won't allow a black valedictorian

After four years of nearly straight-As, Honors and Advanced Placement classes, 18-year-old Kymberly Wimberly achieved the highest GPA at McGehee Secondary School southeast of Little Rock, Ark., according to a court complaint.

However, instead of awarding the student for her hard work and dedication, the school denied her the valedictorian status because she was black, claims the document filed by Wimberly's lawyer, John W. Walker.

According to the court document, this is not the first time this has happened in the school's history:

"[The] defendant's actions were part of a pattern and practice of school administrators and personnel treating the African-American students less favorably than the Caucasian ones...Until Wimberly, the last African-American valedictorian in the McGeeHee school district was in 1989."

This is proof they are still standing in the school house door.