White students not eligible to transfer out of 'failing' schools in Huntsville
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- 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.
Superintendent Casey Wardynski (The Huntsville Times)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.
That's not unusual. Indeed, 71 out of the 74 neighborhood schools listed as failing across Alabama are majority black. Two are racially split. A middle school in Geneva County is the only predominantly white "failing" school in Alabama.
But in Huntsville, race still matters. They're called majority-to-minority transfers, and are intended to increase diversity. For example, black students are not eligible to
National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) Group: 1 in 5 charter schools not doing well enough to stay open
A group that oversees more than half of the nation's 5,600 charter schools said
as many as one in five U.S. charter schools should be shut down because of
poor academic performance.
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019784379_charterschools29.html
as many as one in five U.S. charter schools should be shut down because of
poor academic performance.
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019784379_charterschools29.html