Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
The school board meets monthly, debates district policies and pays a superintendent’s salary.
But the Gardendale Board of Education oversees no schools, employs no teachers and enrolls no students.
City officials in this predominantly white town appointed the board in 2014 as part of a years-long effort to secede from surrounding Jefferson County — where there are more African American than white students — and form their own independent school system.
Five decades after black families first sued over segregation there, Jefferson County schools are still bound by a federal desegregation court order.
Alabama state law allows cities of more than 5,000 residents to form their own school systems, replacing what was once legal segregation with a different kind of division that also effectively has separated children by race.
When the Supreme Court deemed “separate but equal” unconstitutional in 1954, the vast majority of segregation was internal to individual school districts, meaning black and white students attended different schools within the same boundaries.
Today, most segregation in this part of Alabama — and nationwide — is manifested in white and nonwhite students being enrolled in separate school districts.
Secession movements seeking to create whiter school systems have simmered in recent years in many communities across the country.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that federal judges are within their rights to stop secessions that would impede court-ordered desegregation efforts. Gardendale’s school board argues that federal judges should no longer have that right.
Towns in Jefferson County have a long history of seeking independent school systems. In 1970, when federal courts finally made clear that this corner of Alabama had to dismantle segregation, four cities — each predominantly white — responded by immediately attempting to fence themselves off from the county school system.
Three of those cities succeeded, creating what were then mainly white independent school systems. It happened again in 1988, 2003 and 2005.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/a-southern-city-wants-to-secede-from-its-school-district-raising-concerns-about-segregation/2016/08/25/13ce5398-694f-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.html?wpisrc=nl_draw2&wpmm=1