Dive Brief:

• The mayor of majority-white Gardendale, AL, is trying to create a separate school district for his city’s children that would pull them out of majority-black Jefferson County public schools.
• NPR reports residents in Gardendale voted to raise property taxes several years ago to get the process started, but because the district has been under federal monitoring since a 1971 case that found Jefferson County segregated its students by race, a federal judge will have to decide whether this latest proposal avoids doing the same.
• Gardendale’s proposal would limit diversity in the district overall, reduce the district’s funding base and take away certain special program opportunities that used to be available to all Jefferson County Schools students, but Gardendale leaders say the proposal does not amount to segregation because it opens its school system to about 700 black students from one area that falls outside city limits.

Dive Insight:

Countywide school districts have been carved up into smaller districts all over the country, effectively creating majority-white suburban schools and majority-minority city schools. As in Gardendale, these splits were often argued on the basis of better serving local children and even increasing accountability by creating a smaller district. The overall impact means urban school systems became increasingly impoverished by a shrinking tax base and student population.

Big cities like New York have struggled to limit segregation. Even though there is racial and class diversity throughout the city, individual schools are often homogenous, like their neighborhoods. Attempts to shift attendance boundaries to increase diversity are often highly contested. And after decades of progress toward integration nationwide, the last 20 years have been marked by a slide back toward segregation.