Poorly performing schools

Flight poses black school closings in Alabama

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) - Hundreds of black students each year continue to reject north Huntsville schools, often leaving behind half-empty buildings for a bus ride to higher-performing classrooms.

While the transfers are increasing integration in south Huntsville, the demand outstrips the room for extra desks. Each year more than 1,000 transfer requests from black children are denied.

“I saw so many disappointed black kids being turned away from Huntsville High,” said Lekisha Eyma, whose daughter discovered two years ago during freshman orientation that her request to transfer there had been turned down.

Each year about 20 percent of the black students in Huntsville request a new school. Last school year, 1,856 black children applied and only 506 were approved. Some ask for permission to leave a failing school. Others, like Eyma's daughter, ask to leave a majority black school.

Meanwhile, only 300 to 350 other students - white, Hispanic, Indian or Asian - request a switch each year. Most are approved.

Superintendent Ann Roy Moore and school board members say perception problems fuel the requests, that parents flee because of rumors of poor discipline and media reports of low test scores in north Huntsville.

But parents tell The Times that academic and economic differences between the mostly black and the mostly white schools drive the requests.

“If the neighborhood schools were comparable, then we wouldn't have this problem,” said Eddgra Fallin, who years ago transferred her children from north Huntsville into Blossomwood Elementary.

Nowhere is the loss of students more apparent than at Butler High School.

The city's second largest campus five years ago with 1,157 children, Butler opened this month with just 688 students.

The school lost a couple of hundred students three years ago when the school board carved up the Butler zone to open Columbia High. But more than 170 students have transferred out of Butler over the last two school years. Another 70 left this month.

The Huntsville school board says schools in all parts of the city offer equal educational opportunities.

In fact, the board is attempting to prove to the U.S. Justice Department that it no longer needs the federal oversight of a 38-year-old desegregation order, an order that helps ensure equitable courses and facilities for black and white students.

But when answering Justice Department questions last fall, the school board's reply included two copy-paper boxes stuffed with thousands of transfer requests, most of them from black parents hoping to leave mostly black schools. Most were denied.

“I guess it's time for us to ask, as a school system, why they want to transfer out of those schools,” said school board member Jennie Robinson.

As a result, the board may soon need to talk about closing Butler High, she said.

Butler won't close anytime soon, said Superintendent Moore, but she agreed the board may be forced to discuss the possibility.

She said the same concern applies to other schools sapped by transfers.

“How many students do you allow to transfer out,” asked Moore, “and how do you get the public to understand the rate of transfers affects whether a school stays open?”

After being turned away during orientation at Huntsville High, Eyma's daughter enrolled at Johnson High two years ago. Meanwhile, her son, an athlete, was admitted to Huntsville High. She could see the differences, especially in the little things.

Her daughter's friends at Huntsville High were chapters ahead in the same subject. She listened as her son said his business leaders club was headed to Washington, D.C. For two years the same club at Johnson had no money to travel.

“I felt like an unequal parent,” Eyma said. “It's a really bad feeling.”

She said a teacher's warning forced her hand.

“He told my husband to get my daughter out of this school.” After two years of rejected transfer requests, Eyma decided to plead her daughter's case in person at the central office.

“She's No. 3 in her entire class at Johnson High School and she's not being challenged,” Eyma said. “I told them I just want her in a better school.”

Her daughter started her junior year at Lee High this month.

Huntsville has long been a system of extremes.

Five elementary schools in south Huntsville placed in the top 10 percent in the state last year for passing rates on basic reading and math tests. Eight elementary schools in north Huntsville scored in the bottom 10 percent.

Grissom High in south Huntsville sends several top students to Ivy League schools each year. Butler High landed on a federal warning list this summer when too few students passed a basic reading test.

“The problem is the transfers are one way,” said Fallin, who once ran for the school board with a pledge to let parents pick their school regardless of where they live. “Everybody is trying to transfer out of north Huntsville schools and no one is trying to transfer into north Huntsville schools.”

The system's method of counting also obscures the magnitude of the one-way traffic.

The year after a student transfers that child no longer counts as a transfer. And that student will automatically go on to high school and through graduation without reapplying or ever again appearing on a list of transfer students.

With more than 500 black students approved each year, thousands likely attend schools outside their neighborhood.

Aaron Goode said the academic differences, not perceptions, drive the requests.

Goode, whose daughter was not allowed to leave Johnson High for Huntsville High this year, said she may have to take advanced courses at Calhoun Community College because they're not offered at Johnson.

“She might as well take courses via the Internet,” Goode said. “It doesn't mean you can't be successful; you're just at a disadvantage. I think she'll get what she needs, but when she goes to higher education, she'll be in for a rude awakening.”

It's not just Butler facing closure. Several underused schools are steadily losing scores of students to transfers.

Ed White Middle was at capacity with 670 children just five years ago, but has since dropped to 432 students. About 150 of those transferred out of Ed White Middle over the last three years.

About 150 also transferred out of Davis Hills Middle and more than 100 left Stone Middle over the last three years. Davis Hills is 200 students below capacity. Stone, which is proposed for closure, is 500 below capacity.

Westlawn Middle, which lost 40 transfers over the last few years, now has 220 students. That's smaller than most elementary schools and about 500 students below capacity.

Meanwhile, the students from north Huntsville have improved the racial balance in crowded classrooms elsewhere.

Monte Sano Elementary is now 22 percent black, up from just 7 percent in 2001. Whitesburg Elementary went from 18 percent to 35 percent black in seven years.

Since 2001, the once small percentages of blacks have doubled at Grissom High, Jones Valley Elementary, Mountain Gap Elementary and Challenger Middle.

Children can learn in every school, Superintendent Moore said.

“The one-way request for transfers is just how it's panned out to some degree,” Moore said, adding that neighborhoods have changed over time and those changes affect the neighborhood schools.

Since the mid-1980s, Huntsville schools have grown more characterized by race. At nine schools in north Huntsville this month more than 90 percent of students were black. Despite the transfers, fewer than 15 percent of students were black at nine schools in south Huntsville.

White students may also transfer into predominantly black schools under the 1970 desegregation order. Relatively few do.

But Moore said many parents are disappointed when they transfer their child.

She said parents may not realize they leave behind free tutoring, extra computers and after-school care paid for with federal money in many schools of north Huntsville.

Some children ask to return, she said, although the system doesn't track those numbers.