Huntsville City Schools redrawing zone lines (Madison, Opp: school district, gated, zoning)

[CoreLysium]

August 5th is the first day of the 2014-2015 school year. Butler will be gone then.

I'll totally agree, Ed, about the horse to water attitude issue. But this is beyond the students/parents. The administration has not brought any water for the horses. Huntsville's reward system (aka pass the lemon) has caused an excellent separating the wheat from the chaff, and then keeping the chaff. A real "You can lead a horse to a slightly moist patch of dirt, but you cannot make it drink."

[deesonic]

Originally Posted by CoreLysium

August 5th is the first day of the 2014-2015 school year. Butler will be gone then.

Sadly, HCS killed my alma mater long before the upcoming school year when they built Columbia almost 10 years ago. But that's water under the bridge now. I hate to see what has happened to Butler, but in its current state I can't see keeping it either. At least the rezoning plan for the Butler district into nearly all the city's current high schools makes some sense geographically. My old neighborhood (Holiday Homes) will soon be zoned to Huntsville High, about 5 minutes up Bob Wallace Ave. At one point there was talk of combining Butler and Johnson at the new Jemison campus. Talk about busing! The current Butler district covers all the way down to Airport/Johnson Road! I'm actually glad they reconsidered that idea. It's all very frustrating, but they've ignored all this for far too long. I live in the county now, so I guess I'm just a lookie-loo now.

[macwell]

DOJ plan public now? Copy of report?
Difference of plans?

Huntsville Plan public vote?


South Huntsville parents take closer look at school rezoning plan at Grissom High forum | AL.com

The negotiation period between the districts lawyers and the lawyers from the Department of Justice
has expired and Wardynski will send the district's plan before the school board to vote on
at next Thursday's meeting. Wardynski plans to fight for the system's proposal in federal court if a compromise is not made.

<>

The school forum moves to Huntsville High School at 2304 Billie Watkins St SW Feb. 1, at 9 a.m.
Here's a list of the remaining forums set for next week:
Monday, Feb. 3 - 5 p.m. at Johnson High School
Tuesday, Feb. 4 - 5 p.m. at Butler High School
Wednesday, Feb. 5 - 5 p.m. at Columbia High School

[macwell]

Link to Presentation
Huntsville City Schools Approve Rezoning Plan; Department Of Justice Opposes | WHNT.com


Link to Presentation
Huntsville school board to ask federal court to approve its rezoning plan over DOJ plan (live updates) | AL.com

[macwell]

Wardynski Says DoJ Rezoning Bad: Much Ado About Nothing - Geek Palaver

But let’s play out one possible scenario for a moment:

What if the judge decides that the Wardynski plan, which was developed entirely without public input, is indeed to best plan for unifying the district into a single system. (That is the goal, after all.)

So, let’s assume that Wardynski wins.
What happens next?

Well, as Mr. Brooks stated Thursday night, rezoning is a part of the process to move towards a unified district and to therefore lift the desegregation order.

It does not end the desegregation order on its own.



HCS Terrified of Questions from Public - Geek Palaver

They are terrified of the public that they are supposed to be representing.

Contact the Department of Justice

Here’s an idea. Since our board and superintendent don’t want to answer questions from the public about their version of the rezoning plan, I would suggest going over their head to the Department of Justice.

The DoJ, will after all, have final say about what the plan looks like anyway. (The exception to this is, of course, if Wardynski gets his wish to sue the Department of Justice as he will likely ask the BoE to approve tomorrow.)

Let Sarah Hinger know that the district is completely ignoring public input into this plan. As she stated in her letter to J. R. Brooks dated December 17, 2013, the district is actually required to be involved in the plan to unify the district. I’m sure that she would be interested in knowing that the district is not doing so.

You may contact Ms. Hinger via the Department of Justice at the following address:

U.S. Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division, Educational Opportunities Section
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Patrick Henry Building, Suite 4300
Washington, DC 20530
(202) 514-4902
(202) 514-8337 (Fax)
sarah.hinger@usdoj.gov


I’m certain that since Wardynski is going to soon file suit against the Department of Justice, that she would be interested in knowing how little the public has been involved in this process.

It would seem that the board and superintendent need to look up the definition of the word conversation.



BOE Continues to Hide the Truth about Rezoning - Geek Palaver
BOE Continues To “Spin” the Truth

Despite the clarity of the sentence highlighted above, McCaulley and Brooks, and one supposes Blair and Robinson, continue to hide behind the claim that the DoJ “are sending mixed messages” or that the DoJ’s letter “appears to [Brooks] to be a little inconsistent.”

In other words, at no time has the DoJ required or even suggested that the public should be kept in the dark by the superintendent and the Board of Education following his lead. In fact, the DoJ views keeping the public in the dark about these changes are detrimental to the process of achieving unitary status. Let’s be clear: the only thing the board and the DoJ have agreed to keep confidential are the negotiations. They were not required, advised or encouraged to keep the plans presented in the negotiations confidential in any way.

So, this presents us with a dilemma.

Either our board of education and superintendent have been lying to us all along (and continue to do so even after receiving this letter on December 17, 2013, or they are simply incapable of comprehending what has been clearly stated to them in writing.

You know we just finished yet another round of SchoolNet and STAR reading tests in our schools to determine whether or not our teachers are teaching our kids to read.

Perhaps we’ve been testing the wrong people.

I wonder at what level Wardynski, Blair, Robinson, McCaulley, and even Mr. Brooks are capable of reading, if they truly cannot understand a letter as clear as this one.

[macwell]

Huntsville challenges Justice Department over school zones | AL.com

According to information provided by school officials, the federal plan would have the greatest effect on both Lee High and Huntsville High.

Here are some highlights:

The Justice Department plan would move more white students to Lee. School officials say the federal plan calls for the dividing line between Lee High and Huntsville High to be shifted south to Governors Drive, moving Blossomwood and Five Points neighborhoods into Lee. The federal plan reassigns Monte Sano Elementary and 65 percent of Blossomwood students to Lee High.


• At the same time, the federal plan would increase the percentage of black students at Huntsville High. Most of the students at Ridgecrest Elementary and the new Hereford Elementary, where Terry Heights sat, would be zoned for Huntsville High, while most of Blossomwood and all of Monte Sano would be pulled out.

• Both plans include closure of Butler High. But the federal plan sends most of those students to Huntsville High. The city plan scatters Butler students among five high schools, but sends the largest portion north to Jemison High with students from Johnson High.

• The federal plan also restructures some middle schools. The plan combines Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, Montview Elementary and most of Jones Valley Elementary at Huntsville Middle. It also splits up students who graduate from Westlawn Middle, Huntsville Middle and McNair Middle.

• Under both plans, the geographic extremes are largely unaffected. Williams and Providence always feed into Columbia High, and both proposals keep Hampton Cove flowing into Huntsville High. Majority white schools at Challenger and Mountain Gap still feed into Grissom in both plans, and majority black elementary schools in north Huntsville continue to flow into Jemison.


Without a map showing proposed boundaries for each elementary zone, it's not possible to know the full detail of the Justice Department plan.

The plan was not shared with the public at first, as both sides had agreed to hold confidential negotiations. As negotiations have ended,
AL.com has requested access to the full federal proposal provided to school system attorneys.

[LCTMadison]

"moving Blossomwood and Five Points neighborhoods into Lee. The federal plan reassigns Monte Sano Elementary and 65 percent of Blossomwood students to Lee High."


Holy cow. There will be riots.

[CoreLysium]

Originally Posted by LCTMadison

Holy cow. There will be riots.

[StreetSense]

Like I posted on the other thread we were zoned for Huntsville Middle and Huntsville High. With new re-zoning, we might be Chapman Middle and Lee High.

Since Chapman Middle is on the official list of failing schools, according to DOE can we get transferred to any other school.

Anyway, we decided to buy a place in Monrovia and wait a few years to see how the dust settles and how it will screw up Huntsville city schools.

[LCTMadison]

StreetSense.....I will tell you the one thing they are hoping for is that this federal judge will do away with this antiquated desegregation order.

There are very, very, VERY few areas of the country that are still under these desegregation orders as many have been dismissed long ago and are much less "diverse" than HSV. This ain't the 1960's anymore.....

Anyway, that is the hope that comes out of this approach, and if that happens you will probably see HSV go back to the drawing board and rework the lines somewhat.

I think you are taking a good approach to this especially since the schools seem to be a very big factor for you.

Let me add...Lee is NOT a bad school at all. I love the principal, he came from HSV High and he is awesome. Lee, not so long ago, was a really great high school....in fact, the majority of my friends from college that I knew from HSV graduated from Lee, and that would have been late 80's-early 90's.