Welcome to 2006, Vestavia!
Vestavia Hills desegregation plan gets fierce response
Yes, desegregation. Fifty years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
There's a desegregation court order in place that requires the Vestavia school system to offer enrollment to students who are zoned for Birmingham schools. They're supposed to have 25 percent black enrollment; they've never gotten close and are currently at 7 percent. This has been such a rousing success that Vestavia now wants to be removed from the order. Shelia Smoot is not happy.
posted by Mac @ 9/21/2006 10:21:00 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
They've never gotten close, but they've also never received any citation or reprimand based on their efforts. Almost 70% of the black students in the school system live in the district. And the Oxmoor Shannon area is booming, with new construction of apartment complexes and high dollar homes -- which developers are selling by telling families they can pay low Birmingham city taxes and send their kids to Vestavia schools. There's a limit to the number of students the system can absorb without getting the tax revenue to go with them.
Despite what Ms. Smoot might think, there's good reason for the request, and it has nothing to do with racism. Vestavia has asked that all Oxmoor Shannon students currently in the system and their current and future siblings be grandfathered in to the Vestavia system.
I know it's easy to snark about this when looking in from the outside, but the school board made a very tough decision for the right reasons, and they don't deserve the criticism.
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