When Communities Secede From School Districts, Inequity & Segregation Follow. But 30 States Let It Happen Anyway – The 74

The judge was blunt: Although parents in a suburban Alabama community argued that their desire to secede from their county school district centered on local control, race was undeniably a motivating factor.

Since 2000, at least 71 communities nationwide have attempted to withdraw from their school district, and 47 have been successful, according to the groups analysis. Residents in nine additional communities are pursuing a similar separation. These efforts, the report notes, often create bastions of wealth, leaving behind districts with high poverty and poor funding.

Property taxes, the primary source for local education dollars, play a large role in incentivizing secession efforts, said Rebecca Sibilia, EdBuilds founder and CEO. For example, Ohios Monroe Local School District was created in 2000 after a secession effort from the Middletown City School District. In 2015, the median property value in the Monroe Local district was $159,200 more than 70 percent higher than in neighboring Middletown.

We cant forget that education is a public good, and its the publics responsibility to see all of our kids as our own, Sibilia said. The notion of opting out of the common good is one that is almost unique to education. People dont get to say that theyre not going to pay into Medicare simply because they dont have anyone they know who is on Medicare support.

Whats amazing is that its intentional discrimination in 2017, said Monique Lin-Luse, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund who represents black plaintiffs in the Gardendale case. This isnt about something from long ago in the past these are state actors, today, who are seeking to secede and to do so on a racial basis.

In its analysis, EdBuild found 30 states with laws that allow communities to secede from their school districts. Yet only six states require policymakers to consider how the move would affect racial and socioeconomic demographics in the district, and only nine states require a study of the financial impacts of splitting communities. Of states with laws allowing secession, approval processes differ: Some require a majority vote among neighborhood members, while legislative approval is necessary in others.

In Alabama, state law allows cities with more than 5,000 residents to establish their own independent school districts. In Florida and Georgia, state laws prohibit secessions, according to the report.

Legislatures are complicit and sometimes actively enabling these things to happen, Sibilia said. There are states that are going backward in allowing communities to just segregate themselves either along socioeconomic or race lines without having any meaningful check on whether or not thats going to have a negative effect on the students who will be left behind.

Although the Supreme Courts ruling in Brown helped incentivize the formation of smaller school districts to dodge integration efforts, Sibilia said, the importance of school district lines was really cemented two decades later. In Milliken v. Bradley in 1974, the Supreme Court barred states from imposing desegregation plans across school district boundaries.

In her report, Wilson noted that while secession efforts occur across the country, those in the South raise unique fairness and equity concerns because they exist against a backdrop of state-mandated segregation and attempts to skirt court-ordered desegregation. She said that as Southern districts reach unitary status, meaning they no longer have to comply with desegregation orders, theyre increasingly turning to secession.

Though the Gardendale decision could change following appeal, Lin-Luse said she worries the Circuit Court outcome could encourage other communities to launch their own secession campaigns.

It sends a signal to other cities that there arent really any barriers to separating, even if youre found to have had this negative impact on the county system that youre separating from, Lin-Luse said. Also, even if youre having a negative impact and youve been found to have intentionally discriminated, if thats not a city that can be stopped from seceding, then who will be stopped from seceding?

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When Communities Secede From School Districts, Inequity & Segregation Follow. But 30 States Let It Happen Anyway - The 74