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HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Huntsville City Schools approved 294 student transfers for the coming school year under federal and state law. All 294 are black students. All are leaving a majority black school and going to a majority white school.

Skin color is a factor because almost all were approved under a 43-year-old federal desegregation order. That court order dating back to the Civil Rights era still mandates the system consider race in deciding which students get to go where.

Superintendent Casey Wardynski (The Huntsville Times)

Meanwhile, Huntsville granted only six transfers under the new Alabama Accountability Act. All were black students, as system officials say they must be to comply with the desegregation order.

Superintendent Casey Wardynski said that's all the Huntsville system had space for after handling the federal transfers.

That's despite 502 requests to flee the nine "failing" schools in Huntsville.

And Huntsville, realizing it was out of space, cut off the "failing" school requests about a week early, said Wardynski.

Letters are going out now and parents will learn who received a transfer by next week. School officials say transfers are based on space available and on who applied first.

White students, under the court order, are eligible to request a transfer out of a majority white school and into a majority black school. None did this year, according to school officials.

But white students were not eligible to leave Alabama's newly labeled "failing" schools. That's because all nine "failing" schools in Huntsville are majority black.

That's not unusual. Indeed, 71 out of the 74 neighborhood schools listed as failing across Alabama are majority black. Two are racially split. A middle school in Geneva County is the only predominantly white "failing" school in Alabama.

But in Huntsville, race still matters. They're called majority-to-minority transfers, and are intended to increase diversity. For example, black students are not eligible to transfer out of the predominantly white Grissom High, and white students are not eligible to transfer into Grissom High.

Meanwhile, the Alabama Accountability Act, passed this spring, doesn't say anything about race. The state act says all students at "failing" schools must be offered a chance to switch to a non-failing school within the same district.

But federal law trumps a state act, as the U.S. Department of Justice wrote to inform the Huntsville board this summer.

It gets even stranger. The Supreme Court in 2007 ruled 5-4 that public school systems across the United States may no longer consider race when granting transfers. "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.

Source: Huntsville City Schools

However, that ruling regarding Louisville and Seattle specifically set apart Huntsville and about 200 other systems, many in Alabama, that still operate under desegregation orders. Basically, those systems are still working to eliminate signs of the old race-based dual schooling.

Bottom line: That means Huntsville must continue consider race in student transfers, while a parent could sue over the same policy most anywhere else.

For Huntsville, despite a new state law inviting hundreds of new transfer requests, the number of approved transfers has dropped.

For decades there was a second option known as the percentage of race transfer. That meant a white student at Mountain Gap could transfer into a school where there was a smaller percentage, but still a majority, of white students. In practice, white students could go from Grissom to Huntsville High, black students could go from Johnson High to Lee.

That option is gone. Wardynski said the system ended that policy with little fanfare this year, as it was never part of the court order. As a result, no white students moved around and no black students were able to transfer between schools in north Huntsville.

Suddenly there is a stark one-way traffic flow, only from north Huntsville to south Huntsville, only black students entering majority white schools.

In part, that's also because the state received a waiver, ending the old transfers from failing schools under No Child Left Behind. But Huntsville had recently been informed that desegregation also trumped No Child Left Behind.

Wardynski also said the system now blocks transfers into crowded schools. He said not one transfer was granted into Huntsville High this year. That's a departure, as Huntsville High alone accepted 50 students from Butler High in 2011-2012.

Meanwhile, Huntsville school officials say they are working to end the desegregation order. The five board members are in unanimous support for the first time in decades.

41 students were approved to leave Davis Hills Middle in north Huntsville (Huntsville Times file)

The board last year hired a Washington attorney who is an expert in desegregation law. They've met several times, always in private, with attorneys for the Justice Department and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, both of which were plaintiffs in the original suit and remain active parties 43 years later.

School officials say they are making headway. Wardynski says he is attempting to balance the racial composition of faculties through new teacher hiring and transfer policies. He also contends that providing all students laptops will help establish equitable resources and curriculum in all parts of the city. And Wardynski and the board have unveiled a plan to build new schools in north and south Huntsville to eliminate concerns about inadequate facilities in mostly black neighborhoods.

"I think all of us think we are making progress," said school board attorney J.R. Brooks of ongoing legal negotiations. But there is still no clear timeline or process for retiring the order.

Wardynski this week suggested the Alabama Accountability Act could hurt Huntsville's efforts. After all, any student can still leave a "failing" schools in Huntsville, go to a participating private school and receive a $3,500 tax credit.