During P.E. class last week, a second-grader at Blossomwood Elementary went into the bathroom with his friend and showed him the gun he'd brought to school. As he and his friend examined it, the gun went off. The boy who brought the gun was shot in the hand.

The injury wasn't serious, but the reaction was swift. Parents flooded the hallways that day to check on their children after receiving word that a student had been shot.

A few years ago, Huntsville City Schools rezoned kids from the city's poorest neighborhoods into Blossomwood and a few other majority-white schools at the city center, in an effort to get the district out from under a 50-year-old desegregation order.

Since then, some Blossomwood parents expressed concern that their school was not as safe as it used to be. Some families pulled out their kids.

For a school - and a school system - working to make educational opportunities equally available to all children, last week's shooting incident goes much deeper than the national gun debate.

A brief history

To understand why the shooting incident at Blossomwood is about more than just a gun in school, you have to go back a few years.

The city has been under a federal desegregation order since 1970, and as a consequence, had to seek approval from the U.S. Department of Justice if it wanted to redraw school zone lines.

Many parents and school leaders, especially in white neighborhoods, have long wanted more local control. The only way they were going to get it, some officials have argued, is by coming out from under the decades-old federal desegregation order.

Judge Madeline Haikala

In 2014, the system pushed to change zone lines, despite federal objections. They took the dispute to court and found the case in front of the newly appointed U.S. District Judge Madeline Haikala. Judge Haikala decided to review the entire case and to move the system toward ending the desegregation order, a relic now found in fewer than 200 systems nationwide, most of them in Mississippi and Alabama.

In the end, the legal wrangling led to a wide-ranging road map that laid out how the district should address racial disparities in discipline, zoning, academics and more. It was called the consent order, an agreement hatched between the school district and the Department of Justice and approved by the court. Its purpose is to bring the district out from under its decades-old federal desegregation order.

But after zone lines were redrawn and plans were made, wide-ranging integration only happened at a handful of schools, mostly in the city center where majority white and majority black schools were closest. Blossomwood was one.

When everything shifted

Zone lines officially moved in the fall of 2015.

The starkest change came to the city center, where schools in the Huntsville High School feeder pattern - including Blossomwood - are now some of the most integrated non-magnet schools in the district.

Rezoning students from public housing west of Memorial Parkway into that zone meant that black students from some of the poorest neighborhoods in Huntsville would go to schools that served some of the most affluent white neighborhoods.

It all coincided with a DOJ-required overhaul of the city's discipline policy, teacher shuffling to meet racial quotas, and a host of other changes.

Parents and concerned citizens attend a hearing at Columbia High School in January 2015 about the proposed consent order. (File)

Those first years, some parents pulled their kids out of Blossomwood and other schools in that feeder pattern because they said they no longer felt safe. They talked about their kids being bullied by the "new" kids from the other side of the Parkway. Some said their kids' teachers spent so much time trying to manage a few rowdy students that they didn't have time for the rest of the class. Parents worried about a perceived decrease in academic rigor.

Parents whose kids had been rezoned from their neighborhood schools in poorer areas said their kids struggled to keep up with their new schools' higher academic standards and different behavioral norms. They said they felt out of place.

Many parents banded together, launching school-based initiatives aimed at welcoming the new students into their schools. They worked with the district to create the kinds of social services and supports that their schools had never seemed to need before.

"There has been a whole cultural shift," one Blossomwood Elementary parent told AL.com in 2016, "and that will not settle overnight."

A look at numbers

A common concern around downtown Huntsville became that parents with means were pulling out their kids and taking their resources - the time they could spend at the school volunteering, the extra money they had to spend on school fundraisers - elsewhere.

That did happen, to an extent. A look at the data, from fall of 2015 to fall of 2018:

- Since lines were redrawn in 2015, Blossomwood Elementary has gone from 55 percent white to 51 percent white in the fall of 2018, and 35 percent black to 38 percent black. The school lost 58 white students during that time and lost three black students, according to data the district has provided to the federal court and to AL.com.

- Nearby Jones Valley Elementary, which also feeds into Huntsville High, saw a greater change, though it remains slightly more white than Blossomwood. The student population went from 64 percent white in 2015 to 52 percent white in 2018, and 21 percent black to 29 percent black over the same time frame. The school lost 96 white students and gained 34 black students during that time.

- At Huntsville Junior High, also in the feeder pattern, the percentage of white students dropped slightly from 50 to 47 percent of the population, while black students' percentage rose from 36 to 41 percent.

- Huntsville High receives students from predominantly white schools in Hampton Cove, feeder schools that were not affected by the new zone lines because of the distance and the logistics in crossing Monte Sano Mountain. The high school went from 65 percent white in fall of 2015 to 66 percent white in fall of 2018, and the share of black students dropped slightly from 22 percent to 20 percent during the same time period.

- Overall, Huntsville City schools' racial makeup has barely changed. The district went from 40 percent white and 39 percent black in 2015 to 39 percent white and 39 percent black three years later.

'Watching people leave'

Ayoka Billions pulled one of her children from Blossomwood Elementary two years ago to homeschool him for a semester after he struggled in a disruptive classroom. He returned the next year, though, and has had a great experience since, she said. Her other two children are also in Huntsville City schools.

But for those first couple of years, she watched with worry as the school she'd known for years changed and families left.

"Somebody mentioned reaching that tipping point where you lose so many families that your school is one of the inner-city schools where nobody wants to send their kids," she said. "If you're a 'good parent' you move or send your kids to private school. I don't want that to happen to our system.

"As a parent that's been my biggest concern, watching people leave."

Erin Cobb, whose son is a Blossomwood student and daughter attends Huntsville Junior High, said there was always talk each year, even before the consent order, about who's going to choose public or private schools.

Despite bumps in the road those first years, she said, her kids are happy and thriving, just as they were before the rezoning.

"When I walk through the halls and see diversity, it makes me happy," she said. Her kids and others, she pointed out, continue to score highly on standardized tests and have forged lasting friendships with kids they likely wouldn't have met if not for the rezoning.

Over the past few years, she said, it's taken the concentrated effort of neighborhood families, transfer families and newly-zoned families to forge a new kind of community around the school.

"I believe in the importance of public school in our community," she said. "For our society, it's so important, and for our family it's an active choice to be a part of that. We want to be a bridge and not a barrier. We are those positive voices in our community speaking out so people know our school is thriving."

Disbanding schools

As a result of the consent order, the north Huntsville community and its majority-black schools had to contend with upheaval in nearly every neighborhood as their schools were closed, consolidated and new schools opened.

Dr. Sonnie Hereford III (Eric Schultz / eschultz@al.com)

Catherine Hereford testified last year before the federal court in the desegregation case. Her grandfather, Sonnie Hereford III, was the one who filed the lawsuit in 1963 to end segregated schooling in Huntsville.

Many in the black community were upset, she told AL.com, that their neighborhood schools were closed and consolidated. "Devaluing and disbanding the schools that served the black community was a mistake, in my opinion," she told AL.com this spring.

She laid blame at the feet of former superintendent Casey Wardnyski, who oversaw the closing of majority-black Butler and Johnson High Schools and the consolidation into Jemison High School. North Huntsville community leaders said their concerns had been - and in some cases continue to be - ignored.

"Lack of transparency and community involvement created a lot of mistrust," she said.

Some schools in the district remain segregated. The new Sonnie Hereford Elementary in North Huntsville - the namesake of Catherine's grandfather - is 69 percent black and 6 percent white. Goldsmith-Schiffman Elementary in the Hampton Cove area is 77 percent white and 7 percent black.

'The school is diversifying'

When Ne'Keshia Jabbar and her husband transferred their son from a majority-black school to Blossomwood Elementary about six years ago, he was the only black student in his first-grade class. The Jabbars had conflicting feelings leaving their neighborhood school, but said Blossomwood had better resources and opportunities for their children than the school they'd left behind.

Their son was in fourth grade the year the zone lines changed, and Jabbar said she watched as parents pulled their kids out of Blossomwood in the months following.

"Of course that's offensive," she said. "Because the school is diversifying, they feel like it will affect the school in a negative way, and therefore they're going to pull their child out and send them to a private school?

"But in a sense, I understood," she said. "When you have a different demographic come to your school, and a lot of them come from areas that are poverty-stricken, you get a different set of dynamics at the school. You get different types of problems in the classrooms."

The Jabbars stay involved at school, and Ne'Keshia is PTA secretary this year. She said she adores the teachers and principal, and her kids have had a great year.

Then came the shooting incident last week.

"Honestly, when I found out about it, I said, 'God, please don't let it be a black boy,'" she said.

"If it's one of us, then we have those stereotypes reinforced even more. It's hard to fight those stigmas."

Changes in leadership

Teachers would normally provide much-needed stability in a time of change, but the consent order made that nearly impossible. The same year schools were rezoned, the district shuffled teachers around to accommodate the new student patterns because racial balance among teachers was one consideration of the consent order.

The number of teachers who retired or quit after that was large enough that the school board heard a special presentation on it.

At least 14 schools had new principals in 2015, including Jones Valley, Huntsville Junior High and Huntsville High. The district had four superintendents between the fall of 2016 and the fall of 2018. School board members squabbled. Teachers and administrators could not talk publicly. The DOJ watched it all from afar.

Last spring at a status conference on the consent order, the court received a letter, written by a parent, that was also read during a public school board meeting by Blossomwood's school board representative, Beth Wilder.

In the letter, the parent, whose children attend Huntsville Junior High, said the school is full of students who are "happy, tight-knit and thriving."

"This very diverse school in the middle of the city has become one strong, unified community," the parent wrote. And yet, those working for the betterment of the school "desperately need to hear some positive acknowledgement and encouragement from the court and the Department of Justice.

"They need to hear that you are all aware that progress is being made, in tangible and intangible ways. That the ultimate goal is to strengthen, not tear apart, our system and our city."

Discipline

New discipline rules went into effect in 2015, the same chaotic fall that the zone lines changed. A new student Code of Conduct, agreed to under the consent order, was created as a way to keep more students in the classroom and promote early intervention for children with chronic behavioral problems.

The new code severely curtailed the use of out-of-school suspensions and eliminated expulsion for elementary students.

It was meant to address Huntsville City's history of racially discriminatory discipline practices. For years, black students have accounted for the vast majority of suspensions and other disciplinary practices. In 2015, 82 percent of suspensions were black students, even though they represented just 40 percent of the student population.

But that first year, by most accounts, the brand-new discipline policy added another layer of instability to the schools.

Teachers received conflicting directives over how and when to punish disruptive students. Some parents said their children weren't safe from bullies who escaped consequences. Teachers at one elementary school in North Huntsville filed multiple incident reports about being attacked by students in a school environment they said was out of control.

Andrea Hamilton, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, told Judge Haikala in 2017 that the DOJ heard more concerns and complaints regarding discipline than any other topic.

"Our biggest challenge (with implementing the consent order) is discipline," School Board President Elisa Ferrell told AL.com in the spring of 2018. "We have a lot of experts working on that."

A variety of support staff, including behavioral interventionists, classroom aides and social workers, were hired to work with students at schools.

The district eventually replaced the Code of Conduct with the Behavioral Learning Guide, which was created with teacher and parent input. It's gone through multiple iterations over the past couple of years.

But after the accidental shooting incident at Blossomwood, student discipline and the Behavioral Learning Guide are again at the center of concern for parents.

When Aaron and Shannon Hase moved to Huntsville five years ago, they said they toured all the private schools in the area, but chose Blossomwood because they were "completely blown away by Blossomwood, the principal and the teachers we met," said Shannon. The couple have a kindergartener at Blossomwood. "Just by visiting the school, it was a no-brainer to send our children there."

They followed the progress of the school system's attempt to meet the considerations of the consent order, they said, and were pleased to see discipline issues improve after an initially rocky start.

But now they want the student who brought the gun to school to be expelled.

"(School officials) have talked a lot about gun safety in the home, which I am all for," said Shannon, "but if there's going to be a zero-tolerance policy at home, we want to see a zero-tolerance policy at school by the higher administration."

Huntsville Superintendent Christie Finley (Huntsville City Schools)

Superintendent Christie Finley has said the student who brought the gun isn't currently at Blossomwood, but she will not discuss any discipline the student might receive, citing a federal law that requires educational records to be kept private.

"For a lot of families we know, how (the district) handles this is going to affect whether they take their kids out," said Shannon.

Aaron Hase said they were satisfied with how the Blossomwood teachers and principal handled the accidental shooting situation. But he still wants to see a zero-tolerance policy regarding guns, no matter a child's age.

"We've had a lot of friends that have left (Blossomwood) in the last year or two, as stuff comes up," he said. "I can't fault them one way or another.

"But I don't know how many waves of that the school system can handle before you lose all your kids."

'Passionate and determined'

Many parents who spoke to AL.com seem to worry not so much about whether the school system can correct any missteps - that has been happening, with more support programs for students, less teacher shuffling, and a conduct code that had stakeholder input.

What they worry about is whether or not their fellow parents will stay.

That's why the shooting incident weighs so heavily on the community. The identity of the student who brought the gun to Blossomwood has not been released, but his father was arrested the next day for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, and for receiving stolen property - the police said the gun had been stolen.

The implication is that the student might live in one of the areas of town that were rezoned into the school. He became the concrete embodiment of some parents' fears over safety.

Three days after the shooting, Superintendent Finley announced a series of public forums on safety and other issues, and the creation of a school safety task force. She also floated plans for holding parents accountable for gun safety issues.

"This situation could have been avoided," she said of the shooting. "I'm very upset about it. Our parents and the schools are very upset about it, and we will address it."

The morning of the shooting incident, as parents came to Blossomwood to check on their children, a group of parents gathered in the nearby Blossomwood Pool parking lot and watched as police officers hurried in and out of the school.

Cate DeFiore, whose daughter is in second grade, could see her daughter's class on the playground. She watched as the students played and laughed with their teacher.

"We've been through many changes and we're stronger now than ever," DeFiore said.

"We are a passionate and determined group, and I believe we will turn the fear and anger we felt into action."