Huntsville City Schools chipped away at its 57-year-old desegregation order this week when the Federal court ruled the school system has achieved racial balance in its student transportation program.

“We filed the motion and the judge got it back to us in seven days, which was phenomenal,” said Huntsville City School Board President Elisa Ferrell. “We expected it to take several months because she has a huge caseload.

“To me, that seven days means (the judge) is paying attention to the progress we’re making here in Huntsville.”

Huntsville City and as many as 50 other school districts around the state are still under court-supervised desegregation as part of unresolved lawsuits that date back to the 1960s and 1970s. In 2015, Huntsville entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, called a consent order, that outlined a roadmap to get the district out from under its desegregation suit.

“It’s been a huge task,” said Ferrell. “But we are doing everything we can to help the whole student.”

Huntsville has one of the most complex and wide-ranging consent orders in the state, said school board attorney Chris Pape.

Before a school district can be free of federal oversight, it must prove to the court it has eliminated the effects of a formerly segregated system in several categories, called Green factors, so-named for a Supreme Court case. Green factors include student assignment, faculty hiring, extracurricular activities, student transportation and discipline.

However, racial disparities related to transportation, unlike discipline or student assignment, have not been high on the list of challenges facing Huntsville schools.

U.S. District Judge Madeline Haikala granted Huntsville City a Green factor in transportation this week. That means the federal courts will no longer have oversight in that area. Transportation is one of seven Green factors Huntsville must meet and was the most data-heavy Green factor the district faced, Ferrell said.

It’s taken Huntsville four years to get to this point, but Pape said he doesn’t expect it will take another four years to achieve the next Green factor.

“The great thing about a desegregation order as comprehensive as Huntsville’s is that it’s like having multiple trains going at the same time on different tracks,” he told AL.com. “During the time we’ve been putting together transportation, we’ve also been working on all the other green factors.”

He said the school board and its attorneys are working now on identifying which of the Green factors could be next. Facilities could be one; the district has built several new school buildings in both south and north Huntsville over the past few years and has a detailed improvement plan for existing facilities, Ferrell said.

And although a nationwide teacher shortage has complicated the district’s efforts toward the faculty Green factor, said Ferrell, the district has made progress. The consent order requires every grade level at every school to have an equitable number of veteran and new teachers. It also requires a racial balance of teachers at each school that closely mirrors the racial balance of the city.

School officials have repeatedly said fixing racial disparities in discipline is likely going to be the district’s biggest hurdle to ultimately getting out from under the desegregation order.

Black students in Huntsville continue to be disciplined at much higher rates than white students, according to data the district filed with the federal court late last year. This, despite the district overhauling its student code of conduct several times over the past few years.

At Huntsville High, for example, last year 52% of black students received a disciplinary referral, compared to just 12% of white students. And the percent of all students district-wide receiving suspensions has increased over the past four years, according to district data.

Across Alabama, school districts have seen their desegregation cases closed and federal oversight lifted. At one time, the entire state was under desegregation orders; now less than 50 districts remain. Last month, federal Judge Annemarie Carney Axon lifted the desegregation order in majority-white Calhoun County; in June 2019, Judge R. David Proctor lifted the order for Decatur City schools.

But Huntsville’s consent order with the federal court is wide-ranging, and the district is one of the largest and most diverse in the state. For the 2018-2019 school year, Huntsville City Schools had nearly 24,000 students across 37 schools, and about equal numbers of white and black students.

Pape said it’s hard to compare districts that are and aren’t under desegregation orders. Some districts have older consent orders that are simpler; the newer ones, like the one in Huntsville, are much more complex. But the end goal is the same: earning unitary status, the court’s recognition that a district has ended the constitutional wrongs related to dual schooling and become whole.

“In a perfect world, unitary status shouldn’t feel like a change,” he said. “It’s the court saying, I’m going to let you run your system without watching over you because you’re running it the right way.”