Fifty-four years after a federal court placed Huntsville City Schools under a desegregation order, the school district is still trying to prove it's making progress despite changes in leadership, school board drama and new discipline procedures.

"The past school year was a pretty rocky year," U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala told a crowded courtroom on Wednesday during a public hearing designed to let Huntsville City Schools update the court on steps the district is taking to implement a plan - called the consent order - that would allow the school district to prove it no longer operates as a racially segregated system.

The hearing lasted all day, as attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice and for the school system presented data and information related to the consent order's implementation.

The courtroom remained near capacity the entire day, with a mostly even split of black and white spectators that included the school board, central office administrators, representatives from auxiliary groups like the PTA and the Schools Foundation, members of the Desegregation Advisory Council, and North Huntsville community groups.

When Haikala addressed the courtroom at the beginning of the hearing, she noted the system's lack of stability in recent months. The district has had two superintendents and an interim superintendent over a year that's been marked by squabbles among the school board, yet another overhaul of the discipline system, and the reworking of the district's alternative school program.

Constant change has made it more difficult for the district to move forward on the consent order, said Haikala. "I don't think the school system had the baseline (stability) last year that was needed."

She heaped praise on new Superintendent Matt Akin, saying she was impressed by what he has been able to accomplish in his six months on the job. She toured schools with him this week and said it was "incredible" to see him shake every teacher's hand and greet many by name. The district has made strides, she said.

"I've never seen a school district with as many assets as this school district (has)," she said.

Akin told the court that implementing the consent order is "vital" to achieving his oft-stated goal of Huntsville becoming a model school system for the nation.

"Everyone sitting here knows there are division in the community and divisions on the (school) board," said Akin. "Each of our districts has challenges," from the geographic challenges facing the sprawling west Huntsville district to the extreme poverty in North Huntsville, he said.

But, he added, "I believe the provisions of the consent order push the school system to (benefit) all children."

Public concerns

Catherine Hereford addressed the court during public comments at the end of the day. Her grandfather sued the district more than a half-century ago to end dual schooling and launched the legal case that continues today.

She urged the district and the court to not ignore concerns of the black community in Huntsville, particularly in the north part of the city.

"A lot of people in North Huntsville feel they have been treated as less-than, particularly in the decisions that have been made for North Huntsville," she said.

One concern that she said seems to have fallen on deaf ears is the North Huntsville community's concern over the district's decision to build the brand-new Jemison High School and McNair Junior High on the same campus. Some have worried it exposes the middle-school students to more discipline issues at the high school. She wondered aloud if the same decision "would have flown in South Huntsville."

Ayoka Billions, the mother of students at Blossomwood Elementary School, said she pulled one of her children out of the school after he was bullied and she felt the school wasn't able to adequately discipline those who bullied him. She worries about friends who have withdrawn their students from schools.

"We've talked a lot about black and white, but where are these kids coming from? They are in unstable homes," she said. "I've spent hours (volunteering) with children who, when there's a noise down the hall, they wonder if it's a gunshot. And we wonder why they can't read. Obviously schools can't always address those things, but that piece is something you can't measure through black and white."

Elizabeth Flemming, executive director for The Schools Foundation, said she has a kindergartener in a Huntsville school and "this process has not been easy for families across the board. I've had friends pull their students out from Huntsville City Schools, and I've had friends who put their students back in Huntsville City Schools.

"Change is not always easy, but in my heart, and after seeing the data we've seen today, we needed to do better by all students across the system."

Teacher ratios

Attorneys for the Department of Justice acknowledged that their interactions with the district overall "have been positive" and that schools had been cooperative in granting access to inspectors. The DOJ has visited several Huntsville schools.

The Department of Justice has been particularly focused on discipline, minority transfers and equitable access to course offerings.

Rolling Hills Elementary in north Huntsville is one school where administrators have not been able to maintain the ratio of black to white teachers outlined in the consent order - the proportion of black and white teachers has to be roughly the same as the proportion of black and white students in the district. Rolling Hills has a higher ratio of black teachers.

This is because the principal has had difficulty finding white teachers who are even willing to interview for teaching positions at the school, said Chris Pape, attorney for the district.

"Of the white candidates (the principal) asked to interview, 77 percent of them declined to even interview," he said. The DOJ attorneys will visit Rolling Hills on Thursday.

Five of the 38 schools in the district have a racial makeup of teachers that is markedly different from the district as a whole.

Another school on the DOJ's watch list is Huntsville High, which began reporting a series of incidents of racial harassment and discriminatory behavior last year.

One of the most egregious events happened shortly after the presidential inauguration in January, said schools attorney Chris Pape, but he didn't give details about the incident. Since that time, school administrators have been working to develop a better climate of inclusion in the school, and streamlining the formal process for reporting harassment.

There's now a formal process for reporting harassment that can be done through the school's website, and reports go directly to the principal and to district staff.

"(Having new harassment reporting procedures) was a positive outcome of what was a challenging time," said Pape.

At predominantly white Blossomwood and Jones Valley elementaries, the district has seen a high number of students withdrawing from the schools. As part of the federal negotiations, both schools saw their zones expanded west of Memorial Parkway to increase student diversity.

"Blossomwood and Jones Valley are two of our most integrated elementary schools," said Pape. The schools struggled through multiple changes to the student code of conduct over the past few years - four different codes without the past four years.

Hamilton said the feedback the DOJ has received indicated the climate at Blossomwood has stabilized, and that while Jones Valley initially better adapted to the new code of conduct, behavior issues have cropped up again more recently. The DOJ has requested more information "about the situation there."

Discipline & behavior

The DOJ heard more concerns and complaints regarding discipline than almost any other topic, said Andrea Hamilton, attorney with the Department of Justice.

The district has overhauled the student code of conduct four times in the past four years as schools struggled to implement programs meant to close the gap between the percentage of black and white students who are disciplined. Several years ago, according to Hamilton, black students were disciplined ten times the rate of white students.

"Those racial disparities meant black students were spending significantly more time outside classroom than white students for similar infractions," she said.

That gap has narrowed slightly in recent years. In the 2015-2016 school year, four times as many black high school students received a disciplinary infraction as white students. Last year that difference shrank a few percentage points to just over three times as many black high school students receiving disciplinary referrals as white students.

Overall, the percentage of students with at least one disciplinary referral rose last year for both black and white students.

Data table showing Huntsville City Schools disciplinary referrals by race. (Huntsville City Schools)

Achievement gap

Akin identified the gap in academic performance between white and black students as one of the district's biggest challenges.

Last year, only 16 percent of black students passed at least one AP exam, compared with 56 percent of white students. The rate for black students rose slightly from 10 percent in the 2014-2015 school year while the percentage for white students fell during the same timeframe, from 61 percent.

"We still see the same disparity that brought us to the need for the consent order in the first place," said Pape, attorney for the district.

Haikala also addressed the achievement gap:

"The achievement gap isn't unique to this school district but it is a challenge," she said. "if you all close that gap, you will truly be one of the greatest school systems in the nation."