At 7:50 on Monday morning, when school started at the University Charter School in Livingston, in west Alabama's Sumter County, students in kindergarten through eighth grade began a new era, hardly aware of the history they were making.

For the first time, black students and white students are learning side-by-side in integrated public school classrooms. More than half of the school's 300-plus students are black, while just under half are white.

While not fully representative of the county's split---76 percent black, 24 percent white, no public school in the county has come close to reaching the percentage at UCS, according to historical enrollment documents.

Fourth-grade teacher Morri Mordecai with families during the first day of school at University Charter School in Livingston, Ala., on Aug. 13, 2018.

The implications of the charter school opening wasn't lost on parents, teachers and school administrators Monday.

"This is an historic day and an historic mission," principal John Cameron said as he directed cars in the student drop off lane. Cameron is a native of this area of Alabama, known as the Black Belt first historically for its fertile soil and now also because the majority of residents are black.

Kindergarten teacher Brittany Williams, who is one of the school's 20-plus teachers recruited to open the school, graduated from UWA in December. She said at last week's open house she is thrilled to teach at UCS in part because she fell in love with Livingston and didn't want to leave.

University Charter School kindergarten teacher Brittany Williams poses for a picture with her student during the school's open house in Livingston, Ala., on Aug. 9, 2018.

Williams sees both the historical significance and the way students' lives can be changed by attending an integrated school.

"For me," she said, "I'm inspired because now, students, when they come to this school as a kindergartner, that's all they will know is an integrated school."

"The charter school took on a huge task of integrating in this community," Williams said, "and I think our focus is to make sure that our children see this as normal not something that's out of place. Because it should be normal to our kids and to our parents."

First day excitement

In most ways, it was a typical start to the first day of school. Students arrived wearing uniforms and carrying school supplies, while teachers lined up to welcome families. Ladies from the First Presbyterian Church near the school set up a table and offered free coffee for parents and teachers as they mingled in the minutes before school began.

Parent Robert Beard walked his first- and fourth-grade children inside the school. Beard said he hopes the school is able to bring everybody together and provide the support to build relationships in the community. "Hopefully we can keep everybody together and provide a great education program," he said. Beard said the quality of teachers and the state-of-the-art offerings are great for the students.

As students were dropped off at UCS, families waited with their younger children inside the school. The conference center was jam-packed with students and their families, the noise at an acceptable level considering the circumstances.

Parent Markeitha Tolliver waits with her son and her nephew for the first day of school at the University Charter School in Livingston, Ala., to begin on Aug. 13, 2018.

Parent Markeitha Tolliver waited with her fourth-grade son, Marquez. Her aunt is a teacher at the school. "The school will work wonders for the community," she said. "I'm praying they keep it for a very long time."

What students learn here, she said, will give them an advantage as they grow. Tolliver, who graduated from Livingston High School, said the school's mission of integrating schoolchildren means a lot to her. "Change is good. It's been a slow process, but it's happening."

Bruce Cook, a Livingston resident for more than 40 years, agrees that the school's opening is good for everyone. "It's something that this community has needed for a long, long time," he said. Cook spoke with AL.com while taking a break from putting final touches on the school's playground during the Aug. 9 open house.

Avoiding integration

How is it that Sumter County residents have avoided integrating public schools until now?

When the federal courts demanded Alabama integrate public schools in 1969, 15 years after the Brown v. Board decision ending segregation, white students in Sumter County, as in many places across the state, left public school and created their own all-white private schools.

Those schools, called segregation academies, kept segregation in place long after the court ordered an end to it.

Sumter Academy, a K-12 school, opened in 1970 with more than 500 students, but by 2016, that number was down to 172 according to news reports. The school closed at the end of the 2016-2017 school year with school officials in part blaming the opening of the charter school.

According to the state department of education, during the 2017-2018 school year, all but 11 of Sumter County's 1,500 students were black. Black students accounted for nearly 100 percent of enrollment in five nearby counties, all part of the Black Belt region of Alabama, enrolling fewer than 20 white students during the same time period.

Segregation academies still exist across the state and still enroll a large portion of the white students who choose not to enroll in public schools.

Sumter is the poorest county in Alabama, with a median household income of $20,428---less than half of the state's $44,578 median income. More than a third of the county's residents live in poverty.

All of the students enrolled in the county's public schools qualify for free and reduced-price meals, a measure of poverty. At UCS, nearly 70 percent of students qualify.

As Alabama's first rural charter school, UCS is joining the small but growing number of rural charter schools, which, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, are only 11 percent of the nation's 7,000 charter schools. More than 3.2 million students attended charter schools during the last school year.

Charter schools, public schools funded with taxpayer dollars that are allowed some flexibility from regulations in exchange for more accountability, are still new to Alabama, and UCS is only the state's second public charter school to open. ACCEL Day and Evening Academy, a high school program for at-risk students, opened in Mobile in 2017 with 250 students in grades nine through 12.

Four charters, located in Huntsville, Birmingham, Montgomery, and Chatom in Washington County, are expected to open at the start of the 2019 school year.

Excitement at the open house

During last week's UCS open house, the hallways were noisy, filled with students and parents, eagerly meeting their new teacher, checking out the brightly-decorated classrooms, meeting classmates and enjoying popsicles and other refreshments.

Cookies for students at the University Charter School Open House in Livingston, Ala., on Aug. 9, 2018.

Wallace has four children and one grandchild enrolled in the charter school, from kindergarten through the fourth grade. He is excited about what he sees as an opportunity for his children and grandchild to do something different.

"When you have kids that get a chance to be exposed to things at a young age, that makes a difference," he said. "When they get it when they're young, they're a lot better off."

There are no admission requirements at UCS, and students enrolled this year are assured enrollment in subsequent years, and the school plans to add one grade each year, becoming a K-12 school by the start of the 2022 school year. If enrollment next year exceeds capacity, a lottery will be held for students new to the school.

The school plans to add football in the future, officials said, but will start with a wide array of middle school sports, including boys' and girls' basketball.

Kerry Lewis is the basketball coach at UCS. During the school day, he will be an aide for students and will guide UCS students to places across the university's campus, like the music hall, where students will take classes.

The school is currently housed on the site of the old Livingston High School, now called Lyon Hall, adjacent to the University of West Alabama campus. The campus became the center of controversy when the Sumter County Board of Education sued UWA and the charter school claiming that when the university purchased the building from the county in 2011 while under state intervention that they promised not to open a school in the building.

A circuit court judge ruled in the charter school's favor in July, clearing the way for the school's opening.

Lewis, who was a graduate assistant at UWA, said he was recruited to the school by his former Hale County coach and now-principal at UCS. Lewis said he understands that the community might be hesitant to embrace UCS. "A lot of people aren't used to something new," he said. "Give us a year or two and we'll have everybody behind us."

J.J. Wedgworth was named Head of School at UCS last year. She graduated from Sumter Academy and taught there for a year, more than a decade ago.

Wedgworth made the rounds during the school's open house, chatting with new students and parents, but also stopping in with husband Evan to meet her son's first-grade teacher.

Head of School J.J. Wedgworth with husband Evan and son Louis, a first-grader, at the University Charter School open house on Aug. 9, 2018, in Livingston, Ala.

Wedgworth has been a driving force to get the charter school up and running since late 2016, when a group from the University of West Alabama, where she worked as head of research integrity until taking this job, began investigating whether a charter school might be the way to improve education in the county.

During last year's presentation to the state charter school commission, Wedgworth said more than 900 children who live in the county who do not attend the county's public schools. Wedgworth said students are leaving neighboring city school systems and private schools and are "coming home" to Sumter County by enrolling in UCS.

The mission of the school, integrating the community and providing a high-quality education, is important to her.

Integrating the school, she said, "means that finally that we as a county and community can move forward."

Opening a public charter school in Alabama is hard work. There are mounds of paperwork and checklists, and all start-up costs have to be raised by the group who wants to start the school. The state doesn't fund start-up costs for charter schools, and it will be a couple of months before the first state allocation for the school is made.

Wedgworth said more than $1 million has been raised, through donations and grant applications, to get UCS up and running.

Wedgworth said it's "surreal" to know that school has started.

"It's one of those things," Wedgworth said, "where we've kind of just all kept our heads down and we weren't going to stop or give up until we got here."

Morri Mordecai's fourth-grade classroom, with exercise balls as chairs, was a popular stop during the open house.

She has taught school for 10 years, most recently in Tuscaloosa and is excited about teaching at UCS. When her husband first got a job in Livingston, she said, she wasn't sure moving was best for their young daughter.

"We honestly didn't know what we were going to do as far as our child goes," she said, "and then God sent us here for this experience." Now that Mordecai knows about the expanse of academic offerings and flexibility afforded students and teachers in the charter school, she said, "The fact that she gets this opportunity brings tears to my eyes."

"I'm so excited that this is the learning experience she is going to have and that I get to be a part of it," she said.

At that point, a new family entered the room, and Mordecai rushed to greet yet another new student.

UCS' academic opportunities include a rotating menu of offerings for students, Curriculum Director Matt Johnson said.

Students at the University Charter School in Livingston, Ala., wait together before the first day of school on Aug. 13, 2018.

Every student in kindergarten through eighth grade, he said, will take Spanish, robotics and coding, P.E., art, music, theater, career awareness class and a health care science class.

The flexibility afforded a public charter school allowed multiple partnerships with UWA as well as business and industry in the area, he said.

"The Mayor of [the nearby town of] York is teaching the career awareness class," Johnson said.

That flexibility is setting a higher bar for all subjects, he said. "There are higher expectations, just with the freedom that we have to do school the way we know it should be done."

School choice could be a lifeline for the community

Until Sumter Academy closed, families had to choose between an all-black public school system or an all-white private school.

University Charter School board member Anthony Crear said now families have a choice. "It's an opportunity for whites and blacks to go to school together," Crear said, "to give the kids in Sumter County an educational experience that they perhaps have not had before."

UCS board chairman Micky Smith, a math professor and faculty athletic representative at UWA, said they've had a hard time recruiting young people as faculty members.

He called Alabama's 2015 passage of the charter school law a "godsend" and is hoping that providing an academically strong education will be a lifeline for the county.

"When young families ask about school choices, there wasn't really a good solution," Smith said.

Sumter County's four kindergarten through eighth grade schools earned 'F's on the state's recent report cards, while the high school earned a 'D'. On another list of failing public schools, required under the Alabama Accountability Act, one K-8 school and the county's high school earned 'F's.

The Sumter County Board of Education closed North Sumter Junior High, a K-8 school, in June, leaving the county with a total of four schools---three K-8 schools and the county's sole high school.

Smith said he is encouraged by the support the school has had from the white community and the black community. "We're trying to provide an education people can be proud of."

Smith said he already knows at least five families have moved to Sumter County and Livingston to enroll their children in the charter school. That's a good start, he said.

"Before we get industry and other things to happen here, this has got to happen," he said. "And it's going to happen."

The school has five years to make the school a success.

UCS has a five-year contract with the Alabama Public Charter School Commission, the governing body that has the power to close the school if it fails to meet academic benchmarks at the end of those five years.

Wedgworth said her teachers are up to the task. "I think my staff is probably the most selfless group of people I've ever worked with in my life," she said. "They're here to serve those students, bottom line."

The focus at UCS during this first year is forming relationships, she said. "Of course, we're all about academics," she said, "because we're a school."

"But the bottom line is that it doesn't matter how good you are at academic performance," she said, "if you don't form relationships with families and those kids don't feel loved and accepted in the classroom, no learning is going to take place in that environment."

"Anybody can teach English, but you've got to have somebody that can form relationships with students," she said. "We feel like we have a staff that can really do that."

If the first morning of school is any indication, with the hugs and warm greetings exchanged among families and teachers, UCS is off to a good start.

Note: Markeitha Tolliver's aunt is a teacher at University Charter School. We originally identified her as the teacher's sister. We apologize for the error.