Garland ISD’s board voted Tuesday to support a proposal that would end more than half a century of court supervision.
The 6-0 vote came weeks after Ryan Raybould, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, filed a motion seeking to have the district’s 56-year-old desegregation order lifted, and asking a federal judge to rule the district had successfully eliminated segregation from its schools.
Before the board’s vote, Superintendent Ricardo López emphasized that the district’s campus choice system, which was put into place under the court order, would remain in effect. The system allows any student in the district to apply to attend any campus they choose, and caps the number of white students at each campus to within 20 percentage points of the district’s overall enrollment.
About 55% of Garland ISD’s roughly 51,000 students are Hispanic, according to a December report. Almost 18% of students are Black, almost 13% are white and 10% are Asian. The district is home to 67 campuses and magnet programs.
The Education Lab
López said the vote doesn’t indicate that Garland ISD has “suddenly arrived at equity.” The district’s efforts to end school segregation go back decades, he said, and school leaders will continue to work to ensure the district serves all its students long after the order is lifted.
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“This vote is not about closing a chapter and walking away,” López said. “It’s about recognizing progress while recommitting ourselves to vigilance. It’s about acknowledging that systems must always be reviewed, improved and held to the highest standard, not because we were required to do it, but because it is the right thing to do.”
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