Garland ISD could soon be released from decades-long federal supervision of its desegregation policies after a United States attorney filed a motion to dismiss a 1970 court order.
Ryan Raybould, a U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, called the court-enforced agreement to integrate “outdated” in his December motion, which asked a federal judge to rule that the district had successfully eradicated segregation from its schools.
The move comes after Trump administration officials vowed last spring to overturn court-ordered desegregation plans across the country, including two in Louisiana, that they say are outdated. The cases, which were opened by the Justice Department during the Civil Rights era, went after schools that resisted desegregation.
In 1970, a U.S. district court mandated Garland ISD follow a plan to ensure a “unitary, non-discriminatory school system.” Those policies, which were modified in 1987 after the NAACP joined as a plaintiff, included the creation of a school choice plan and an advisory committee charged with discussing how to achieve “interracial harmony and understanding” among the community, according to court documents.
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Those policies remain in place. Garland ISD has the nation’s oldest school choice desegregation plan, which means its 51,000 students can choose to attend any of its 67 campuses and magnet programs in the district. A policy known as the “ethnic band” limits the number of white students at each campus to be within 20 percentage points of the district’s overall white student enrollment.
An 11-member Multi-Ethnic Committee sends two reports a year on its schools’ ethnic and racial makeups to a federal judge. The committee, which is made up of three white members, three Black members, three Hispanic members and two Asian members, also oversees efforts to recruit more minority teachers and solicit scholarships for minority students.
What Garland ISD said
Garland ISD is the only Texas school district still under a desegregation order, according to the district.
Spokesperson Typhani Braziel said U.S. attorneys and Garland ISD leaders have not previously moved to release the district from the desegregation order. Trustees will vote on the motion to move to unitary status at a Jan. 20 meeting.
District leaders have previously called the order and the school choice program “a model for the nation to follow.”
“Every school is reflective of the entire community,” said Jovan Wells, associate superintendent at the time, in a 2018 podcast for the Commit Partnership, a nonprofit focused on improving educational and economic outcomes in Dallas County. “It’s not just one race in the school. … It really promotes that equity.”
On Dec. 16, two U.S. attorneys asked a federal district court to find Garland ISD has successfully ended racial segregation and should be released from court supervision. They pointed to the district’s demographic composition and the fact that no school has a percentage of white students greater than 36%.
“Here, there can be no question of Garland ISD’s compliance with this Court’s desegregation decrees and its elimination of the vestiges of de jure segregation,” wrote Raybould, who was recently appointed by President Donald Trump, in his motion.
Raybould said the district’s dramatically changed demographics, including an influx in Hispanic students and a decrease in white students, means federal supervision and the district’s ethnic bands are “outdated.”
Garland ISD demographics
In 1987, white students made up 76.2% of Garland ISD’s enrollment, according to the motion. As of December, that number is less than 13%, according to a Multi-Ethnic Committee report.
Hispanic students now make up 55% of the district’s enrollment, according to the December report. Nearly 18% are Black and 10% are Asian.
“The conditions that initially prompted this Court to intervene in the district’s affairs to remedy a pattern of discrimination against Black students by an overwhelmingly white district … have dissipated and changed in a way that no longer mandate or justify this Court’s ongoing supervision,” Raybould wrote.
In 2013, the district’s changing demographics began to test the success of the school choice plan and limit how many students could enroll in their first pick, according to a Dallas Morning News article.
“Because of school capacities and the federal court’s ethnicity bands, not everyone can be accommodated,” the article stated, noting over a thousand families were asked to pick a second-choice school.
In his motion, Raybould emphasized that federal supervision of local systems was meant to be a temporary measure and “not intended to operate in perpetuity.”
Ricky McNeal, president of the Garland NAACP, said the group would meet later this month to decide whether it supported a declaration that the district is legally desegregated.
“We have developed a great partnership with the district and they recognize the issues that we have been championing and there has not been much resistance from the district in trying to meet some of those goals,” he said. “However, just like with everything else, there’s always an opportunity to improve.”
He said the district had made progress in expanding access to magnet and gifted and talented programs. Still, he wanted to see more diversity in administrative hiring and a closer examination of the district’s discipline programs.
“Change is never easy,” McNeal said. “However, the thing that’s going to assist us, in whichever direction that our unit decides to move forward, is the fact that we — the district, as well as the NAACP and other community groups — have to continue an open partnership so that everyone is heard.”
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