Pandemic, courts may lead to long lead time for Tenth Street closure

Feb. 27—Alma Maya says she doesn't have a problem with the proposed closure of Tenth Street Elementary School, but she does have a few simple questions.

"When?" said Maya, one of the several parents parked in the afternoon pickup line that flowed out into the street in front of the school Tuesday.

Anniston's school board last week voted to "start the process" of closing Tenth Street, a declaration of intent that has policymakers now waiting like parents in a pickup line.

"We don't know when," said school board president Robert Houston. "We know there's a lot of due diligence to be done."

School board members for years have said they intend to close or consolidate schools. The school system has fewer than 1,800 students in three elementary schools, a pre-K and kindergarten academy, a middle and a high school. Enrollment a decade ago was close to 2,400, but has declined apace with the general decline in the city's population.

With around 290 students, Tenth Street is the school in the city system with the lowest enrollment, school officials have said, and is in the oldest building.

So far, the proposed closure hasn't packed the house at school board meetings or generated rallies in opposition, but in the late stages of a pandemic, public sentiment can be difficult to gauge. Parents in Tuesday's pick-up line took only a moment to lament the loss of the school before calculating how it might affect their day.

"It's kind of sad," said April Coburn. "I understand that they feel there's a need."

Coburn said she has three kids in the school system — one at Tenth Street, one at Anniston Middle and one at Anniston High. Depending on where her youngest winds up in school — school officials have said students will be split between Golden Springs and Randolph Park — her daily drive could change significantly.

The plan to redraw those school zones, like every other part of the school closure, is likely to be held up at least a little by the pandemic. Houston said the school board plans to talk to community members about the proposal before holding a final vote. In the age of COVID, it's hard to say what that sort of outreach would look like.

"If we held a meeting, he'd have to have a building big enough to have the space," Houston said. He said it's possible there could be a public meeting in Anniston High's auditorium at some point, or a forum on Zoom or some other virtual venue. It's something school board members are still trying to figure out, he said.

Storied history

History could also get in the way. Anniston's school system is still under a consent decree in Lee v. Macon, the 1960s court case that integrated Alabama's schools. Schools under those decrees typically have to get a federal court's permission before beginning major changes that could affect the demographics of local schools, such as school construction or school closure.

Houston said that approval will likely take time, though he doesn't expect significant objections to the closure. Black students make up 84 percent of the student body at Tenth Street, according to Alabama Department of Education numbers. In the school system as a whole, 88 percent of students are Black.

Tenth Street opened in 1954, the same year the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, but the integration battle would have to be fought again in the newly opened school. Tenth Street was all-white until at least 1965, when the city school board adopted an integration plan to avoid the loss of federal funds, according to past accounts in the Star.

Civil rights activist N. Q. Reynolds enrolled his two children at Tenth Street in 1967, the first Black students to attend the school.

"The children were kind. The teachers were uncomfortable," Andre Reynolds, who was 7 in 1967, told The Star in a 2009 interview. "But through the grace of God, we made it."

By 1976, the school was more integrated, with 260 white and 78 Black students. In 1992, the school was half Black and half white, expected to become majority Black the following year.

Some other Alabama school systems have sought release from consent decrees. Calhoun County Schools won just such a release in December 2019, against the objection of some local Black leaders. Anniston's school board hasn't been as eager to seek release from their order.

"That's not a dog we're ready to fight," Houston said.

Anniston operated 15 schools the year Tenth Street opened. That may have been another manifestation of segregation and its duplication of services, but the city was also larger then, with a population of about 31,000 in the 1950 census.

Today there are about 22,000 people in the city, a reflection of the decline that began with the closure of Fort McClellan in the 1990s.

Less than a year ago, school board members were talking about bolder plans for school consolidation, in particular the possibility of moving all three remaining elementary schools into the building now occupied by Anniston Middle. Houston won't rule that out as a possibility, well down the road. He said board members want to spend less on buildings, and more on kids.

"We're not in the real estate business," he said. "We're in the children business."

Capitol & statewide reporter Tim Lockette: 256-294-4193. On Twitter @TLockette_Star.