The Jefferson County Board of Education (JEFCOED) has launched a program that allows students to transfer from schools where their race is in the majority to schools where their race is in the minority.
According to the district website, the program will allow majority-to-minority ("M-to-M") transfers for qualifying students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
Parents are encouraged to review a spreadsheet detailing each school and stating which race of students can transfer into and out of each. On the spreadsheet, Lipscomb Elementary is the only majority Hispanic school in the district.
According to the district, "There are no JEFCOED schools that have a majority race other than Black, White, or Hispanic. Therefore, at this time, students of a race other than Black, White, or Hispanic are not eligible for an M-to-M transfer."
"The purpose is to ensure that we don't have any racial isolation," Jefferson County Schools Superintendent Walter Gonsoulin, Jr., told WVTM 13.
"It furthers desegregation, where we won't have communities that are segregated by race, whether black or white," he added.
M-To-M Table 2025-2026 School Year by aprylmarie.fogel on Scribd
On March 4, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama approved a consent decree in Stout v. Jefferson County Board of Education, a 60-year-old school desegregation case. This transfer process is a part of that decree. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which represented the plaintiffs in the case, a group of black families in Jefferson County, the decree will require:
- Expanding the use of majority to minority transfers gives black students more opportunities to attend better schools.
- Requiring the District to implement a robust magnet program to increase opportunities for black students to access themed schools.
- Significant revision of the District's Code of Conduct and Alternative School policies to reduce racially disparate disciplinary results.
- Changes to the gifted program to hopefully help combat the consistent under-identification of black gifted students.
According to JEFCOED, the criteria for students to transfer are:
- The student's race is in the majority at the student's zoned school; (To verify your child's zoned school for the 2025-26 school year, please use the "Find your address" tool found on the JEFCOED School Search Page linked here.)
- The student's race is not in the majority at his or her desired school; (Find your child's school on the M-to-M Student Transfer Table linked here.)
- There is space available at the student's desired school, as defined by the decree; and
- The student lives within the JEFCOED attendance boundaries.
The school district is holding public forums for families to get more information.
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