University Charter School (UCS) is a

charter school A charter school is a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established state school system in which it is located. It is independent in the sense that it operates according to the basic principle of auto ...

in Lyon Hall, on the campus of the

University of West Alabama The University of West Alabama (UWA) is a public university in Livingston, Alabama. Founded in 1835, the school began as a church-supported school for young women called Livingston Female Academy. The original Board of Trustees of Livingston Fe ...

in Livingston, Alabama.About
" University Charter School. Retrieved on January 15, 2019. PDF p. 2/19: "UCS Contact Information University Charter School UWA’s Lyon Hall 108 North Street Livingston, AL 35470"

Background

It opened in 2018, with grades PreK-8, with plans to add one more grade each year until it reaches the 12th grade. It opened with 300 students. More than half of the students were black and fewer than half were white. Therefore, media outlets described the school as the first

de facto ''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...

racially integrated school in Sumter County. In an opinion article Wanda Jackson, a Washington, DC resident who originated from Sumter County, stated that there were earlier integrated schools. She cited the

Rosenwald schools The Rosenwald School project built more than 5,000 schools, shops, and teacher homes in the Education in the United States, United States primarily for the education of African-American children in the Southern United States, South during the ear ...

, which had some white students, and a group of black students who integrated Livingston High School in the 1960s. Initial plans called for the school to be in the former Livingston High School. In 2018 the Sumter County district board attempted to get an injunction against the opening of UCS.

Background

Prior to 1970s schools in Sumter County were by law, and later ''

'',

racially segregated Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...

. Even though the Sumter County School District was ordered to de facto desegregate by the federal courts system in 1970, white families had immediately moved their children to Sumter Academy, a

segregation academy Segregation academies are private schools in the Southern United States that were founded in the mid-20th century by white parents to avoid having their children attend desegregated public schools. They were founded between 1954, when the U.S. ...

, leaving the public schools majority black. - This article includes statements by Nettles, citing the ''

Tuscaloosa News The '' Tuscaloosa News '' is a daily newspaper serving Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States, and the surrounding area in west central Alabama. In 2012, Halifax Media Group acquired the ''Tuscaloosa News''. Prior to that, the paper's owner was Th ...

'' article, linking his statements to the establishment of the charter school. Joe Nettles, the American football coach at Sumter Academy, stated that chatter about a proposed charter school convinced some prospective families that Sumter Academy was bound to decline and close anyway, so they chose not to enroll their children. Sumter Academy closed in 2017.

References

External links

University Charter School
{{Coord, 32.586124, -88.189018, display=title University of West Alabama Schools in Sumter County, Alabama Charter schools in the United States Educational institutions established in 2018 2018 establishments in Alabama Public K–12 schools in Alabama University-affiliated schools in the United States