Good Monday morning to you, and the Gardendale school separation just got a bit more complicated…

Weather: Warming up. We’ll have sunny skies today with highs in the upper 70s, perhaps reaching 80. Partly cloudy and cool tonight with lows in the lower 50s. Tuesday will be mostly sunny with highs around 80 and lows in the lower 50s.

Race enters the separation case. What was originally characterized by the Jefferson County Board of Education president as a routine filing in the system’s decades-old desegregation case, now appears to be an effort to get the federal courts to intervene. In the brief, filed last Thursday in the continuing case of Stout and the United States, et al vs. Jefferson County Board of Education – a lawsuit originally filed in the mid-1960s – JefCoEd lawyers invite the U.S. District Court to intervene in the separation under the premise that having Gardendale schools, with their mostly-white student body, leave the county system would adversely affect the county’s ability to provide equal educational facilities and opportunities for minority students. We’ll have a full report on this filing, and its repercussions, later this morning.

Time for a chat. In a related story, JefCoEd Supt. Dr. Craig Pouncey has scheduled a series of hastily-arranged public meetings with parents of students who currently attend Gardendale schools, but who live outside the city limits – the so-called “red zone.” Pouncey attends to address the progress of the separation, and how the county systems feels that the families will be affected in the next school year. The first meeting, and likely the largest, will be held tonight at 6 p.m. at the Mt. Olive Elementary School gymnasium. Additional meetings will be held Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at Brookville Elementary in Graysville (for Brookside parents), and Thursday at 6 at Bethel Baptist Church in North Smithfield.

Sports: So long. The Alabama Crimson Tide men’s basketball team will be playing in the National Invitation Tournament later this week, but their coach of six years will not be with them. Anthony Grant was fired Sunday morning by Athletic Director Bill Battle, after the Tide failed to make the NCAA Tournament field for the third straight season. No word yet on who will fill in for Grant at the NIT. Meanwhile UAB earned an automatic bid to the Big Dance by winning the Conference USA tournament championship, and has been installed as a 14th seed in the bracket. They will face third seed Iowa State in the first round of the tournament, and will play Thursday morning at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Ky…. Baseball: Fifth-ranked Mortimer Jordan had an easy tri-series on Saturday, dispatching Dora by a 14-0 score and Center point by a 19-0 mark, both games lasting just five innings. Andrew Warren and Dylan Burgett combines to throw a one-hitter against the Eagles, with each pitcher striking out five hitters. Elsewhere, Corner swept a tri-series of its own, beating Oak Grove 12-4 and Walker 6-3. And Fultondale struggled to get just two hits in a 13-0 five-inning loss to Cordova…. Softball: Locust Fork split a tri-series on Saturday, beating St. Clair County 7-2 off a three-run home by Anna Hood plus a solo shot by Micilah Watkins. They then fell to Etowah 7-0, with Blue Devils pitcher Madison Grant holding the Hornets to a one-hitter.