Jefferson County Schools Supt. Craig Pouncey, standing next to Board of Education President Dean Taylor (far right), talks to parents who have applied to have their children attend the system's proposed International Baccalaureate middle school. The opening of the school has been delayed by a year, due in part to delays by a federal court that must approve the new program.

A plan to reconfigure grade levels at Corner and Bagley schools, plus the establishment of an international baccalaureate middle school program, have both been delayed one year.

Jefferson County Schools Supt. Craig Pouncey announced the delay Thursday at the monthly regular meeting of the JefCoEd Board of Education. His announcement came after about 20 anxious parents of applicants to the new IB program showed up for the meeting, wanting to know about the status of the project.

Pouncey said much of the delay lies in the U.S. District Court in Birmingham, primarily due to new appointments to the bench and within the Department of Justice. Judge Madeline Haikala, who took the bench in October 2013, now has jurisdiction over the decades-old Stout v. Jefferson County Board of Education desegregation case, which was originally filed in the mid-1960s.

“She has taken a very in-depth interest in trying to better understand Jefferson County’s obligations to the desegregation court order,” Pouncey told the parents. “At the same time, the plaintiffs — the legal defense fund for the NAACP — have two brand-new attorneys. The Justice Department has a brand-new attorney. So we’re trying to establish that Jefferson County is trying to do what’s right for kids. Going forward, our goal is to be relieved from that court order.”

The same process has also affected the separation process for the breakaway Gardendale City Schools system, which jointly announced on Friday along with JefCoEd that the takeover would not occur on July 1 as originally planned.

“We’ve got two different conversations going on with federal court,” Pouncey said. “All the while, we’ve got a new judge and new attorneys, and we’re trying to prove ourselves to them that we’re doing what’s right.”

The plan to rearrange grades at Corner and Bagley would put grades 5-8 at Corner Middle, and K-4 at Bagley. Currently, both schools house grades K-8.

Pouncey said that he and his staff had promised to meet with parents at both schools before any change takes place. With the delays by the court and only eight weeks before the new school year begins, the superintendent said there simply wasn’t enough time to properly make the changes.

The International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme is designed to be an enlargement of the Jefferson County International Baccalaureate School — consistently rated in numerous rankings as one of the top high schools in the nation. It’s administered by the same Swiss-based foundation that developed and oversees the high-school version.

The middle years IB school will move into what is now Pleasant Grove Middle School. Current PGMS seventh- and eighth-grade students would move to the new Pleasant Grove High, which currently operates at about half of its capacity, partly because of population declines stemming from the 2011 tornado that wiped out part of the city. Sixth-grade PGMS students would move back to Pleasant Grove Elementary or Brighton School.

The initial goal for the new IB program is to have about 300 students in grades six through eight. JefCoEd officials said more than 570 applications had been received, and several parents of those applicants told Pouncey that their children were anxiously awaiting their acceptance, even to the point of going to the mailbox every day.

Pouncey said he knew that many of those parents were considering sending their children to private schools, and that with just eight weeks before the new school year begins, “private schools are telling you it’s time to put up or shut up.”