The federal judge presiding over the breakaway of Gardendale City Schools from the Jefferson County system appears have her focus on what that split will mean to efforts to declare JefCoEd fully desegregated, after a half century of federal oversight.

In a status conference held on Nov. 10, U.S. District Judge Madeline Haikala told attorneys for both systems, the Department of Justice and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that she sees efforts by Jefferson County Schools to achieve unitary status — the legal term for a finding that the system no longer has any vestiges of racial segregation — as being the bigger issue in the case.

“The court has to be concerned with the desegregation goals overall for Jefferson County,” Haikala told the attorneys.

Haikala is the latest in a series of judges to preside over the Stout vs. Jefferson County Board of Education, which was filed in 1965 by plaintiff Linda Stout with representation by the NAACP. The court ordered the system to be desegregated at the time, and that ruling also applies to all other systems that have broken away from JefCoEd over the years, including Trussville, Leeds and Hoover.

Haikala has broad powers to change school enrollment patterns, and could even deny Gardendale’s effort to form its own system despite what state law allows, if she believes it would push the efforts by JefCoEd to achieve unitary status out of reach.

Federal judges have, in past desegregation cases, forced city and county systems to merge in order to remove segregation. In the early 1970s, civil rights groups filed a case in Louisville, Ky. that resulted in the city’s schools to combine with those from Jefferson County, Ky. and the suburban system of Anchorage. Such action is not being sought by the plaintiffs in the Stout case, however.

Gardendale and JefCoEd officials requested the status conference in order to get the case moving again, as Gardendale is still seeking to take over operation of the city’s schools in time for the 2016-17 school year, after being forced to delay a year already. JefCoEd officials are still seeking a payment of more than $30 million to build a new high school for students that would be displaced by the Gardendale breakaway; they argue that the schools those students would be moved to aren’t equivalent to the new Gardendale High facility.

An analysis prepared by the Department of Justice showed that students outside the Gardendale city limits who are currently attending the GHS feeder pattern would likely be moved to Mortimer Jordan or Minor. Jordan, which is slightly newer than Gardendale High, is considered functionally equivalent but has a student population that is 90 percent white. Minor, a 27-year-old facility, is almost the opposite — 89 percent of its students are black, and most of the transfers from Gardendale would also be black, mainly from the North Smithfield neighborhood.

Haikala said she would like to tour the schools involved in the near future, and also directed attorneys for all sides to set up a schedule for the discovery process, where all parties share information and evidence.

Gardendale City Schools attorney Steve Rowe told Haikala that they hope to have the case resolved by March, in order to stay on schedule for a takeover that summer.