Trustees in the Garland Independent School District are expected to vote Tuesday to support a federal motion to end more than 50 years of court oversight of school desegregation, citing major demographic shifts that have rendered the original order obsolete.
U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould of the Northern District of Texas filed the request last month, arguing that the district has fully complied and no longer requires supervision.
The 1970 federal order, issued amid segregation practices, required Garland ISD to adopt a racial integration plan, including routine demographic reporting and the closure of the all-Black George Washington Carver school.
“Garland ISD eliminated its system of formal segregation many years ago, including by doing away with the former segregated Carver school, and the demographic composition of its schools today … indicates that there are also no remaining vestiges of any former discriminatory policies,” Raybould wrote in the motion, KERA reported.
The district, once predominantly white with over 76% enrollment in that group as of 1987, now serves 50,930 students as of December 11, 2025. Current breakdowns show 55% Hispanic, 18% African American, 13% white, 10% Asian, and smaller shares for others. White student percentages range from 1.12% at Bullock Elementary to 35.81% at Keeley Elementary.
Ethnicity bands established in 1987, which cap white enrollment deviations at 20 percentage points above or below the district average, are now unworkable given the low overall white enrollment, the motion states. It notes that supervision was meant as a “temporary measure to remedy past discrimination” rather than a permanent fixture.
The order followed the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Garland ISD responded with a freedom-of-choice program that lets students choose any campus or magnet program, alongside nondiscrimination rules for staff, buses, and buildings.
Garland ISD is the only Texas district still bound by such a mandate, though a statewide order has remained in effect since 1971. A 2010 Fifth Circuit ruling freed most districts, leaving at least six under oversight as of January.
The local NAACP, an intervenor since shortly after the order’s inception, helped shape modifications like the 1987 bands and required the formation of a Multi-Ethnic Committee.
Activist Tony Torres, a committee member, backs the change.
“The district was dealing with obsolete data and issues pertaining to, well, another era,” he said, per KERA. “The intent of the order had been met.”
Longtime resident Koni Kaiwi called the step overdue.
“I truly believe this order needed to have been lifted 20 years ago. (It’s) well, well past time. It is like super ripe,” she said, KERA reported.
In a statement, the district affirmed that, whatever the court’s ruling, it will “continue to work collaboratively with the NAACP and its community partners and remains committed to systems and practices grounded in its belief that all means all.”
Approval would declare the district “unitary,” dismissing the case and federal jurisdiction. Last May, the Justice Department terminated a similar order in Louisiana, labeling it a “historical wrong.”
