Revised Hoover school rezoning plan should come out Thursday

Hoover school officials plan to release a revised rezoning plan on Thursday after a planned conference call with the U.S. Department of Justice and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, school officials said today.

School officials have made changes to proposed new school attendance zones based on feedback received at community meetings over the past month, and those changes will be reflected on newly drawn maps that should come out Thursday, according to an email sent out to parents this afternoon.

The Justice Department and Legal Defense Fund, two parties to a decades-old school desegregation lawsuit that includes the Hoover system, already are looking over the revisions, according to the email.

School officials had a “productive, collaborative meeting” with the Justice Department and Legal Defense Fund in the past week, the email said.

Another in-person meeting with those parties was scheduled for this week, but enough progress was made last week that a conference call will be held instead to iron out final issues, school system spokesman Jason Gaston said. That conference call is scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday.

The Hoover school board plans to hold a special meeting at 5:30 p.m. Monday to vote on the rezoning plan.

Once the revised zoning plan is released, parents once again will be able to go to hooverrezoning.com and type in their address in school locator software to see where their children would be zoned to attend school in the 2016-17 school year, officials said.

See more about Hoover school rezoning here.

This post was updated at 4:45 p.m. Wednesday to include more information about meeting with the U.S. Department of Justice and NAACP Legal Defense Fund and to include a time for Monday's school board meeting.