Three local parents have joined together in a lawsuit against the Troy City Board of Education charging that a policy allowing parents to request classrooms is intentionally discriminatory.

The suit, filed Tuesday morning in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, seeks declaratory and injunctive relief.

“[The parent choice option] is racist in its implementation and it’s racist in its intent,” said attorney for the parents, Eric Hutchins.

At a news conference held Tuesday afternoon on the square, Troy Councilwoman Dejerilyn King Henderson explained that she and Hutchins believe the parent choice policy used by Troy City Schools is a “violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Henderson, acting as a spokesperson for the families involved in the litigation, said parent choice allows elementary school families to request teachers and request their children be placed in the same classroom as their friends. Henderson said that act leads to the formation of primarily white and all “black and brown” classrooms.

John F. Johnson is participating in the legal action on behalf of his son who was in an all-black kindergarten classroom last year; Linda Cotrell joined the action on behalf of her son who attended an all-black first-grade class last year; and Jessica Berry listed her children who attended all-black kindergarten and third-grade classes last year as her reason to join in the suit.

On Tuesday afternoon, Troy City Schools Superintendent Lee Hicks said the parents involved in the injunctive relief request had not come to him on behalf of their children prior to the lawsuit, but he wished they had. He also said he had not been served the suit which also names TES Principal Theresa Sims and school board members Roxie Kitchens, Judson Edwards, Wally Lowery, Eva Green and Jason Thomas.

“The parent request policy is open to all our parents regardless of color,” Hicks said. “The policy has been in place long before I came here.”

Hicks said the school system works to place elementary school students in a classroom where they know one or more children so that there is a level of comfort for the students while they branch out and make new friends.

“This has nothing to do with anyone’s personal agenda,” Hicks said “In this particular case, we are doing what is best for the kids.”

Hicks said more than 60 percent of the students in Troy City Schools are African-American about 35 percent are Caucasian. In a classroom of 20 students, there are usually 15 black students to five white students. Hicks said it is “very, very difficult” to prevent all-black classrooms because of the overall ratio.

“We are a school system that predominantly has African-American children in the school system,” Hicks said, noting that children do interact outside the classroom during computer, gifted, art and other programs.

Henderson and Hutchins maintain that parental choice affects the color of the classrooms at Troy Elementary School and that, in turn, is a disservice to all children.

“This is wrong because these children are not allowed to be in a classroom with children who don’t look like them,” Henderson said. “We are preventing children from being racially, culturally and socially diverse.”

Hicks said the school system has no plans to change its parent request policy.

“It’s sad that we have a city councilwoman who feels this is going on in our system,” Hicks said. “Obviously, we are trying to make sure a child feels comfortable when they are starting school. When a student is focused on learning, they are successful in the classroom.”

The lawsuit asks for an injunction against the policy, as well as legal fees for the plaintiffs and “any other relief the court deems necessary.”