Hoover City Schools had family followed to prove they lived out of district

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The Hoover City School System is being sued in a federal court by a parent who says officials harassed her family over claims that her daughter did not live within the city.

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Tamica Shipman, whose eight-year-old daughter is in the third grade, said city school officials took dramatic measures to prove that her daughter was not zoned to attend school there.

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Those included monitoring and following vehicles associated with her family and her elderly parents without their consent.

“If there were concerns, I should have been shown the evidence and given the opportunity to respond,” Shipman said. “Instead, my child was removed without transparency or due process, and that’s not fair to any family.”

Shipman told AL.com that problems began in October when school leaders asked her daughter to draw a map indicating her home.

The third grader then drew an image of her grandparents’ home in McCalla. That property is in Shipman’s name, although she rents a home in Hoover. She then contacted student services.

“She told me, ‘You don’t live in Hoover. We’ve been following you,’ and it just went from there,” Shipman said. “It was just an immediate attack.”

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“He gave me a warning that I was up against Hoover and that I needed to be prepared, and if I was going to come back with an attorney I needed to let him know the resources that Hoover has, that they have an unlimited amount of resources,” Shipman said.

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The child was formerly in a gifted program but is now unable to participate. She now completes coursework online, away from student interaction for months.

“The transition has not been good,” Shipman said. “We battle depression. She’s just at a loss. Being at home and not being with friends has not been good for her.”

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Shipman’s attorney Richard Rice questioned if race played a role in the family’s treatment, noting the discriminatory nature of school policies of the past. Shipman and her daughter are Black.

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“While Hoover City School is not currently operating under an active federal desegregation order, its policies remain subject to constitutional scrutiny where present-day practices perpetuate the effects of past segregation,” Rice wrote in his complaint. “Residency enforcement practices form part of this broader pattern by selectively scrutinizing Black families while affording white families greater leniency and benefit of the doubt.”

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