County district joins NLR, files for unitary status

LITTLE ROCK — Acting on the encouragement of state lawmakers, the Pulaski County Special School District on Monday asked a federal judge to declare the 17,400-student district unitary, or desegregated, and release it from further court supervision of its desegregation efforts.

The motion for a declaration of unitary status, sent to U.S. District Judge Bill WilsonJr., came one day before today's state-imposed deadline for filing the request.

Act 395 of 2007 promises both the county and the North Little Rock school districts payment of up to $250,000 for their legal fees if they would file motions for unitary status by today and receive unitary declarations from the judge by June 14 next year. The North Little Rock district filed its motion Sept. 21. The Little Rock district was declaredunitary Feb. 23, but that order is being appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.

Unitary status would allow the School Board and administration for the county district, the state's second-largest school system, to make decisions on district operations without obtaining federal court approval, and it would relieve the district of desegregation legal bills.

If unitary status is achieved,the question remains about what happens to extra state funding provided to the three school districts - now more than $700 million since 1989 - for desegregation-related programs such as magnet schools and other interdistrict student transfer programs. Act 395 calls for the extra funding to be phased out over as many as seven years.

When Little Rock was freed from court control, the judge was never asked about nor didhe address extra funding. That extra funding has continued in the Little Rock district.

The seven-member county School Board voted in August to "stand unified as a board" in directing its attorney Sam Jones of the Mitchell, Williams, Selig, Gates & Woodyard law firm to apply for unitary status.

"We intend to do everything right to get it approved," School Board President Charlie Woodsaid Monday about unitary status.

"We're strongly hoping we can get this settled over the next seven or eight months."

Rep. Will Bond, D-Jacksonville, sponsored the bill that became Act 395.

"I'm glad they are moving forward, pursuing unitary status," Bond said Monday. "It's time to wrap the case up."

Unitary status for each of the three school districts would bring to a close the nearly 25-year-old federal lawsuit filed by the Little Rock district in 1982 against the county and North Little Rock school districts plus state officials for a remedy to desegregation problems that had resulted in a majority black student enrollment in Little Rock and majority white enrollments in the neighboring school systems.

Since 2000, the Pulaski County district has been required to comply with the provisions of its court-approved desegregation plan, Plan 2000, in assigning students and staff to schools, student discipline, multi-cultural education, school facilities, special education and student achievement.

"The PCSSD believes that it has complied with or is in substantial compliance with its desegregation plan," Jones wrote in the motion to the court Monday.

John Walker, an attorney for the Joshua intervenors, who represent black students, did not return a message left at his office Monday afternoon seeking comment about the position the intervenors might take in the county district's request for unitary status.

In late 2005, Walker complained to the U.S. Department of Justice about disproportionate rates of discipline of black students, disproportionate assignment of black students to special-education programs at the high schools, a lack of monitoring of multicultural education efforts and failure to recruit black teachers for certain teaching assignments.

The complaints resulted in aseries of meetings between representatives of the school district and the intervenors that have yet to be concluded.

Jones explained to Wilson on Monday that, "While currently languishing, this process remains technically in progress."

In his arguments in support of unitary status, Jones reported to the judge that a small number of schools fall outside the district's goals for the racial composition of schools. Four elementary schools - Adkins, Taylor, Jacksonville and Harris - have black student enrollments that exceed the recommended 51 percent cap. Mills University Studies High School at 60 percent black exceeds the recommended 58 percent cap.

"With only five of the 36 .... schools out of compliance with the enrollment guidelines, the district believes it is in substantial compliance with the federal district's court's order to the extent practicable," Jones wrote.

In regard to faculty and administrative assignments to schools, Jones said Plan 2000 did not establish a specific requirement. However, he said case law generally provides that the staff at each school should generally reflect the districtwide racial composition of its administrators, teachers and support staff.

"The PCSSD believes it is in compliance with this requirement," Jones wrote.

He added that the racial composition of principals and assistant principals was 47.1 percent white and 52.9 percent black.

And, Jones told the judge, while the condition of the district's school buildings range from excellent to poor, the buildings that need replacement or remodeling are not left over from a dual system of education for black and white students. He also noted that recent state laws have created a multimillion dollar program to upgrade school facilities throughout the state, including the county district.

"The court can thus be assured that the work will be done and facilities will be upgraded," Jones wrote.

In the motion, Jones noted the financial incentives that are available to the district if unitary status is granted by next June. He asked the judge to take those deadlines into account in scheduling any court hearings to review the district's evidence of desegregation compliance.

Monday's motion for unitary status is not the first such request made by the county district in the lawsuit. The district initially sought unitary status in 1998 when U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright was the presiding judge in the case. That unsuccessful effort prompted the development of the Plan 2000 desegregation plan, a shorter, more streamlined plan than the district's original 1989 desegregation plan.

Attorneys for the Joshua intervenors and other parties in the Pulaski County desegregation lawsuit now have the opportunity to respond to the county district's request for unitary status. The intervenors asked for 60 days to respond to North Little Rock's Sept. 21 motion of unitary status, and a similar response time is likely to be sought to respond to the county district's request.

Jones said in a telephone interview Monday that he doesn't expect a hearing in the county district's case to be held before the end of the calendar year.

But, he said that the filing of the request is "a development that we presume will please the Legislature. It will please Representative Bond. It remains to be seen if we will be entirely successful or not. That will be in the hands of the court."