Pulaski County schools facing time of decision over desegregation plans

By Cynthia Howell

Magnet schools and the interdistrict student transfer program put in place 20 years ago to help racially desegregate Pulaski County's public schools are at a legal and financial crossroads.

One school district in Pulaski County is newly free of federal court supervision. Two other districts want to be. Some state lawmakers want to redirect millions of dollars in desegregation aid to other purposes. And a new U.S. Supreme Court decision puts strict limits on using race to assign students to schools.

Those and other recent developments at the local and national levels are prompting questions about how much longer the voluntary desegregation programs in Pulaski County and state desegregation funding for them - $66 million this year - can, or should, continue.

If the state is excused by the courts from funding the desegregation programs, the districts would have to raise substitute funding or abandon the programs that provide school choices for families.

Without legal backing for the desegregation initiatives, the districts couldn't continue them in their present form even if they had the money, again possibly reducing school choice options and potentially alienating public school families.

For more information see today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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