Compliance resisted, court hears

2 say NLR district’s desegregation effort lax, discipline uneven

— Attorneys for black students known as the Joshua intervenors on Wednesday called their first two witnesses in an effort to expose what they see as holes in the North Little Rock School District’s compliance with its long-standing desegregation plan.

Angela Olsen, the district’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction from 2006-2008, and Charles Jones, the principal of the Argenta Academy alternative high school, testified before U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller.

They gave examples of inequitable school facilities, racially disparate student discipline practices, an attitude of disregard for black students, and failure to hire and/or promote black faculty members.

In response, an attorney for the North Little Rock district showed that Olsen was forced to leave her job because her contract was not renewed and that she is now suing the district over her dismissal.

Miller is presiding in the federal court hearing to determine whether the 9,660-student North Little Rock district has complied in good faith with its desegregation plan.

If so, the district would be released from years of federal court monitoring of staffing practices, special-education services, gifted education and compensatory education programs, school building conditions, student extracurricular activities, student discipline procedures and efforts to self-monitor its desegregation plan compliance.

“I never had anyone tell me what I needed to do in terms of desegregation,” Olsen said at one point in her testimony. “I understood that was [Assistant Superintendent for Desegregation Bobby] Acklin’s job.”

Olsen testified that she had read the district’s desegregation plan but found it to be “antiquated.”

“I didn’t understand that it was actually a working document,” she elaborated. “I saw it as a document of 20-something years and I never received a directive that this was something that we were putting into place right now.”

Olsen testified that the district did not have state-approved high school courses, resulting in what she called “layers” of courses that were not all based on the state’s curriculum standards or “frameworks.”

She cited as examples a wide range of courses that were considered acceptable for high school English requirements and 30 different drama courses.

“It appeared we made classes so that white students didn’t have to sit with African-American or special-education children,” Olsen said in response to questions from John Walker, an attorney for the Joshua intervenors.

She also said that parents who knew how to demand that their children be placed in gifted-education programs were likely to get those assignments over those with less-assertive parents.

Olsen said teachers and principals were not familiar with the vocabulary necessary to communicate about instructional strategies and district teachers did not know how to read student test-data reports.

Her efforts to institute training and other changes were often undermined by her supervisors as well as by her own staff, she testified.

Olsen said she sought to use federal Title I money to hire literacy and math coaches but, instead, the unused money was turned back to the federal government.

She proposed “classroom tallies” in which administrators would visit classrooms to monitor course content, but that prompted a memorandum from Superintendent Ken Kirspel who said principals had to be consulted and in “100 percent” support.

Olsen said she suggested that a specialty or magnet program be instituted to attract students to the underenrolled Rose City Middle School.

That too was resisted by Kirspel, she said, accusing Kirspel of saying that people wouldn’t want to drive through the neighborhoods necessary to get to that campus. The school is in a low-income and working-class part of North Little Rock.

She also accused Kirspel of saying “Those children can’t learn,” which she took as a reference to black students in the district.

In response to questions from Walker and then Stephen Jones, an attorney for the North Little Rock district, Olsen described how her working relationship with Kirspel and others soured when she intervened in support of a black candidate for an assistant principal’s job.

The candidate was offered a lesser salary than was earlier proposed. Olsen contended that Kirspel and Gregg Thompson, the district’s personnel director, wanted the job to go to a white person.

Relations deteriorated further, causing Olsen to repeatedly question and complain to Kirspel about her lack of authority.

Olsen said she filed complaints with the North Little Rock Police Department and the Pulaski County prosecuting attorney after she said she was cursed and threatened “personally and professionally” by Rhonda Dickey, the district’s director of secondary education.

Stephen Jones introduced memos showing that both Olsen and Dickey were reprimanded.

The attorney also showed memos exchanged between Kirspel and Olsen about her failure to report to work or call in on an inclement-weather day. She responded that she did call.

Stephen Jones then presented documents showing that while Olsen complained about a lack of communication among top-level staff, she routinely missed weekly Monday meetings that Kirspel initiated just for that purpose.

She also rarely attended the monthly meeting of the district’s desegregation team of which she was a member. She responded that she didn’t know she was a member but attended when her full schedule permitted.

Charles Jones, the Argenta Academy principal, testified late Wednesday that the alternative school for ninth- through 12th-grade students who are not successful in traditional schools has a virtually all-black enrollment.

He said it is housed in a building with “holes in the windows,” a malfunctioning heating and air-conditioning system, no library and a pest infestation.

White students who commit offenses and are suspended from their regular schools are not as likely as black students to attend Argenta’s 10-day suspension program where they can complete schoolwork they would otherwise not be permitted to make up, Charles Jones said.

He testified that he was involuntarily transferred to the academy from his former job as Ridgeroad Middle School principal.

In response to questions from Walker, Charles Jones cited as an example suspensions of six white students for drinking alcohol on a campus. His school had room for the students but they chose not to attend.

Charles Jones is expected to continue his testimony when the hearing resumes at 9 a.m. today.

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 02/11/2010

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