Schools denied unitary rulings

District due back in court in fall

— A federal judge plans a series of hearings next fall to allow the Pulaski County Special School District a chance to prove it has met some or all of its desegregation mandates and that it should be freed from court supervision in those areas.

In a Monday order, U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. denied the 18,000-student district’s November motion to declare it unitary in four of the nine remaining parts of its desegregation plan: addressing one-race classrooms in the district, Advanced Placement/gifted education programs, special education services and district staffing.

But Marshall said he was “heartened” that, from the perspective of the Joshua intervenors, who represent black students in the 30-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation case, the school system is “moving diligently to address areas where the District is not in compliance.”

“The court appreciates and applauds PCSSD’s update, but denies the motion without prejudice,” Marshall wrote.

He ordered the district’s attorneys to file a status report by Feb. 1 indicating “all areas in which the District believes it is in compliance.” The court will then set a discovery period and a series of short hearings in August and September to hear the district’s case, Marshall wrote.

Jerry Guess, superintendent of the state-controlled school district, said he was pleased with the Monday court order.

“We can provide evidence in each one of these areas to prove that we have removed the vestiges of segregation here in this district,” he said. “I just think this is a good acknowledgment of our efforts.”

Little Rock and North Little Rock - the other two school districts involved in the desegregation lawsuit - have been declared unitary, or desegregated, in all areas of their plans.

A unitary status declaration in a given area means the federal court and the federal Office of Desegregation Monitoring no longer monitor and critique the district’s efforts in that area. It also frees the district from submitting reports and answering to the court and federal monitors on that issue.

The desegregation monitoring stems from a lawsuit in which the Little Rock School District sued the state and the two other districts, claiming they had fostered segregation among the county’s three school systems. That suit led to a 1989 settlement, under which the state pays about $70 million a year to help finance Little Rock’s six original magnet schools and all three districts’ majority-to-minority interdistrict student transfer programs, some employee health and retirement costs and general operating expenses.

In addition to the four areas listed in its court motion, the Pulaski County Special School District remains under court supervision in five other areas described in the district’s Plan 2000: student achievement, student discipline, facilities, scholarships and internal monitoring.

“We should be totally unitary, but I think you have to take this one step at a time,” Guess said.

The district has previously sought a full release from desegregation monitoring.

In December 2011, an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in St. Louis upheld a previous district court order that said the district had failed to comply with its desegregation plan in all nine areas.

In the previous May 2011 ruling, U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller, who has since recused from the case, wrote that compliance with its desegregation plan “seems to have been an afterthought” for the county district.

In Monday’s order, Marshall also approved a $29.4 million magnet school budget for the 2011-12 school year and a proposed budget for the 2012-13 school year.

He acknowledged the state’s pending motion to end its financial obligations under the desegregation settlement but said he would not “pull the plug on magnet funding in the middle of this school year.”

Marshall requested further information about a proposed settlement under which the Pulaski County Special School District would pay the Joshua intervenors’ attorney $875,000 for “helping monitor, enforce, and implement desegregation plans during the last two decades.”

He requested time records and other work-related materials from the intervenors’ attorneys to show how much time they had spent on their efforts.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/11/2012

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