LITTLE ROCK — The disagreement between the state and the Little Rock School District over the establishment of publicly funded, open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County will get an airing in federal court today.
U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. in August set this week’s date for arguments on a motion filed in 2010 by attorneys for the Little Rock district.
The purpose, the judge said, is to hear oral arguments from the parties and decide whether to schedule an evidentiary hearing in which witnesses would be called to provide more information.
The Little Rock district has accused the state of giving unconditional approval to charter schools without regard to the effect on desegregation efforts in the three traditional school districts. The district has sought summary judgment, which is a ruling based on the arguments and facts already before the judge.
At stake in the legal dispute is the growth of the independently run, publicly funded charter schools in Pulaski County versus the operation of the older, districtrun magnet schools and the majority-to-minority school interdistrict student transfer programs that were created to promote desegregation in the three school districts.
“That’s our argument, that the operation of the charter schools in the manner approved by the state undermines the agreement of all the parties to the 1989 settlement to support the magnet schools,” Chris Heller, an attorney for the Little Rock district, said this week.
“The charter schools are in competition with the magnet schools, and you can’t support a system of schools-of-choice by establishing a competing system,” he said.
Scott Smith, executive director of the Arkansas Public School Resource Center that supports charter and rural schools, said the Little Rock district hasn’t been harmed by the charter schools.
“Judge Marshall’s point at the last hearing was ... that the Little Rock district had to produce some evidence to suggest ... these charter schools were actually impacting some desegregation obligations that Little Rock has at this stage,” Smith said. “From our perspective, it looks like Little Rock is in a bad spot.”
A total of 4,566 students attend 11 charter schools in Pulaski County, not counting the Little Rock-based Arkansas Virtual Academy, which serves students statewide.
A total of 3,566 students from the three Pulaski County school districts are enrolled in the six original magnet schools — Booker, Carver, Gibbs, Williams elementaries, Mann Middle and Parkview High. Another 1,865 students are participating this year in the majority-to-minority transfer program, according to data from the federal Office of Desegregation Monitoring.
The state pays all transportation costs for the magnet and majority-to-minority transfer students as a result of a 1989 settlement agreement and accompanying stipulations.
The state also pays 50 percent of the education cost for magnet students and offers financial incentives to entice the three districts to permit their students to cross district lines in the majority-to-minority transfer program.
The 1989 settlement agreement among the parties in the long-running federal school desegregation lawsuit requires the state to assist in eliminating a racial-achievement disparity in the districts and “take no action which has a substantial adverse impact on the ability of the districts to desegregate.”
But the state’s unconditional approval of charter schools resulted in those schools drawing students — often more affluent students who are not dependent on school-bus transportation — away from magnet schools and the majority-to-minority transfer program, attorneys for the district and Joshua intervenors wrote to the judge.
The Joshua intervenors represent black students in the long-running school desegregation case.
Th e programs at issue were designed to help the three districts meet their desegregation obligations. The magnet schools offer special academic programs to attract a 50-50 black-to-white enrollment mix to schools that were otherwise difficult to desegregate. The majority-to-minority transfer program permits students to transfer from schools and districts where their race is in the majority to a school and district in which they are in the minority.
The Little Rock district and Joshua intervenors are asking Marshall to prohibit any new open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County and order the existing charters to be altered to comply with the “the terms and spirit” of the 1989 agreement.
The district is also asking the judge to direct the state to pay the three Pulaski County school districts for district students who currently or previously attended the open-enrollment charter schools.
In all, the Little Rock district and Joshua intervenors listed more than a dozen concessions they want from the state, including state programs to remediate the achievement disparity, additional transportation funding and protection from state-ordered consolidation or reconstitution of the three Pulaski County school districts.
The Arkansas attorney general’s office and the 12 openenrollment charter schools operating in Pulaski County, including the Arkansas Virtual Academy charter school, are asking Marshall to deny the district and Joshua’s motion to enforce the terms of the 1989 settlement.
The attorneys for the state and charter-school intervenors told the judge that the Little Rock district and Joshua intervenors failed to present proof that students in the open-enrollment charter schools would have chosen a magnet school or a majorityto-minority program transfer in the absence of charter schools.
The attorneys also argued that the race-based student assignments used in magnet schools and the majority-tominority student transfer program do not conform to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that restrict the use of racial quotas.
Attorney General Dustin McDaniel and Assistant Attorney General Scott Richardson offered data showing that a total of 324 students transferred from magnet to charter schools in 2005-06 through 2010-11, an average of 54 students per year, or nine students per school, per year.
Of the 324 transfers, 126 were fifth-graders and 20 were eighth-graders who had completed all grades possible at their magnet schools, and there was no evidence they would have continued in a new magnet school.
A total of 109 students transferred from charter schools to the six magnet schools, and 151 more students transferred from charter schools to Little Rock Central High.
The state attorneys have argued to the judge that contrary to the Little Rock district’s demands, state law “does not authorize the state Board of Education to place ‘conditions’ on charter applications” or “rewrite a charter application,” or “unilaterally select the location of a charter school.”
The state attorneys acknowledged that charter schools were approved for locations that would likely have an enrollment skewed highly to one race but said that is not a constitutional violation.
They also noted that the state has not required charter schools to provide transportation but added that no traditional school or district is required to provide transportation.
Aaron Sadler, a spokesman for the attorney general, said Wednesday that the charterschool issue is not about desegregation.
“State law requires charter schools to enroll students without regard to race, and they do exactly that,” Sadler said. “The court is being asked to exclude Pulaski County students of all races from the opportunities that open-enrollment charter schools provide and take away the ability of parents in Pulaski County to decide what school best serves their children’s needs.”
The charter school intervenors, represented by an attorney team headed by former Rep. Mike Wilson of Jacksonville and Jess Askew III, told Marshall that the 1989 settlement agreement was written before the state’s charter school law was enacted in 1999.
“A court could enforce every sentence and clause of these agreements and still have no power to reach charter schools,” the attorney team wrote, adding that charter schools are creatures of state law and the federal court in this case has no jurisdiction over them.
The charter attorneys further argued that the magnet and interdistrict transfer programs “employ illegal and judicially unenforceable racial quotas.”
Attorneys for the Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock school districts have taken no position on the Little Rock motion to enforce the settlement agreement but sent Marshall their objections to the charter intervenors’ repeated categorizing of the majority-to-minority and magnet school stipulations as illegal contracts.
Sam Jones for the Pulaski County Special district and Steve Jones for the North Little Rock district said Marshall’s Dec. 29 order allowed the charter schools to intervene on a limited basis but rejected the charter schools’ plan to challenge the legality of the 1989 settlement and agreements on magnet schools and majority-to-minority transfers.
“Simply stated, the charter intervenors have ignored the admonitions of the district court that they are not to attempt to raise and pursue claims that the 1989 settlement agreement and its components parts, including the M-M stipulation and the magnet school stipulation, are illegal, unconstitutional and should be terminated. This court made that clear,” the attorneys wrote.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/29/2012