LITTLE ROCK — The state of Arkansas’ responsibility to desegregation efforts in the Pulaski County school districts goes beyond “just writing checks,” a Little Rock School District attorney argued Thursday in a federal court challenge to state-sponsored charter schools.
Chris Heller told U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., in a day-long hearing that the state has constitutional violations that it must address in part by supporting magnet schools and interdistrict student transfer programs instead of creating competing charter schools in Pulaski County.
Arkansas Assistant Attorney General Scott Richardson, however, told the judge that the charter enrollment numbers show that the schools - of which there are a dozen based in Pulaski County - have had little impact on the magnet schools.
Richardson also argued that the school district has been declared unitary by the federal courts and no longer has to meet the desegregation requirements set out for the magnet schools and interdistrict transfer program.
“The vestiges of segregation on student assignments [to schools] have been cured,” Richardson said and questioned why the state is continuing to help pay for magnet schools.
Marshall on Thursday announced no decisions about the fate of the charter schools from the bench. He complimented the attorneys on their written and oral arguments.
“I’ll do my best with it,” Marshall added.
The Little Rock district asked the judge to enforce a 1989 settlement agreement in the long-running Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit. That agreement calls on the state to not only provide desegregation aid to the three districts, which now amounts to about $70 million a year, but to also take other steps to promote school desegregation, including steps to eliminate an achievement disparity between black and white students.
The district has also asked the judge to issue a summary judgment based on the arguments presented to him at this point without necessarily holding another hearing to take testimony from witnesses.
Attorneys for the state of Arkansas, the black students known as the Joshua intervenors and for the charter schools that have intervened in the case did not object Thursday to the judge making the summary decision on charter schools and student achievement.
Thursday’s hearing was the culmination of about two years of debate between the district and state officials about the effect of independently run, publicly funded charter schools on the six special program magnet schools and the majority to-minority student transfer program.
Magnet schools offer special programs to create a 50-50 black-to-white racial ratio in schools otherwise difficult to desegregate. Five of the six magnet schools are in predominantly black neighborhoods. The majority-to-minority transfer program enables students to move from schools and districts where their race is in the majority to a district and school where their race is in the minority.
Charter schools do not have similar racial restrictions and are open to all students. The charter schools based in Pulaski County currently have a total enrollment of 5,066 students, counting the Arkansas Virtual Academy that serves students statewide. Of the total, 2,179 are white and 2,887 are members of minority groups including 2,188 black students.
In his arguments, Richardson said that the Little Rock district’s interest is to keep the desegregation case and the state funding going.
Richardson said 325 students over six years moved from the six magnet schools to charter schools.
That number included pupils who completed all grades possible at their magnet elementary or magnet middle school and there was no indication they would have moved to another magnet school in the absence of charter schools. He said the district has acknowledged that families are reluctant to attend the city’s middle schools to the point that the district’s school board has initiated efforts to improve them.
When the number of charter students moving to magnet schools is considered, the net effect of charter schools on the magnet programs was a diminutive 70 students, Richardson said and added that the charter schools resulted in no financial impact to the district nor have they prevented the magnet schools from teaching, testing and remediating their students.
Heller said the state figures represent only “the tip of the iceberg,” because they don’t include the number of charter students from the North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts who moved from magnet to charter schools, nor the students who moved from private or home schools to charter schools but would have attended traditional public schools in the absence of charter schools.
“How is it humanly possible to know that without interviewing” individual parents? Marshall asked.
“We can put a number of things together to determine the impact,” Heller said. “We need good data,” he said and added that the district knows that the charter schools have fewer children from poor families - about 36 percent - compared with 71 percent in the Little Rock district.
“That has an impact on the students left behind [in the traditional school],” Heller said and quoted Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell as saying in his deposition that the greater the concentration of poverty in a school, the more difficult to educate the students.
Isn’t that an argument against any charter school, even the two created by the Little Rock district, the judge asked.
Heller said one of the district-created charters was an alternative school for students not successful in a regular school and the other - Cloverdale Middle Charter School - was established in response to the fact that the school had been on the state’s list of schools needing improvement for seven years.
Heller said the charter school students are the Little Rock district’s “market” for the magnet school and transfer programs because they have already demonstrated a willingness to make school choices other than the neighborhood school.
He said past court orders, particularly one denying the creation of a separate Jacksonville school system, support the district’s contention that the state can create competing schools to the magnet schools.
John Walker, an attorney for the Joshua intervenors, said that the charter school law passed in 1999, on its face was “neutral,” and was not subject to an immediate legal challenge but that some of the charter schools have become largely one race - black.
And while he has not been happy with the education provided to black students in the traditional public schools, the state has taken a laissez faire attitude to monitoring the charter schools.
“What is required on paper is not enforced by the state,” said Walker who also criticized the state for failing in its commitment in the 1989 settlement to address the racial achievement disparity in the public schools.
Marshall said that state hired experts found that student achievement has increased in the three districts, but Walker countered that the achievement gap between black and white students has remained constant.
Jess Askew III, who represents the charter schools, focused on the elements of the 1989 settlement agreement. He told Marshall that the federal courts don’t have jurisdiction over the charter schools because the schools are not included in the 1989 settlement agreement and, in fact, didn’t exist at that time.
Askew said the 1989 agreement is a contract that has not been broken or breached. He said that as a result the the Little Rock district is left “scratching and clawing” to fight the charter schools.
He also said that there is nothing in the 1989 agreement that prevents school competition. Nor does the agreement prevent the Little Rock district from losing students or territory, Askew said, or being “splintered into pieces” although it does provide autonomy for the Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock districts.
He called the charter schools an option for students who have been barred from attending magnet schools or participating in the interdistrict student transfer program because of the color of their skin.
That’s because more black students than white and students of other races apply for the magnet schools. The transfer program also has racial limitations.
Sam Jones, an attorney for the Pulaski County Special School District, supported Heller’s argument Thursday that the state had retaliated against the districts for the 1989 settlement by requiring the districts to undergo audits by a New York company that criticized the North Little Rock and county districts for spending desegregation funds on general expenses, although there is no requirement to do otherwise.
Jones also countered the state’s contention that the district has been released from court supervision regarding its student assignment plan.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/30/2012