Allow county-district split, aid phaseout, judge urged

LITTLE ROCK — The Pulaski County Special School District on Monday proposed an eight-year phaseout of millions of dollars in state desegregation aid and the formation of a new, 10-school Jacksonville school system as a way to meet desegregation obligations.

Attorneys for the 17,000-student district made the proposal to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. in response to a March 26 request by the state to be released from financial and other desegregation obligations in a 1989 settlement agreement to the Pulaski County school desegregation case.

The Pulaski County Special district attorneys said the state’s motion to immediately end desegregation aid should be denied.

Attorneys for the Little Rock and North Little Rock school districts also responded Monday to the state’s motion, urging the court to deny the request to end desegregation funding.

The 1989 settlement serves as the basis for special state desegregation funding to the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts.

That funding is now about $70 million a year and totals more than $1 billion since the agreement. The money helps finance Little Rock’s six original magnet schools and all three districts’ majority-to-minority interdistrict student transfer programs, employee health and retirement costs, and general operating expenses.

The magnet schools and majority-to-minority student transfer program in particular were designed to promote racial desegregation of schools and the districts.

Sam Jones of Little Rock and Allen Roberts of Camden, the Pulaski County Special district attorneys, said that instead of accepting the state’s motion, the judge should modify the 1989 settlement because the agreement has not completely fulfilled its purpose of producing three unitary or desegregated districts in Pulaski County.

The Pulaski County Special district has yet to achieve unitary status in nine areas of its operation, including its facilities. The Little Rock and North Little Rock districts have been declared fully unitary by the courts.

“The State essentially argues for a complete obliteration of the 1989 Settlement Agreement,” Jones and Roberts wrote. “However, while the agreement might warrant the substantial changes proposed ... by PCSSD, it has not yet reached the point where it should be jettisoned wholesale.”

They said that “much of the agreement should remain in place, or even enhanced” until the district becomes fully unitary.

“The District proposes that the Court approve the creation of a separate Jacksonville area school district,” Roberts and Jones wrote. “Its creation would not have a segregative impact in either a new Jacksonville School District, or in PCSSD sans Jacksonville. Its creation would be popular among the patrons of Jacksonville and the residual PCSSD. Popular support remains a critical elementin attaining unitary status.”

The attorneys said the new Jacksonville district would be eligible for a far greater share of state funding for new and renovated facilities than the Pulaski County Special district could receive on its own for the Jacksonville area schools.

And the detachment of the Jacksonville area would reduce the number of facility projects that the remaining Pulaski County Special district would have to address to comply with the terms of its 2000 desegregation plan, they said.

Some Jacksonville civic and government leaders have worked for several years to establish a school district independent of the Pulaski County Special district, saying a Jacksonville district could be more competitive with nearby school systems such as Cabot.

A move to form a Jacksonville district was thwarted in 2003 when, at the urging of the Pulaski County Special district, a federal judge determined that detaching Jacksonville would hinder desegregation efforts in the remaining Pulaski County Special, Little Rock and North Little Rock districts.

Jerry Guess, the state-appointed Pulaski County Special School District superintendent,said in an interview Monday that a 4,500-student Jacksonville school system could be eligible to receive more than half of its building renovation funds from the state. The Pulaski County Special district, determined to be a ‘wealthy’ district, is eligible to receive from the state less than 3 percent of its building and renovation costs.

The remaining Pulaski County Special district would have about 12,500-students and 26 schools, Guess said.

“We think it would greatly enhance the operational efficiencies for this district and that district,” he said.

A Jacksonville district would likely include both Jacksonville and North Pulaski high schools, as well as Jacksonville Middle and seven elementary schools - Bayou Meto, Arnold Drive, Tolleson, Adkins, Taylor, Pinewood, and Dupree.

Jones and Roberts told the judge that they agree with the state that it is time to end the “protracted litigation” in what will be a 30-year-old school desegregation lawsuit this year.

In addition to forming a separate Jacksonville district, they recommended that the judge modify the 1989 settlement agreement by requiring the district and state to comply with the district’s desegregation plan within three years and fix the school facilities within a reasonable amount of time.

A federal appeals court in December affirmed a lower court’s finding that the Pulaski County Special district had failed to meet its obligations in regard to student assignment to schools and classrooms, Advanced Placement and gifted education, discipline, school facilities, scholarships, special education, staffing, student achievement and monitoring.

Jones and Roberts also proposed a phaseout of the special state desegregation funding that amounts to about $20 million a year to the district.

That phaseout would be done by providing the full amount of funding for the coming 2012-13 school year and then reducing the annual amount over the next eight years so that the final desegregation payment in 2019-20 would be 80 percent of the amount paid to the district this coming year.

Additionally, Roberts and Jones proposed the three Pulaski County school districts present the court with a plan for phasing out state and district financial support for the six original special-program magnet schools in Little Rock and the majority-to-minority interdistrict student transfer program over no more than seven years.

The magnet schools - Booker, Carver, Gibbs and Williams elementaries, Horace Mann Middle and Parkview High - along with the interdistrict transfer program were designed to promote racial desegregation in the three school districts. The state pays one half the education costs for the magnet schools and incentive costs to participate in the interdistrict transfer program, as well as all student transportation costs.

Adding an unusual twist to the case, the Pulaski County Special district is currently classified by the state as fiscally distressed and is operating under state control, witha state-appointed superintendent and no elected school board. Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell serves as the school board for the district.

However, because the state and the district have opposing interests in regard to the 1989 settlement and desegregation agreement, the school district by court order doesn’t confer with Kimbrell and the state Department of Education about its legal positions in the desegregation case.

Guess said Kimbrell was not consulted or even told about the district’s position in the court filing.

“We have carefully avoided discussing these issues,” Guess said.

Chris Heller and Clay Fendley, attorneys for the Little Rock School District, which is the plaintiff in the case, said the state is asking to be released from its commitments under the 1989 settlement and related agreements on the magnet schools and majority-to-minority transfer program without showing that it complied with those agreements in good faith or that it has eliminated the vestiges of its constitutional violations to the extent practicable.

“The state’s request must be denied as a matter of law,” Heller and Fendley told Marshall.

“There is no point in proceeding to develop the factual record under the wrong legal standard,” they said. “The State’s Motion for Release should be dismissed for failure to state a claim.”

Stephen Jones, an attorney for the North Little Rock School District, also said that the state “has a burden of proving it has complied with the 1989 settlement agreement and the existence of any changed circumstances that justify the relief it seeks.”

He also urged that if the judge determines the state desegregation money should be terminated, that it be phased out and not ended immediately.

“The districts need a transition period to maintain fiscally sound schools,” Stephen Jones wrote, adding that the districts need to uphold promises made to students who participated in the magnet and interdistrict transfer programs. Those students should be able to complete the grades in their current schools, he said.

The Joshua intervenors, who represent black students in all three districts, asked for a deadline extension to turn in its response.