A looming federal court hearing set for two weeks in December has attorneys in the 30-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit meeting to prepare their arguments - and a possible settlement offer to their state adversaries.
The Arkansas attorney general’s office - acting for the Arkansas Department of Education and other state leaders - is asking a federal judge to relieve state officials from commitments made in a 1989 desegregation settlement with the three Pulaski County school districts and intervenor groups. Those commitments include state desegregation aid totaling $70 million a year to the three districts.
The districts and intervenors have argued to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. that the state has not fulfilled all the commitments it made in that 1989 agreement and is not entitled to release.
The court hearing is scheduled to begin Dec. 9.
Chris Heller, an attorney for the Little Rock School District, told the Little Rock School Board last week that there may be grounds for at least a partial settlement offer to the state.
Heller and attorneys for the North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts, the black students known as the Joshua intervenors and the teachers organizations known as the Knight intervenors have met a couple of times in recent weeks.
“We are trying to coordinate and streamline our defenses to the extent we can,” Heller said. “That’s been fairly successful, but we have also talked about whether there is something that everyone on our side of the case can agree on to propose to the state as a way to resolve this.”
Heller told the board that the attorneys have concluded that there are “a number of things” that could be used to structure a proposal to the state.
But Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said Friday, in response to Heller’s comments to the School Board, that he has made serious attempts at a settlement in the past. And while he believes a settlement would be in the best interest of all the parties, including students, “a settlement seems to be all but impossible.”
The state’s top lawyer said the efforts by the opposing parties are likely to be too little and too late.
“While I welcome all efforts at settlement, I have assembled a team of top litigators in this office to prepare for the December hearing,” McDaniel said. “I believe the state has its best chance in decades to end this litigation, and I cannot allow my team to be distracted by vague references to settlement.”
Heller told the School Board that the districts and intervenors could be amenable to forgoing some of the state desegregation aid in return for statewide changes in the funding for school bus transportation and for teacher retirement and health insurance benefits.
Part of the state desegregation aid to the districts is used for transporting students to magnet schools and to other schools where their enrollment promotes desegregation.
The state also pays desegregation money for employee benefits in the districts. That’s because a federal judge presiding in the desegregation case several years ago determined that the state’s funding system for employee benefits shortchanged the three Pulaski County districts and did so in retaliation for the desegregation case.
“If there were in place just a fair system of funding teacher retirement and health insurance statewide, that would be $15 million out of what the state calls desegregation funding,” Heller said.
“If there were transportation funding, that would be about $5 million [out of the desegregation aid] and what there would be left to talk about would be about $6.5 million for magnet schools and $1.1 million for the [majority-to-minority student transfer] program.”
Heller told the Little Rock board that there are other entities in the state - school districts and independently run charter schools - that could benefit from a resolution to the Pulaski County desegregation aid dispute.
“Transportation funding is a problem statewide,” he said. “It’s completely a random, senseless funding system. It doesn’t have anything to do with anybody’s actual cost of transportation. There are school districts across the state that are disadvantaged by the transportation funding and by the teacher retirement and health insurance funding.”
Additionally, Jacksonville residents who have been working for years to establish their own local school district but have been hindered by the desegregation case could benefit from a settlement of the desegregation funding issue, he said.
The same is true for Pulaski County charter schools that are the subject of desegregation case litigation and, as a result, operate with some uncertainty, he said.
“If we look at how relatively small this issue really is, how important magnet schools are and all of the interested parties who might come together to try to work out a solution, we are hopeful that something can be put together on our side that we can come to you with and get approval to make some sort of proposal,” Heller told the board.
“I’ve heard from several of you that you would like to see an effort in that direction before we just march to December without really exploring whether there was something else we could work out that would be beneficial to our students.”
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 07/29/2013