Judge won’t delay desegregation trial

A federal judge refused Tuesday to delay a December trial to determine whether the state should be released from a desegregation settlement agreement that requires it to pay about $70 million in annual aid to the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts.

Attorneys for the Little Rock School District and the Joshua intervenors, who represent black students in the decades-old case, had asked U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. to stay the trial, which would have halted scheduled proceedings while the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis considers whether the state’s authorization of independently run charter schools in Pulaski County violated that settlement agreement.

Marshall previously denied a similar motion by the same parties requesting a continuance in the case.

Marshall earlier ruled against the Little Rock School District in the charter-school matter, disagreeing with its claim that the state approved open-enrollment charter schools without regard for their effects on district magnet schools and other court-approved desegregation efforts.

The Little Rock district has asked the appeals court to overturn that ruling. Because its arguments related to the settlement agreement may relate back to the appeals court’s ultimate decision related to the charter-school issue, the district’s attorneys want to delay the December proceedings until the appeals court rules.

But Marshall said in his Tuesday order that he does not see justification for a delay.

“The upcoming trial on the State’s motion for release provides no occasion for this Court to revisit the charter-school issue now,” he wrote. “That issue is on appeal. We’ll see, in due course, whether it was decided correctly. In the meantime, other aspects of the case need attention.”

The attorney general’s office has argued on behalf of the state that any appeals in court proceedings that may release it from the multimillion-dollar agreement would be costly and unnecessary.

Little Rock filed the original lawsuit in 1982, arguing that the state and two other school districts had fostered segregation among the three Pulaski County school districts.

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-care and retirement costs, and general operating expenses.

Parties in the case have discussed settling the issue out of court, but they have not reached an agreement to do so.