The Little Rock School District will take a more personal approach to its efforts to reach a settlement with the state of Arkansas over desegregation aid, the district’s School Board decided Thursday.
That means the district representatives will seek to enter into “face to face negotiations” with the staff of the Arkansas attorney general’s office and with attorneys for other parties in a 30-year-old federal school desegregation lawsuit in hopes of reaching a settlement before a Nov. 15 deadline.
The district’s School Board on Thursday approved a resolution authorizing school district attorneys to work in such a manner with all parties in the case to reach a possible settlement over the state’s desegregation obligations as listed in a 1989 agreement in the case.
That 1989 agreement obligates the state to provide desegregation aid to the three Pulaski County school districts. That state aid now totals nearly $70 million a year, with about $42 million of that going to the Little Rock district. The money is used to support magnet schools and majority-to-minority interdistrict student transfers and for teacher health-insurance and retirement-fund costs.
The state has asked the federal court to relieve the state of its financial and other obligations to the districts under that 1989 plan. U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. has scheduled a two-week hearing to start Dec. 9 on the state’s request.
The Little Rock district in late September offered to drop its fight against state-approved charter schools and all other desegregation claims against the state in return for the state continuing to pay the $42 million a year in desegregation aid for seven more years after this current school year. That would total $297 million.
Attorney General Dustin McDaniel made a counterproposal asking that any settlement involve all the parties in the long-running suit. He proposed that during the school year, the state pay the already scheduled desegregation aid to the three districts for this 2013-14 school year and that a final $49.3 million more be shared by the three districts between Jan. 1 and Sept. 1, 2014.
McDaniel said that any settlement proposal to be reached before the Dec. 9 court hearing must be presented to the Legislative Council by Nov. 15.
The Little Rock School District has asked for a delay to the Dec. 9 hearing in order to receive a decision from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on whether state-approved charter schools have hindered desegregation efforts in the three Pulaski County districts.
Marshall this week denied the motion to stay the December hearing. The Little Rock district immediately asked the 8th Circuit to delay the lower court hearing. Chris Heller, an attorney for the district, told the board that he expects the appeals court to decide on the delay within a week.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 10/25/2013