A circuit judge randomly assigned to a lawsuit that seeks to undo the state's immediate takeover of the Little Rock School District made a comment in late January opposing the takeover.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen was assigned the lawsuit filed Friday by a group of residents, including three members of the recently disbanded Little Rock School Board. They are suing Arkansas Education Commissioner Tony Wood and the state Board of Education, which voted 5-4 on Jan. 28 to take over the state's largest district.
When reached Saturday afternoon about comments first reported by the Arkansas Times blog Jan. 28, Griffen said that he couldn't talk about the case "because there has been a lawsuit filed, and it is assigned to my court."
"Therefore, I am not permitted under our rules of ethics to have any comment about a matter that is pending in my court," he said. "So, I can't talk about this case."
When asked whether he would recuse himself from the lawsuit in his court, Griffen declined to comment again, saying, "This is asking me to talk about a case that is pending in my court."
Messages left with Wood and state Education Board Chairman Sam Ledbetter were not returned Saturday.
The suit seeks an initial restraining order or preliminary injunction against the state leaders.
On Jan. 28, the date of the state's decision, Griffen sent the Arkansas Times blog a statement addressed to the state Education Board opposing the takeover, the newspaper reported.
"I urge you to reject the attempt to disenfranchise the voters who have entrusted the Little Rock School Board with responsibility for governing the Little Rock School District," Griffen wrote.
Griffen wrote that there was "no evidence whatsoever that the Little Rock School District is not lawfully governed by the presently composed" School Board. Any action that strips governance from the "democratically elected" School Board amounts to impeachment of each board member and subjects electors of the School Board to "taxation without representation," he wrote.
There also is no credible evidence that the School Board "has failed to discharge the legal obligations to govern" the district as required by state and federal laws, Griffen wrote.
The School Board is "laboring to overcome the cumulative effect of race discrimination, poverty, and willful actions by many political leaders and private actors bent on noncompliance with the legal and moral obligation to provide free public education to every student in an efficient and fair manner," Griffen wrote.
The designated "academically distressed" problems in the district schools also were not caused by the School Board, Griffen wrote.
"History will not be kind to the people who seek to have the current Little Rock School Board dissolved," he wrote. "I urge you to not align yourselves with those actors."
Dissatisfaction with district efforts in raising achievement levels at six schools classified by the state as academically distressed was the central basis of the state's takeover decision.
The schools -- Baseline Elementary; Cloverdale and Henderson middle schools; and J.A. Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools -- are labeled "academically distressed" because fewer than half of the students at those schools scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy exams over a three-year period.
The district has 48 schools.
The takeover included removing the seven-member School Board and making Superintendent Dexter Suggs an interim superintendent under the direction of the education commissioner.
The plaintiffs in the suit are three of the seven displaced School Board members: Dianne Curry, Jim Ross and C.E. McAdoo. The fourth plaintiff is Doris Pendleton, who is a resident in Zone 1 of the school district and who voted for School Board member Joy Springer in last year's School Board election, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit said the state did not give the district and its newly elected School Board members sufficient time to enact the changes at the targeted schools and that the state Education Board hadn't taken over other districts in the state "where the rate of academically distressed schools is greater than in Little Rock."
The lawsuit also argues that the standards in Arkansas law don't allow the state Education Board to take control of a whole district unless the takeover is necessary to fix individual distressed campuses.
Information for this article was contributed by Cynthia Howell of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 02/22/2015