U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. on Tuesday rejected a request by the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District to be a party in the long-running Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit -- at least for now.
The judge ruled from the bench on the request from attorneys for the Jacksonville district during a status conference that hit on a range of topics pending in the 32-year-old case, including:
• A recommitment by the Pulaski County Special School District to replacing Mills High School despite the May 12 defeat of a proposed 5.6-mill property-tax increase.
• A report on the Donaldson Scholars Program to help Pulaski County Special district students score high enough on ACT college entrance exams to bypass remediation courses, increasing college enrollment and chances of success for students who might not otherwise attend college.
• Past rulings in the case that prohibit school district boundary line changes and/or creation of new school districts -- other than Jacksonville/North Pulaski -- out of the Pulaski County Special district.
The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District was established late last year by the state Board of Education but remains a part of the Pulaski County Special district while officials plan such matters as the division of students, the staff, assets and debts. Planners for the new district expect that the system for about 4,000 students will begin operating on its own July 1, 2016.
Last month, Patrick Wilson and Scott Richardson -- attorneys for the new district -- had asked that the new district be given recognition as a separate defendant party in the lawsuit to present concerns that might be of greater importance to the new district than to the Pulaski County Special district. Wilson said at that time that party status would enable the new district "to tell our story" in the case and no longer have to rely on the Pulaski County Special district to do that.
Marshall said Tuesday that he wasn't sure that there was one right answer in the law regarding party status for the new district.
"I'm just not convinced we are to the point in the maturation of the district for the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district to be a formal party in the case," Marshall said.
"That is not to say that the court doesn't want to hear from you and hear concerns from the new district -- I do," he said. "But as I expressed at the last conference, my view is that the current, complicated, difficult, challenging issues involved in the detachment are best handled in the normal course with the representatives of the new district and the representatives of the existing district and working within the framework that the state Board of Education has established to handle the detachment.
"I do not believe it would be productive or proper for the court to get into the middle of those issues unless or until someone comes to the court and say this is what has been decided and this is going to adversely affect the quest for unitary status in the county district or the new district. If and when that happens, the court will be available to resolve that issue."
The Jacksonville/North Pulaski district, when it detaches from the Pulaski County Special district, will be subject to the same desegregation obligations as the Pulaski County Special district. At the point it detaches, the district will become a separate party in the case.
The judge said it is undisputed that the new district and the Pulaski County Special district both subject to meet the obligations of the Pulaski County Special district's desegregation Plan 2000 and are "arm in arm in the quest and determination to become unitary -- to meet the obligations of Plan 2000. The court will see that that that is accomplished if any one wavers," he said.
The Pulaski County Special district remains under federal court supervision of its desegregation efforts in five areas of its operation: facilities, student discipline, student achievement, staffing and the district's own monitoring of its desegregation efforts.
District leaders had put a 5.6-mill tax increase on the ballot at a May 12 special election. The proposed increase, which was defeated by a 3-to-1 ratio, would have helped finance a $221 million building plan that included two new high schools and doubling the size of a third. Additionally, two new elementary schools were planned along with the relocation of two middle schools and updates to every other campus in the district. The tax -- had it passed -- would not have applied to Jacksonville-area residents, and the Jacksonville schools were not included in the building plan.
Jerry Guess, the state-appointed superintendent of the state-controlled district, assured Marshall on Tuesday that the district will proceed with its previously announced "Plan B" for a new Mills High in the southeast section of the district and to relocate Fuller Middle School to the modernized existing Mills campus.
The district will pay for the two campuses by issuing second-lien bonds, Guess said. Those bonds do not require backing by a tax increase. The district will use a portion of its final year of $20.7 million in state desegregation aid in 2017-18 to help pay the debt on the second-lien bonds, he said.
Guess estimated that it will take about three years to complete the planning and construction work.
Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, one of the attorneys for the class of black students known as the Joshua intervenors, questioned Guess about the condition of the facilities in the Jacksonville area, which remains part of the Pulaski County Special district. He asked whether Guess was aware that the Jacksonville schools "lie in shame" next to the new and renovated schools in the Maumelle area of the district.
"I agree that they are in horrific shape," Guess said about the Jacksonville schools. He also acknowledged in response to questions from Walker that 84 percent of the voters in the Maumelle area voted against the millage increase.
Walker argued to the judge that Jacksonville/North Pulaski district's detachment should not occur until there is a firm commitment from the state to fund more than half of the construction costs in the Jacksonville schools.
"We don't wish to be in a position where the condition of facilities are uncertain for years to come," Walker said, adding that his basis for supporting the formation of a Jacksonville district was the promise of state funding for buildings through the state Partnership Program fund. The Pulaski County Special district, a relatively wealthy district, is ineligible for the Partnership Program money.
The new Jacksonville district likely will qualify for state aid if that aid is available.
Walker also told Marshall at Tuesday's meeting that he is likely to file a motion in coming weeks asking that a school board election be held in Jacksonville/North Pulaski that is based on single-member election zones, or one board member elected per zone.
The current interim Jacksonville/North Pulaski School Board has approved an election-zone plan for September's school board elections in which five members would be elected from single-member zones and two board members would be elected at-large, or by voters throughout the district.
Sam Jones, an attorney for the Pulaski County Special district, used the conference Tuesday to bring to Marshall's attention the work of a state Board of Education committee that is studying the boundary lines of districts in Pulaski County. The committee has indicated some interest in altering those lines to create one district south of the Arkansas River.
Jones presented a partial transcript of a Jan. 13, 2014, hearing conducted by Marshall in which Marshall said that under the terms of a 1989 settlement agreement in the desegregation case "there shall be no changes in the geographic boundaries of the Pulaski County district."
Marshall also said about boundary changes at that 2014 hearing: "That opportunity was taken away in the party's settlement agreement in 1989 as construed by my Brother [U.S. District Judge Bill] Wilson in 2003, which is the law of the case."
A 2014 settlement in the case -- negotiated by representatives of the three Pulaski County school districts, the state and the Joshua intervenors -- permitted the formation of the new Jacksonville school system in accordance with state law. The same 2014 agreement obligated the state to oppose the creation of any other school district from Pulaski County Special's territory until Pulaski County Special is declared fully unitary and is released from federal court supervision.
In the area of student achievement, leaders in the Pulaski County Special district last year agreed to help fund the Donaldson Scholars Program operated by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Philander Smith College to increase college attendance by Pulaski County Special district students who were otherwise unlikely to go.
Charles Donaldson, a retired university faculty member for whom the program is named, reported to the judge that 190 students in ninth through 12th grades are participating. That is short of the 400-student goal for the program but still "phenomenal."
Brad Patterson, an interim vice provost at UALR, said that of the 63 high school graduates who enrolled in July, only five or six initially planned to attend college. Ultimately, 30 of the 63 of the students chose to attend UALR. and 29 of those 30 completed the first year of college last year.
Metro on 05/20/2015