The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday granted interdistrict student transfers upon appeals from four Jefferson County families whose earlier requests to attend school in the White Hall School District were denied.
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But the state board denied one appeal of a Little Rock family that had sought to send a student to the Bryant School District. It also declined a request from El Dorado School District attorneys to reconsider its approval last month of interdistrict transfers from the El Dorado School District to the Parkers Chapel School District.
The state action on the interdistrict student-transfer appeals comes in the same week in which a federal judge on Monday reversed the state Education Board's July 14 approval of the transfer of a student who resides in the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District to the Cabot School District.
The Jacksonville district had claimed an exemption to participating in Arkansas Public School Choice Act transfers because it is subject to a federal school desegregation plan and because it is a party to a desegregation settlement in which the parties agreed to follow state law that allows exemption.
U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. said the state -- one of the parties in the long-running Pulaski County federal school desegregation lawsuit -- has to be a "backstop" to the Jacksonville and Pulaski County Special school districts' claimed exemptions to Public School Choice Act transfers.
Two families in Pulaski County-area school districts -- one from Little Rock and the other from Jacksonville/North Pulaski -- asked to withdraw their appeals for student transfers that were on the Education Board's agenda for Thursday.
Gary Newton, executive director of the Arkansas Learns school-choice organization, had applied for a transfer for his child from the Little Rock district, where the family resides, to the Pulaski County Special School District, which has exempted itself from the participating in School Choice Act transfers.
Newton said Thursday that the appeal was "futile" after Marshall's decision this week and so he withdrew it.
In the transfer appeals that were considered Thursday by the state Education Board, two families from the Dollarway School District asked that their children and grandchildren be able to attend school in the White Hall district. Their requests were denied by the White Hall system last spring because the Dollarway district, like Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville/North Pulaski, had exempted itself from participating in interdistrict student transfers because of a federal court school-desegregation plan.
Jennifer Davis, an attorney for the state Department of Education told the Education Board that the 2015 revisions of the School Choice Act require districts that claim exemptions from participating in choice must produce documentation showing that choice would interfere with court-ordered desegregation efforts.
Davis said her preliminary research showed that the Dollarway district was declared unitary, or desegregated, and released from federal court oversight in the early 1970s, according to legal and historical journals but she had not yet found the actual court order.
Davis also said that the district, which is operating under control with state-appointed Superintendent Barbara Warren at its helm since last December, is no longer actively claiming the exemption from participating in interdistrict student transfers although the district's exemption claim remains on the Arkansas Department of Education website.
Larry Smith, superintendent of the White Hall School District, told the Education Board that he did not object to his district accepting the Dollarway students but didn't want to put his district into legal jeopardy by accepting them from a district with a desegregation-case exemption.
LaQuita Wilson of Dollarway had appealed to the Education Board last year for a transfer for her kindergarten daughter but was denied because of Dollarway's claimed exemption to participating in school choice. Wilson applied again this year, was denied for the same reason, but won her appeal Thursday with a unanimous board vote, enabling her daughter to attend first grade in White Hall, where her three older siblings are students.
Tommy Breamsey, the first-grader's grandfather, praised the board before its vote.
"I have newfound respect for what you do,"the minister said about the issues he has seen the Education Board face. "The decisions you make can impact children for the rest of their lives."
The board also allowed the teenage grandchildren of Ida and William Allen to transfer from the Dollarway district to White Hall. The teenagers previously attended Maumelle High in the Pulaski County Special district, but they and their mother moved in with the grandparents because of the mother's medical condition.
The two boys are transferring to the White Hall district under a different state school-choice law -- the Opportunity School Choice Act. That act allows students to apply to transfer out of a school that has been labeled by the state as academically distressed, as is the case of Dollarway High School.
The White Hall district had denied the School Choice Act applications for two families from the Pine Bluff School District by the July 1 notification date. In one case, the White Hall district accepted the application of one kindergarten pupil from the Robert Wall family but denied the application of his twin sister because of capacity considerations. In the other case, the White Hall district accepted the application of a sixth-grader from the Danny Campbell family but rejected the application of the third-grade sibling again because of capacity.
The School Choice Act allows a district to reject a nonresident transfer student if the desired school is at 90 percent of capacity, which gives the district some cushion to be able to enroll children who actually live in the district.
"To say we were shocked that our twins would have to attend separate schools would be an understatement," Carmen Wall told the Education Board as she fought back tears in making her appeal.
Smith, the superintendent, said the situation "tugs at my heart as well" and "my heart sank when this happened."
He said his district had determined last spring that it could serve 198 kindergartners with 11 teachers in the White Hall schools this year. The district took all district residents and School Choice Act applicants up to that number for kindergarten. As of this week, however, the district has 162 children enrolled but that number could increase in the first few weeks of the school year, he said.
If the district accepted more transfer students now and the district's enrollment grew later in the year because of children moving into the district, the district would face having to hire another kindergarten teacher, at a cost of about $65,000, including benefits.
The district turned down 81 transfer requests but is enrolling 280 transfer students.
"We are taking a leap of faith that they will be happy and stay with us," he said of the transfer students. Some do leave for various reasons. If all were to leave, the district would lose about $1.5 million in state funding.
Education Board members quizzed Smith about the possibility of creating student waiting lists and deciding on whether to accept transfer students in late summer after knowing more about the projected enrollment counts. Smith said the state law requires the families to be notified of approval or denial by July 1. He also said that would be hard on districts in which transfer students reside to lose students late in the summer after the districts have made their own school staff hires for the year.
The Education Board approved both appeals from both families.
Earlier, the Education Board denied an appeal from the Kincaid family of Little Rock that sought to enroll children in the Bryant School District.
Jeremy Lasiter, director of human resources and legal services for that district, told the Education Board that the Bryant district schools were over 90 percent capacity and, as a result, could not accept transfer students.
Early Thursday evening, the Education Board was asked by an attorney for the El Dorado School District to reconsider a student transfer to Parkers Chapel that was approved last month. The board voted against reconsideration.
Davis, the Education Department attorney, said the El Dorado district needs to ask a federal judge to decide whether student transfers will conflict with the district's 45-year-old desegregation plan. Davis said the district has described itself as unitary in the past. District representatives argued last month that if the district begins participating in transfers, it will become racially segregated.
Metro on 08/12/2016