Attorneys for former Little Rock School Board members and families of black students late Friday asked a federal judge to stop the district from "spending desegregation funds on a new middle school in an almost entirely white area" of the city rather than on majority-black schools in a high state of disrepair.
The motion for a preliminary injunction sent to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. also asked that the district be stopped from "closing 10 schools with the result that thousands of black pupils would be subjected to a racially discriminatory one-way transportation."
The motion was filed by Shawn Childs, a member of a team of attorneys including state Rep. John Walker that filed a lawsuit last year against the Arkansas Department of Education, Education Commissioner Johnny Key, members of the state Board of Education and Little Rock School District's state-appointed superintendent, Baker Kurrus.
The lawsuit seeks to reverse the Jan. 28, 2015, takeover of the Little Rock School District by the state Education Department, and to eliminate what attorneys said were disparate conditions of school buildings and treatment of students.
The state Board of Education voted 5-4 to assume control of the state's largest district and, in so doing, dismissed the seven-member elected School Board and placed the superintendent under the supervision of the commissioner. The takeover was the result of six of the district's 48 schools being classified by the state as academically distressed because fewer than half of the students scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy tests over three years.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of displaced Little Rock School Board members Jim Ross and Joy Springer and families of some black students in the district, most of whom are not identified by their real names.
Attorneys for the state asked earlier this week that Marshall dismiss the lawsuit.
The condition of the school buildings is the focus of the motion for injunction and accompany brief written in its support.
The brief states that Kurrus, the superintendent, announced Oct. 1 that the Little Rock district would open a new middle school in the former Leisure Arts office and warehouse building on Ranch Drive, just off Cantrell Road near Don Roberts Elementary. The district is purchasing the property for $11.5 million.
"The funding for this project will come, in part, from the desegregation payments of $37.5 million a year that the LRSD receives from the State of Arkansas," the attorneys wrote. "Although Kurrus also announced a plan to open the replacement school in southwest Little Rock, he reportedly stated that the new school will not be ready for at least four years," the brief said.
A footnote in the brief states that when the Little Rock district makes the $11.5 million payment for the property, the district only will be able to do so because of the state desegregation payments and that the desegregation payment allows the district to avoid a negative balance.
The brief also states that Kurrus "with the express approval of Defendant Key and the Governor of Arkansas, has made public a plan to address the unequal facilities issue in the school district by taking actions to close 10" elementary schools in majority-black parts of the city.
The brief lists those schools as: Carver Elementary, Rockefeller Elementary, Booker Magnet Elementary, Geyer Springs Gifted and Talented Academy, Western Hills Elementary, Wilson Elementary, David O. Dodd Elementary, Bale Elementary, Franklin Elementary and Gibbs Magnet Elementary.
Kurrus also has proposed closing Cloverdale Middle, McClellan High, Hamilton Learning Academy and J.A. Fair High schools, the brief said, and added that Kurrus has made it known he plans to build one new high school "sometime in the future" in southwest Little Rock to replace both McClellan and Fair high schools.
"In sum, Kurrus, Key and the State Board of Education, proposed to eliminate virtually all of the schools attended by black students in the areas where black students live and to focus upon new schools and improved schools with use of desegregation funds previously committed to schools in southwest Little Rock," the attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote.
"The Defendants clearly favor the schools of north and west Little Rock," the brief said. "It is Kurrus and Key's intention to strengthen and enhance all of the schools in majority white residential areas and to have them populated by one race transportation of black students from their neighborhoods to predominantly white neighborhoods."
Kurrus said in a telephone interview that he had attended basketball games at Hall High and Fair High on Friday night and did not know about the motion and couldn't say much about it, but he also said he wasn't surprised by it.
He said he was unclear what the motion meant in regard to spending desegregation money to convert the Leisure Arts building into a new middle school for 200 sixth-graders in August
"I wouldn't want to comment. I don't know what that means," Kurrus said. "We have hundreds of millions of dollars of money, so I don't know what money he or somebody is talking about."
The Little Rock district, which has an annual budget of more than $300 million and $40 million in reserve, receives $37 million annually in desegregation aid from the state. That aid will stop after the 2017-18 school year as the result of a 2014 agreement among the parties in the 33-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation case, in which Marshall is also the presiding judge.
Kurrus also said Friday night in response to the motion for an injunction that there has been no public disclosure of 10 schools to be closed.
"I have no idea what that is about," he said. "I certainly don't know which 10."
Kurrus told the state Board of Education on Thursday that he would announce a plan for closing and consolidating schools in the 2017-18 school year by Aug. 15 this year. He didn't state what number of schools would be affected but said efforts would be made to fill up the district's larger, newer schools, including Stephens, King and Washington elementary schools. He also called Carver a good school building and said there would be a need to consolidate some smaller schools in west Little Rock.
The district is converting Geyer Springs Gifted and Talented Academy for elementary pupils into a prekindergarten center for the 2016-17 school year.
At the same time Kurrus announced steps in October to open the middle school, he also said the district would build a new high school on property owned by the district on Richsmith Lane in southwest Little Rock. Architects have been selected for both designing the new high school and for converting the Leisure Arts building into a school.
The brief to the judge Friday said the desegregation funds should not be spent on a new middle school but on majority black schools "operated for several years in a high state of disrepair." The motion described problems at several schools, including Cloverdale, Henderson and Dunbar middle schools.
The brief states that the defendants will not be harmed if the injunction is granted, whereas black students in the district will suffer "irreparable harm" to their education unless the defendants' attempt to close schools in the areas of the city where they predominate is preliminarily enjoined.
"Many will have to be bussed one-way to schools far from their neighborhoods in a perversion of prior Court-ordered attempts to integrate schools through the use of transportation," the brief said. " The pre-existing burdens imposed upon African American children by the inferiority of their schools will be greatly exacerbated."
Metro on 02/13/2016