The Arkansas Supreme Court rejected a request from a group of parents and former School Board members to reconsider its Oct. 29 ruling upholding the state's takeover of the Little Rock School District.
On Thursday, the court denied a petition that the group had hoped would revive their claims against last year's decision by the state Board of Education to dissolve the School Board and take over the district's 48 schools. The state took over the district because six schools were in academic distress.
In their petition, attorneys for the group opposed to the state takeover argued that part of the reasoning behind the Supreme Court's Oct. 29 ruling was based on a lack of arguments allowed early on in the case.
The state's high court reversed a lower court judge's ruling that allowed the suit to go forward and instead found that the takeover was proper and opponents failed to plead enough facts in their complaint against the state.
The problem, the attorneys argued, was that as soon as Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen refused to dismiss the case at the request of attorneys with the Department of Education, the case was instantly appealed to the high court.
That appeal left the attorneys no opportunity to make the arguments necessary in their legal complaint to establish that the Board of Education's actions were unconstitutional and the takeover was illegal.
An attorney challenging the state takeover, Marion Humphrey, said Thursday that he was disappointed in the ruling but he had hopes for a similar challenge to the takeover that is ongoing in federal court.
"The Board of Education operated in bad faith. If they suggested a school board to say 'you need to do something' and you give them one semester [before taking it over], that is bad faith. It is disingenuous," Humphrey said. "The way members of the [school] board were treated, well, I can't think of a better word than ugly. It's ugly what happened."
Metro on 01/08/2016