UPDATE:
The Arkansas Board of Education voted Thursday to allow a pair of student transfers under the state's Public School Choice Act that had earlier been denied at the district level, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Education said.
In separate votes during its meeting Thursday in Little Rock, the board approved transfers for one student from the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District to the Cabot School District and for three members of another family to transfer from the El Dorado School District to the Parker's Chapel School District.
In both cases, districts said they were exempt from school choice because of active desegregation lawsuits.
The board first approved the appeal seeking the transfer to Cabot and denied the appeal seeking the transfer to Parker's Chapel. But after those votes, the panel reconsidered both measures and opted to approve both appeals, reversing each denial and allowing the transfers.
Read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
EARLIER:
The Arkansas Board of Education voted Thursday to allow a family with a student in the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District to send that child to the Cabot School District, reversing an earlier district-level decision.
The Jacksonville district had denied Nacesha Dulaney's request to transfer her daughter from that district, where the family lives, to Cabot under the state's Public School Choice Act.
The Cabot district said in a letter to the family that Jacksonville denied the request because it is "party to a desegregation lawsuit."
After a hearing Thursday, the state board voted 5-3 to reverse the denial and allow the school choice transfer for the 2016-17 school year. Board members voting Thursday for the reversal were Joe Black, O. Fitzgerald Hill, Ouida Newton, R. Brett Williamson and Diane Zook.
Read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.