The Pulaski County Special School District is claiming for one more school year a legally permissible exemption to a state law that enables students living in one school district to enroll in a different district.
The district's School Board voted 5-1 at a special meeting Tuesday against participating in the kind of interdistrict student transfers that are allowed by the state's Public School Choice Act in the coming 2017-18 school year.
But the board also voted 6-0 -- and actually took that vote first -- to permit Public School Choice Act student transfers in the 2018-19 school year.
The board members also encouraged any individual families who are unwilling to wait a year to enter or exit the district through the School Choice Act transfers to appeal to the board for consideration on a case-by-case basis.
The board decision on the exemption for 2017-18 is due to the state Board of Education by Saturday.
The board's two votes supported the recommendations of Superintendent Jerry Guess, who warned that the loss of what could be hundreds of students, paired with multiple unfinished school construction projects, would destabilize the district and hinder the district's meeting its obligations in a federal school desegregation lawsuit.
"I think this district has challenges in 2017-18 that present a very foreboding possibility," Guess said. "If we were to lose 350 to 400 kids -- that would have a devastating effect on us," he said.
The Pulaski County Special district's leaders are anticipating the loss of as many as 250 students in 2017-18 even without School Choice Act transfers, Guess said.
That's because this is the last year that the school districts in Pulaski County are providing bus transportation for students who have crossed district lines to attend schools using an older majority-to-minority student transfer program. It is expected that many of those majority-to-minority transfer students will remain in their resident districts for school next year if they don't have bus transportation to their current schools.
Guess also said that the construction of a new Mills High School and a new Robinson Middle School are not complete and the funding for a greatly expanded 2,200-seat Sylvan Hills High School won't be decided until a June election on the 13-year extension of 14.8 property tax mills.
"If those were done we would have facilities that might contribute to students staying in [the school district], but neither Mills nor Robinson is completed. So during the '17-18 school year we plan to finish those and open them in the fall of '18," Guess said.
As it stands, Sylvan Hills High and Middle schools are filled to capacity and couldn't accept transfer students.
Additionally, the district is working to be declared unitary, or desegregated, by the federal court in certain areas of its operations, including school facilities, student achievement, student discipline and school staffing.
"The reduction of as many students as we have talked about would significantly destabilize our teaching force and result in teachers without a doubt being moved around ... and very likely affecting our goal to maintain a racially reflective staff," Guess gave as another reason to delay participating in the School Choice Act transfers for one more year.
Gary Newton, executive director of the Arkansas Learns organization that advocates for parent choice for their children's schools, addressed the board, acknowledging that a January 2014 settlement agreement in the long-running desegregation case permitted the Pulaski County Special district to claim the exemption from participating in the School Choice Act transfers, but didn't mandate it. He urged the board "to tear down the walls that separate us whether they are keeping students in or keeping students out."
There is no quantifiable evidence to indicate that the Pulaski County Special district would actually see a net loss of students if it participated in School Choice Act transfers because the Robinson, Maumelle and Mills schools will be attractive to parents, he said.
Newton also noted that the loss of students to a district due to School Choice Act transfers is capped in law at 3 percent or about 360 in the Pulaski County Special district. The district is experiencing annual revenue growth of $3.5 million a year that would offset the $2.5 million the district would lose in revenue if it lost 3 percent of students.
Scott Miller, a former North Little Rock School Board member, also urged the Pulaski County Special board to participate in the transfer program this coming year as a way to better adapt its school construction projects to the enrollment it can expect to have in future years.
Both the North Little Rock and Little Rock districts participate in School Choice Act transfers.
Board member Brian Maune cast the sole no vote on the exemption for 2017-18, saying that his west Little Rock community is eager for the option of going to schools in Pulaski County Special.
Other board members said they also very much favored giving parents choices about schools and believe Pulaski County Special will be the district that many choose, but they said they were reluctant to put the district's work now at any risk.
Alicia Gillen said that when the district participates in school choice, "I want us to put our best foot forward. I want the choice to be us."
Metro on 03/29/2017