Possible disparities in the funding and construction of Mills High and Robinson Middle schools in the Pulaski County Special School District were at the forefront of talks Friday between the judge and parties in a 34-year-old federal school desegregation lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. directed leaders in the Pulaski Special district to send to him by Oct. 9 a report on whether the district has deviated from its commitment to provide students with equitable school facilities and, if so, what will be done about it.
John Walker, an attorney for black students known as the Joshua intervenors, will have until Oct. 24 to respond to the school district's report, and the court's independent expert in the case, Margie Powell, will then have until Nov. 8 to present her analysis of the building matters to the judge.
"I feel confident that the Court will have a sufficient picture in 60 days on which direction we need to go on the county's facilities issue -- whether that is discovery and a trial date or just continued reporting [by the district] and monitoring by the court," Marshall told representatives of the parties at Friday's quarterly status conference in the long-running lawsuit.
The 12,000-student Pulaski County Special district remains under court supervision of its efforts to eliminate inequities in the condition of school buildings, student discipline practices and student achievement. The 4,000-student Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District is seeking unitary status in those areas plus its staffing practices.
Both districts have aging and inferior school structures in communities with high percentages of black students compared with Maumelle High and Chenal Elementary schools, which are in more affluent communities and serve higher percentages of white students.
Marshall started Friday's status conference by saying that he was "bumfuzzled" by the Pulaski County Special district's notice this week of plans to investigate for possible disparities in the funding and construction of Mills High on Dixon Road in the district's southeast section and Robinson Middle on Arkansas 10 in west Pulaski County. Robinson Elementary, Middle and High schools serve the district's Chenal Valley neighborhoods, a largely more affluent area than southeast Pulaski County.
Sam Jones, the district's newly reinstated lead counsel in the lawsuit, referred to a supplemental status report he sent to the judge on Tuesday that focused largely on athletic facilities at the two schools.
"There are indications, which are being evaluated and further explored, that certain aspects of the facilities at Robinson may involve features that could be subjectively if not objectively regarded as superior to certain of those at Mills," Jones wrote in that report.
There are questions about the differences in the size of coaches' offices and weight rooms at the new Mills and Robinson schools as well as differences in lighting and windows and in the interior wall, floor and ceiling finishes, Jones said.
Also to be determined, he said, is why the new indoor athletic facilities are already being used at Robinson but not at Mills, although he suggested that an outcropping of granite rock at the Mills site may be a reason for a delay there.
"Thus far the questions that have arisen are limited to the athletic facilities at the two schools," Jones said. "Construction of the academic facilities has not yet progressed to the point where the district is unable to remedy any equitable issues that might be present in the construction plans."
The district has received assurances from architects for Mills that, if necessary, additional windows can be added to the indoor practice facility and that the lighting can be enhanced to bring it on par with that at Robinson, Jones said. Concrete columns at Mills can be wrapped in plasterboard.
Jones said the district is also looking at the broader issues of whether expenditures for the new Mills comport with the judge's Jan. 12, 2015, order approving the expenditure of about $50 million for Mills and $5 million for the conversion of Mills High to be a new Fuller Middle School. Also in question is whether the district is devoting $15,350,000 in state desegregation aid exclusively to the Mills projects, as had been planned.
"What has been spent to date at Mills? What has been spent to date at Robinson? What were the original budgets for each project? Have the respective budgets changed, who proposed the changes and who approved the changes?" are among the inquiries being made, Jones wrote. "What can be done at this stage to equalize the projects if in fact they are not substantially equal in terms of expenditures overall?"
Jones said the district so far has determined that an application was submitted in June 2015 to the Arkansas Board of Education for authority to issue $56,265,000 in bonds for the purpose of equipping school facilities, construction a new Mills High and converting the existing Mills High to a middle school.
"It appears that on March 14, 2016, the architects for Mills were directed to work toward a $35 million construction budget for the new Mills High," Jones also wrote. "The district is inquiring further as to how that figure was derived and the authority for that directive."
"On March 15, 2016," Jones continued, "the superintendent and commissioner approved a recommendation to construct the Mills High replacement project and to covert the existing high school into a middle school and to demolish the existing Fuller Middle School and campus support facilities for the Robinson Middle School replacement project reflecting a cost for all projects of $80 million and describing the funding source as the building fund and second-lien bond proceeds."
Walker, on behalf of the Joshua intervenors, complained to Marshall on Friday that both the intervenors and the judge "had been sold a bill of goods" in regard to the Pulaski County Special district's building of a new Robinson Middle School. He called the status conference "a sad occasion because the district has admitted in effect complicity in circumventing" its desegregation plan commitments.
Walker argued to the judge Friday that one recently resigned Pulaski County Special district staff member "manipulated" the district's building program to advantage his own own neighborhood.
"This reinforces the notion that kids in the Mills area matter less than kids in more affluent areas," he said.
Walker didn't specifically name an official, but Derek Scott, the district's executive director of operations, earlier this month submitted his letter of resignation, effective Sept. 15.
The Pulaski Special district is not the financially strapped system it has been depicted to be, Walker told Marshall. The district should be made to earmark some $20 million for improvements to College Station Elementary in the southeast part of the district and Harris Elementary in the northeast section.
He also proposed that the Pulaski County Special district transfer some money to the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski district for replacing its old schools. That district is in the midst of building a new elementary to open in 2018-19 and anew high school to open in 2019-20, with plans for other new elementaries in later years.
Just this week, Jacksonville/North Pulaski district leaders have raised the possibility of constructing a new middle school rather than spending almost the same amount to renovate its existing middle school campus, which is the former North Pulaski High School.
Friday's status conference between Marshall and the parties was the first since the Pulaski Special district's school board voted in July to fire six-year Superintendent Jerry Guess and the Allen P. Roberts law firm, which had taken the lead counsel role in representing the district in the ongoing lawsuit.
The seven-member School Board, elected in November 2016 after the district operated for five years in state control and without an elected board, immediately named Janice Warren as interim superintendent for this school year and reinstated Jones as lead counsel. Jones had held that role before the hiring of the Roberts firm.
The judge on Friday asked Jones to report later this year on the long-term leadership plans for the district.
Metro on 09/09/2017