Central Arkansas district out to ease schools' oversight

Jacksonville seeks ruling on staffing

The new Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District is breaking out on its own in a long-running Pulaski County federal school desegregation lawsuit.

The nearly 4,000-student district that detached from the larger Pulaski County Special School District in July 2016 is going to court at 9:30 a.m. today to attempt to show a federal judge that it is entitled to be declared unitary in regard to its school staffing practices and should be released from any further court supervision in that area.

Additionally, the Jacksonville district is asking U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., the presiding judge in the lawsuit, to rule that the district's plan for improving its school buildings will result in the district meeting its desegregation obligations in regard to facilities.

The district is in the midst of building a new high school to replace the current one and a new elementary school to replace Arnold Drive and Tolleson elementaries. It also has a timeline for replacing all of its remaining schools over the long term, including its middle school.

The district is flying solo, so to speak, in the court hearing, which is expected to last most of this week.

The Pulaski County Special district, the only other remaining defendant in what has become a 35-year-old lawsuit, was declared unitary, or desegregated, on staffing in June 2017 and has not asked for any designation on the condition of its school buildings.

"I think the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district has a good story to tell on its efforts to comply with Plan 2000, and how that has been a priority for the district," Scott Richardson, an attorney for the school district, said about this week's hearing.

Plan 2000 is the Pulaski County Special District's desegregation plan.

The obligations in that plan apply to both districts -- a condition that was in the agreement that enabled Jacksonville/North Pulaski area residents to form their own school system apart from the Pulaski County Special system.

If the judge declares the Jacksonville district unitary on staffing, the district would continue to be subject to court monitoring in regard to eliminating inequities in school buildings, student achievement, student discipline and its own desegregation monitoring system.

Marshall declared the Pulaski Special Special district unitary on staffing last year without a trial after that district and the class of black students known as the Joshua intervenors agreed on how the district would proceed over the course of three years to ensure that school staffs are racially desegregated.

There is no such stipulated agreement between the Joshua intervenors and the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district.

The Joshua intervenors is opposing the Jacksonville district's motion for unitary status and release from court scrutiny on school staffing. That's in part because the district is so new and because of the recent turnover in the district's top administrative team. The district started this school year with a new superintendent and two new assistant superintendents.

"Joshua intervenors' facts show that the JNPSD has not made progress in improving the staffing of its district with regard to black students; and that its facilities program is premature," attorneys for the intervenors wrote to the judge in pretrial documents.

The Joshua intervenors is represented by a team of attorneys that includes state Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, Robert Pressman of Lexington, Mass., and Austin Porter Jr. of Little Rock.

Section L is the part of Plan 2000 that focuses on staffing.

The Section L provision requires the district to allocate teachers and other professional staff members in a manner that avoids the racial identification of schools.

It calls for the district to engage in recruitment so that new teachers are selected from a racially diverse pool of applicants. It further requires recruitment that is extensive and sustained, and there can be no policy or practice that imposes a cap on the proportion of black teachers.

Section L obligates the district to programs and procedures to increase the number of early childhood teachers, primary grade teachers and secondary core academic teachers who are black.

That includes "offering incentives for African-American teachers to obtain certification in these areas, and to assign those teachers to the ... schools where the greatest disparity exists."

Section L also calls for recruitment of applicants for available administrative positions to be done in ways that result in a racially diverse pool of applicants.

In its motion for unitary status on staffing -- submitted to the judge in September -- the district said it had embedded Plan 2000's staffing requirements in its personnel policies and procedures, and that none of the district's schools are racially identifiable by their staffs.

The district contends that it operates a single high school and a single middle school, making it "impossible for ... schools to be racially identifiable at the secondary level." The district further argues that staffs in the elementary schools have been equitably allocated within an allowable range "so that no school is racially identifiable."

Overall the district's state-licensed staff is 20 percent black this school year, up from 16.6 percent black in the 2016-17 school year, Richardson said in documents submitted to the judge in January.

He also reported that the Jacksonville district has a total of 105 teachers at its six elementary schools, 21 of whom are black. That is up from 18.9 percent in 2016-17.

The numbers of black teachers per school this year range from two out of 15 total teachers at Arnold Drive, 13.3 percent, to six of 20 total teachers at Taylor Elementary, 30 percent.

The attorneys for the Joshua intervenors argued in opposition to the unitary status that the district's numbers and percentages of black teachers have declined since the formation of the Jacksonville/North Pulaski system, with hiring of staffing going from 61 of 257 (23.7 percent black) in 2015-16 to 39 of 257 (15.2 percent) in 2016-17. In the current year, 47 of the district's 270 teachers are black, the Joshua attorneys said, citing a state Department of Education database. That is 17.4 percent.

The attorneys also wrote to the judge last month that the district failed to produce tangible evidence of advertising vacant teacher positions; nor can the district show extensive and sustained recruitment of black teachers and no written standards for determining whether an applicant pool is sufficiently diverse, they said.

The Jacksonville/North Pulaski district is obligated by Plan 2000 to make its school buildings equitable with much newer buildings in the Pulaski County Special district, including Maumelle High and Chenal Elementary that are in predominantly white communities.

Bryan Duffie, the district's superintendent, said last week that the district, will open its new Lester Elementary School in August and its new high school in August 2019.

New multipurpose rooms will open later this school year at Murrell Taylor and Bayou Meto elementaries.

Additionally, the district is seeking state aid in the 2019-21 cycle of state funding to build a replacement Jacksonville Middle School and a replacement school for Pinewood and Dupree elementary schools, Duffie said. The district also is planning to replace Taylor and Bayou Meto elementaries by the early 2030s, if not before, he said.

The Joshua attorneys have argued that the district's plans rely on state funding, and there is no backup plan if that funding falls through.

Additionally, the attorneys have objected to the length of time to accomplish the replacement schools and to the combining of existing schools into one campus, which could create a transportation burden for students and their families.

A Section on 02/05/2018

Upcoming Events