Hope, Junction City, Lafayette County and Camden Fairview school districts must participate in Public School Choice Act interdistrict student transfers, the state Board of Education decided Thursday.
Leaders in the four districts and their attorneys appealed to the state Board of Education for exemptions to the transfer law in sometimes blunt and emotional terms. They argued that allowing students to cross district lines to attend schools in districts in which they don't reside will result in "white flight" out of their districts and put their school systems in conflict with federal court-ordered school desegregation obligations.
The state Department of Education staff earlier this year denied or partially denied requests from the four districts to be exempted from participating in interdistrict student transfers, saying that the language in the districts' federal court desegregation orders or court-approved desegregation plans did not prohibit those transfers.
The Camden Fairview district's request for an exemption was partially approved and partially denied by the state earlier in the year. The Education Department had agreed that student transfers to Harmony Grove School District in Ouachita County were prohibited by the federal court decrees but student transfers from Camden Fairview to other systems were allowable.
On Thursday, the Education Board voted 6-1 in each of the appeals to uphold the decision of the state agency staff. Board member Mireya Reith of Fayetteville cast the single no vote.
Allen Roberts of Camden, an attorney for each of the districts, said during a break in the board meeting that he now expects the districts to challenge the state decisions in the federal courts.
The school district appeal hearings were a first for the state because of changes in Arkansas School Choice law made in 2015 and 2017. The hearings are the latest development in the state's ongoing relaxation of school district boundary lines.
Every state except for Maryland has some degree of open enrollment/cross-district boundary school-choice laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Mary Claire Hyatt, an attorney for the Arkansas Education Department, told Education Board members that the appeal issue before them was "relatively simple."
"Does the consent decree exempt school choice?" Hyatt said. "The Public School Choice Act specifically gives deference to consent decrees and federal court-ordered desegregation plans -- both in the intent of the act placed in the statute and by placing the duty and obligation on the department to review the consent decree and make sure it doesn't prevent school choice and, if it does, to grant an exemption. Such deference is mandated."
Whitney Moore of Little Rock, an attorney for the four school districts, argued to the Education Board that each of the districts seeking an exemption has a substantially black student enrollment as compared with nearby districts, and that participation in School Choice Act student transfers would have a segregative, interdistrict result.
She said Education Department staff members did not indicate that they had evaluated the segregative impact of the interdistrict transfers when deciding against the exemptions to the transfer law.
"We are asking you to consider that today," Moore said. "I would remind you that the state -- and you are the state -- has the obligation not to approve or facilitate state policies that have the purpose or effect of creating, maintaining or increasing school districts or school attendance zones that are racially identifiable."
Moore told the board that the department and board do not have the authority to interpret the district's federal court orders.
She also said the state Legislature's call for districts to participate in student-transfer programs -- unless federal desegregation orders expressly limit the interdistrict transfer of students -- is an attempt to nullify the federal court orders by inserting language that wasn't relevant at the time of the federal court order.
Education Board member Diane Zook of Melbourne questioned why the districts don't ask the presiding judges in their cases for opinions on whether the interdistrict transfers would be permissible.
Reith, who voted against upholding the Education Department's position on the transfers, questioned why the state can't anticipate the segregative impact of the transfers.
Hyatt cautioned against basing decisions on speculation or fear and without evidence to show what would happen in the affected school systems.
Camden Fairview Superintendent Mark Keith said it is a little early in the year to know what the number of transfer requests will be for the coming 2018-19 school year, but he expected there to be requests from families in his district to transfer to the predominantly white Smackover School District.
Camden Fairview School Board President Eddie Moore said he has watched white flight in Ouachita County for 25 years and that, with the transfer exemption, Camden Fairview will become a district with a black enrollment of more than 75 percent.
Other superintendents and school board presidents told the board that white parents are racially motivated to transfer their children to neighboring, largely white school districts.
"While I'm not here to judge what is in the hearts of men, I do know that I sit across the desk from countless parents who come in and request to go schools that are all much whiter," Bobby Hart, superintendent of the Hope School District, told the board. That district is 30 percent Hispanic and nearly 50 percent black.
"I push on 'why?'" he said. "Not once has it been about academics. It's disheartening. There are areas of this state that have not yet accepted the fact that we cannot have separate but equal school systems."
Lindsay Nutt, president of the Lafayette County School Board, fought back tears as she recalled "the hateful and racial words" people have used in saying why they want to transfer from that system to other districts.
In her presentation to the Education Board, Whitney Moore reported the demographics of the districts.
Camden Fairview's enrollment is about 60 percent black as compared with Harmony Grove, which is about 19 percent black and the Smackover School District, which is about 17.6 percent black, Moore said. In the Spring Hill District, near Hope, the school system's black enrollment is 1 percent. The Hope district enrolls about 92 percent of all black students in Hempstead County.
The Lafayette County district is about 61 percent black as compared with 1 percent in the Spring Hill School District and 16 percent in the Emerson-Taylor-Bradley system.
And the Junction City School District, with a 38 percent black enrollment, borders on the Parkers Chapel School District that is about 10 percent black, Whitney Moore said.
Junction City is on the border of Arkansas and Louisiana. Since 1894, the Arkansas school district has accepted Louisiana students, who pay tuition to attend and are not claimed for Arkansas education funding, Superintendent Robby Lowe said in response to board member questions. There are 179 Louisiana students in the district this year.
Districts that are side by side will have a greater divide in the racial makeup of their systems with the denial of the exemptions, Whitney Moore said, adding that white students are disproportionately more likely to participate in interdistrict student transfers than are black students.
She cited statewide data showing that 92 percent of the more than 14,000 students who participated in school-choice transfers in the 2016-17 school year were white and 7.6 percent were black, although black students make up 20 percent of the overall student population in the state.
There have been similar trends in the affected districts in different or earlier transfer programs, she said. The Lafayette County district, for example, participated in interdistrict school choice in the 2013-14 school year, believing that its desegregation efforts would not be affected. The district lost 29 white students and one Hispanic student to transfers but no black students.
Earlier in the year, when the four districts were denied or partially denied exemptions by the Education Department, six others -- including El Dorado and Jacksonville/North Pulaski school districts -- were granted exemptions to participate in the transfer program.
The El Dorado district was exempted based on a 2016 court decision by U.S. District Judge Susan O. Hickey who concluded that the long-standing court-ordered obligation to eliminate segregation within the district extended to segregation resulting from interdistrict transfers.
Whitney Moore said the federal desegregation requirements in Hope, Lafayette County, Camden Fairview and Junction City districts are similar to those in the El Dorado case and that a similar outcome in a court challenge to the interdistrict transfers should be expected.
Hyatt, the attorney for the Education Department, told the board that a federal school desegregation case challenging student transfers between the Forrest City and Palestine-Wheatley school districts did not prohibit those transfers.
A Section on 03/09/2018