U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. on Thursday resumed a tour he started in August of selected Pulaski County Special School District schools, spending much of the day at four campuses -- including two of the smallest and oldest in the widespread district.
Marshall is the presiding judge in a nearly 36-year-old lawsuit in which the Pulaski County Special district remains a party and is obligated by its long-standing desegregation plan -- called Plan 2000 -- and various court orders to equalize the condition of its school buildings.
The judge in August toured some of the district's newer schools: the 7-year-old Maumelle High, and the brand-new Mills University Studies High and Robinson Middle schools.
On Thursday, Marshall -- in suit and bow tie and no judicial robes -- changed his focus a bit and led a small entourage of courthouse staff members, attorneys and school district representatives through the offices, classrooms, cafeterias, music rooms and libraries at College Station and Harris elementaries.
Both schools are on the east side of the district, date back to the 1950s and serve communities that have a greater proportion of black pupils and pupils from low-income families than do the Maumelle and Robinson school areas.
Attorneys for black students -- known as the Joshua intervenors -- asked Marshall earlier this year to order the replacement of the district's College Station and Harris elementaries to promote "facility parity" in the district.
The group on Thursday also toured the newly renovated Mills Middle School that replaced the now demolished Fuller Middle School, also on the district's east side, and drove around the three-story classroom expansion under construction at Sylvan Hills High School in rapidly growing Sherwood.
Marshall took notes and asked questions but offered no rulings or opinions on the status of the schools he toured. He did tell Sylvan Hills High Principal Tracy Allen that he would likely impose on the district's attorney Sam Jones to arrange a return trip to see the completed expansion of that school.
"I appreciate the hospitality," Marshall said at the end of day in which he asked district leaders to include historical information, data on building costs and square footage in their Dec. 1 report to him on the buildings. He also asked for a map of the district with all the district schools marked.
"Driving again from campus to campus today, all this has been very helpful to the court," he said on a day that required a mix of driving on interstates and two-lane -- at one point flooded -- back roads. "It has struck me once again how vast this district is."
College Station Elementary, built in 1958 and now serving 147 children -- down from more than 300 in past years -- is made up of six buildings housing a cafeteria with a stage, a fine arts building, a large safe room built after a 1997 tornado, an office suite and library building, and two classroom buildings, one of which included classrooms that open to the covered but open-air walkways that link the buildings.
"We wear rain boots here," Principal Mary Carpenter told the judge about the open walkways.
The school features one classroom for each grade, a computing device for every child, orchestra instruction, a maker's lab with technology supplied by a nearby mining industry, a "bank" for cashing in good behavior points for prizes and a specialty program for children identified as gifted.
Margie Powell, who is Marshall's court expert on the desegregation case, said the campus -- home of smiling blue dragons -- is old but a favorite for her because of its "homey feel," and arrangement of landscape bricks and plantings.
Still, the classrooms and hallways, while gaily decorated, have low ceilings and fluorescent lighting that is rather dim compared with more modern LED lighting. Building materials vary. They include cement blocks, bricks and cement fiber board and paneling. Exposed pipes and wiring are attached high up on exterior walls.
Windows throughout the campus let in natural light, but many of them are high up on walls or are small and barred to deter break-ins. The school has full-time security, Carpenter said, but lacks other safeguards that have become common in schools.
In contrast to College Station, the newly renovated campus that became Mills Middle School this year features a sleek two-story portico plus an enclosed glass and steel vestibule that keeps visitors from entering the main part of the school without being allowed in by the office staff.
The 428-student sixth-through-eighth-grade school's suite of administrative offices has been created out of former classroom space, and the old office suite has been refreshed to house school counselors.
Luxury vinyl tile in different shades of gray cover floors in main hallways. The school's once noisy open cafeteria has been divided into two parts -- both enclosed in glass. One section is for daily meals and the other for celebrations, Principal Lisa Watkins told the judge.
Marshall complimented the arrangement. "It's closed in but you can see the [hallway] lockers," he said.
New ceiling tiles and lighting are other features found in parts of the former high school.
Joe Lansden, construction services vice president for Baldwin & Shell Construction Co., said the Mills Middle School project is about 75 percent complete. New roofing, mechanical systems, LED lighting and doors have or will soon be installed at least in parts of the building.
The school's music rooms have been renovated to include sound-absorbing wall and floor coverings. Instrument storage is forthcoming.
The auditorium, gymnasium and auxiliary gymnasium are largely untouched, although Curtis Johnson, the district's director of operations, said they have been remodeled since the days when he attended Mills and had to run up and down the bleachers.
The district has obligated itself to spending $5 million for the transition of the former high school built in 1968 into a middle school.
Harris Elementary was built in 1954 in the McAlmont community as a high school for black students.
Principal Taniesa Moore said the school where she has worked for three years has 185 students and could grow beyond its one classroom for each of the upper elementary grades if it had teachers to cover additional classrooms.
The elementary school has a gymnasium, a rarity for an elementary school, but the period wood ceiling routinely leaks. There is a large library, as well, at Harris. The school's music room, staffed by a half-time music teacher, is equipped with drums and a piano. The school also shares its art, physical education and counseling staff with other schools.
When asked by Joshua intervenor attorney Austin Porter Jr. for a list of needs at Harris, Moore said she wished the school was housed in one building and not three. As a result, the separate buildings require pupils and staff members to brave the weather to get from place to place.
She also asked for more than a single restroom for adults in the school, carpet for the tiled floors, new ceiling tiles to replace some damaged by animals in the attic crawl space, brighter lighting, replacement of wood paneling, and separate drop-off and pickup areas for bus riders and car riders.
"I dream big," Moore said.
Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, and his legal team that represent the Joshua intervenors have also asked Marshall to order the Pulaski County Special district to do "additional work" on the brand-new Mills High building along with the newly renovated Mills Middle School so that the campuses are "equal in size and quality" to the new Robinson Middle School building and Robinson High.
"[W]hite communities are favored, while the African American community receives lesser facility resources," Walker and his colleagues wrote to Marshall earlier this year on behalf of black students.
Jones, the attorney for the Pulaski County Special district, has argued in response that demands by attorneys for black students to replace College Station and Harris elementaries "are premature."
"The population trends appear to be stagnant or declining," Jones wrote earlier this year in response to the Joshua intervenors' call for replacement schools. "The PCSSD [Pulaski County Special School District] does not believe that immediate replacement of these schools will have any positive impact upon these demographic trends," he wrote.
Metro on 11/02/2018