LITTLE ROCK — Attorneys asked the Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday to stop the state Board of Education from closing isolated schools until after the state defines how long is too long when it comes to school-bus rides.
Clay Fendley, an attorney representing a group of parents from the shuttered Fourche Valley school in rural Yell County, said the 2009school closure forced some students to spend between three and four hours per day on the bus to reach their new school.
Fendley said the state needs to study whether long bus rides limit students’ opportunities for adequate educations as guaranteed by the Arkansas Constitution.
Until it does so - and defines exactly how long is too long for a student to ride ona bus - any vote to close an isolated school is arbitrary, capricious and unconstitutional, Fendley said.
“The state has to have a rational basis for making decisions,” Fendley said.
“Only after defining excessive transportation time can it know whether or not these children can be provided a substantially equal opportunity to an adequate education at another school,” he said.
Jeremy Lasiter, attorney for the Board of Education, said the Arkansas Constitution does not guarantee students a right to attend school within a certain distance of their homes.
Some students must travel longer distances because their parents choose to live in remote areas, Lasiter wrote in his brief.
The state board approved a petition filed by the Two Rivers School District to close Fourche Valley school April 13, 2009.
Parents of the kindergarten-through-12th-grade, 139-student school subsequently sued the state board to get the closure blocked.
Last July, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Collins Kilgore allowed the closure to proceed, and the Fourche Valley school never opened last August.
The Fourche Valley students are now bused about 15 miles farther down the road to Two Rivers’ Plainview-Rover campus.
Fourche Valley parents say some of their children spend between three and four hours on the bus daily after factoring in the additional mileage, a reduction in buses and a redrawing of bus routes.
The area’s mountainous, gravel roads exacerbate the travel time.
The Education Board had no authority to define excessive transportation time. Its only legal role, in this instance, was to consider Two Rivers’ closure petition and rule on it based on the evidence the district presented.
At the state board hearing, district officials said it was simply too costly to keep the Fourche Valley school open.
At the time, the district was operating with a declining fund balance because of decreased student enrollment.
If the losses continued, district officials said, they could be in line for a state takeover.
The school district showed that closing Fourche Valley school would save about $1.3 million annually.
Lasiter said Two Rivers leaders also promised better academic and educational opportunities for Fourche Valley students at Plainview-Rover.
“It is important to consider transportation time, but ... the overarching concern is to look at what’s in the best interest of the students as a whole,” Lasiter said. “While transportation time is a part of that, it’s not the only thing.”
During oral arguments, Chief Justice Jim Hannah asked attorneys why the court should not be concerned about student transportation time.
“Do you think children - 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds - who are traveling four hours to and from school, you don’t think they are being harmed in some way?” Justice Paul E. Danielson asked.
Jay Bequette, an attorney for the Two Rivers School District, said he did not.
Bequette cited the 1962 state Supreme Court case of Evans v. McKinley.
In that case, the justices upheld the closure of a grade school on the grounds that it was educationally and economically inefficient, even though students were forced to travel four hours per day to get to their new school.
“It is inherent in rural Arkansas that there are going to be bus transportation times of some length,” Bequette said. “That’s not just in Yell County ... that’s the case all over the state.”
About a dozen Fourche Valley residents attended the Thursday proceedings.
Debra Lofland, a parent from Fourche Valley, said the majority of students from the area have since transferred out of the Two Rivers School District because of the closure.
Lofland’s son transferred to the neighboring Danville School District. His new school is about 20 miles from their home, while Fourche Valley school was only one mile away.
Lofland said she knows that Fourche Valley school may never reopen. This lawsuit is about preventing the same thing from happening to other rural communities, she said.
“We want to help other rural schools avoid the trauma of what we went through,” Lofland said.
Larry Aikman, a member of the school board when Fourche Valley was an independent school district, rejected the argument that inordinately long bus rides should be accepted as part of rural life in Arkansas.
Instead, Aikman said, it’s incumbent on the state to provide adequate funding to rural schools so that children can get to school quicker.
“I can’t help but feel that everybody who has ever had a kid knows that four hours is excessive,” he said. “I don’t know how much is too much, but three or four hours is surely too much.”
The Supreme Court typically releases opinions within two or three weeks of hearing oral arguments, spokesman Stephanie Harris said.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 05/28/2010