The Pulaski County Special School District is committed to spending $55 million on a new Mills High School and a relocated Fuller Middle School, and that the new Mills campus will compare favorably to Maumelle High, an attorney told a federal judge Monday.
Sam Jones, who represents the district, also told U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. 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 in response to the Joshua intervenors who called for replacement schools. "The PCSSD does not believe that immediate replacement of these schools will have any positive impact upon these demographic trends," he wrote.
Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, and his legal team for the black students known as the Joshua intervenors, asked Marshall earlier this month to order the replacement of College Station and Harris elementaries to promote "facility parity" in the district.
Marshall is the presiding judge in a 35-year-old federal school desegregation lawsuit in which the Pulaski County Special district is a defendant. The district is obligated by its desegregation plan -- Plan 2000 -- and different court orders to equalize the conditions of its school buildings, which vary substantially in age.
The Joshua legal team also asked Marshall to order the district to do "additional work" on the new Mills High building and the relocated Fuller Middle School so that the campuses are "equal in size and quality" to the new Robinson Middle School building and existing Robinson High.
The Robinson schools are in predominantly white west Pulaski County. Mills, Fuller, College Station and Harris are in southeast and east areas of the district, with greater proportions of black families than west Pulaski County.
"[W]hite communities are favored, while the African American community receives lesser facility resources," Walker and his colleagues Austin Porter and Robert Pressman wrote to Marshall in early July.
Walker was away from his office for an appointment late Monday afternoon, one of his staff members said, and he could not be immediately reached for comment on the Pulaski County Special district's submission to the judge.
Marshall will see the schools and surrounding communities for himself in the coming weeks.
At the invitation of the district and in cooperation with the Joshua intervenors, the judge will visit Maumelle High, Mills High and Robinson Middle schools on Aug. 9 and then participate in a tour of Sylvan Hills High, Fuller Middle, College Station Elementary and Harris Elementary schools at a time not yet set in September or October.
Jones argued Monday in response to the Joshua intervenors that the new Mills High has features that are missing from the district's Maumelle High, which he said the Joshua intervenors have made the standard or "the Mercedes Benz school of the district to which all other new construction should be compared."
Jones also said that while athletic facilities will be larger at Robinson and Maumelle than at Mills, many of the students benefiting from the larger facilities are black.
"While certain of the athletic facilities at Robinson will be larger than those at Mills, there are, for instance, more football players and more black football players at Robinson than at Mills," Jones wrote.
"Overall, for 2017 and 2018 black participation in football in the PCSSD was 82% compared to 18% for non-black students. The 2017-2018 football team at Mills High School consisted of five non-black student athletes and 46 black student athletes. At the same time, Maumelle High School had 66 black athletes on its football team and only 10 non-blacks. Robinson High School had 10 non-black and 66 black athletes on its state runner up football team."
Jones reported that the grand total number of students participating in athletics in the 2017-18 school year was 2,207, of whom 1,585 were black and 622 were non-black.
"Surely the race of the students participating in these activities and directly benefiting from the new facilities is a legitimate circumstance to consider," he told the judge.
As for the comparison of the new Mills High on Dixon Road with Maumelle High, Jones said Mills' features are equivalent and in some cases superior to Maumelle and to the new Robinson Middle School on Arkansas 10.
"For instance, new Mills has a state of the art track -- Maumelle has no track. Mills has a state of the art baseball field; Maumelle has a cow pasture. Mills has a new indoor practice facility, Maumelle does not," he said.
"As the court will see, the new Mills High School has a performing arts center. The Robinson Middle School project does not and its cafeteria doubles as an auditorium," Jones wrote.
Jones also argued that the Joshua intervenors had multiple opportunities -- through court-ordered monthly meetings of the parties in the lawsuit and in their monitoring of the schools -- to be aware of and involved in the planning of the district's new facilities.
"It is respectfully submitted that Joshua knows how to inject itself into an issue when it desires to," Jones said. "The design, planning and pursuit of these three school projects were no secret. Indeed, they were mentioned at almost every status conference held during the tenure of [former Superintendent Jerry] Guess and continuing until the present."
Jones wrote that, as the court will see, Mills is in an area of stagnant or declining population growth.
"Nevertheless, the PCSSD irrevocably committed to the building of a new Mills High School as an acknowledgment to the African American population of its good faith," he said.
The new Mills High and Robinson Middle schools and the relocated Fuller Middle are to open to students Aug. 13.
Fuller Middle is being moved to the former Mills site, which is being spruced up for the sixth, seventh and eighth graders. Fuller Middle will be renamed Mills Middle School. The old Fuller building has been demolished, and the Fuller name will no longer be used in the district.
Metro on 07/31/2018