Two of the nine positions on the Little Rock School Board will be open as originally scheduled for election in November -- and not all nine seats -- as the result of a 7-2 vote Thursday.
The decision on the number of seats to be open for election comes after the board in December approved revised school board election zone boundary lines. The revisions were done in an effort to equalize the zone populations after shifts in those populations occurred between the 2010 and 2020 census results.
The two zones that will have elections this year are Zone 8, currently represented by board President Greg Adams, and Zone 9, currently represented by Jeff Wood. Both men would be eligible to run for re-election.
Board member Michael Mason said he supported the board's initial plan to open two seats for election as he wanted to ensure both the completion of school campus construction plans and a smooth transition to a new superintendent. Having some continuity of the members on the board would provide that. Superintendent Mike Poore is retiring at the end of the school year.
Wood and board member Ali Noland, the two attorneys on the board, voted against the limited election.
Noland said she had told voters in last November's vote on a property tax extension for school construction that board members would be held accountable for the promised construction projects because the board members would all be up for election this year. That was the guidance at the time about the election and she offered it as a safeguard, she said.
Wood noted that an attorney for the district had advised that limiting the election to two positions was legally defensible. However, Wood said that districts across the state had held wholesale elections after previous censuses and the redrawing of zones, and the legal matters may not be clear cut.
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"We should err on the side of giving people their voice when there is any level of a question," he said, adding, "It's easy for me to say, I'm up for re-election this year anyway. It's no skin off my back."
Adams and Wood were elected along with seven other board members in the November/December 2020 elections -- the first local school board elections in the capital city district after the state's nearly six-year control of the district, during which there was no elected board.
After the 2020 election, board members drew lots for terms of up to five years. Adams and Wood drew two-year terms, opening their positions for election this year.
Then, in late 2021, after the results of the 2020 U.S. census were released, the Arkansas School Boards Association advised school boards statewide that all seats in districts with revised election zone boundary lines should open all positions for election this year.
But Chris Heller, an attorney for the Little Rock district, advised the Little Rock board in a six-page memorandum that only those board members whose terms are expiring should be required to run for re-election.
"Ark. Code Ann. 6-13-631 requires school districts with a 10% or greater minority population 'as reported by the most recent federal census information' to elect board members by zone," Heller wrote to the board.
The same statute requires a new school board at its first meeting to draw lots for terms.
"The question is whether this requirement applies after every [federal] census, or just the first time a district is required to rezone in accordance with this statute," Heller wrote.
"For two reasons, it is my opinion that school districts are required to elect an entirely new board only when first coming into compliance with this law. The first reason is that the law exempts certain districts from its requirements, including districts that have 'a zoned board of directors meeting the requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act.'
"I believe LRSD is such a district," Heller continued. "The second reason is the Fields [versus Marvell School District] case. There, in a nutshell, the Arkansas Supreme Court held that after the Marvell School District rezoned following the 2000 census, only the board member whose term was expiring had to run for reelection."
"The Supreme Court explained that 'there are clear exemptions that allow a school district to deviate from the requirements of section 6-13-631' and held that having a board elected from zones in compliance with the Voting Rights Act -- as does LRSD -- provides one of those 'clear exemptions.'"
Heller acknowledged that as the result of the revised boundary lines, some school district residents are now in zones with board members for whom they did not have the opportunity to vote for or against.
"Courts have held that this situation does not create legal issues for the redistricting entity," Heller wrote.
Heller also listed for the School Board the series of events since the state law on school board elections -- Arkansas Code Annotated 6-13-631 -- was enacted in 1993. Since the passage of the law, which he described as frequently amended and not as clear as it could be, the district has not elected an entirely new board following a decennial census. The events were:
• 1986: Little Rock School Board election zones were established by federal court order after the annexation of territory from the Pulaski County Special School District. The federal court held that the zones complied with the Voting Rights Act, Heller said.
• After the 1990 U.S. census, the district won a federal Voting Rights Act case that had challenged the district's rezoning in part because of "minimal changes" to the court-approved zones. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1995 affirmed the 1993 decision issued by U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright.
• After the 2000 census the district made changes necessary to comply with the "one person, one vote" principle of the U.S. Constitution and there was no challenge to the new zones. Only those board members whose terms expired in 2002 stood for election that year, Heller wrote.
• In 2011 Heller said he advised the board that Arkansas law did not require all board positions be filled by election in 2012. That was because of the district's compliance with the Voting Rights Act. Only two board members, Leslie Fisken and Michael Peterson, were elected that year. There was no legal challenge to this process, he said.