Deny transfers, judge asked in El Dorado case

Will rule this week, she says

EL DORADO -- El Dorado School District attorneys asked a federal judge on Tuesday to oppose school choice transfers in and out of the district.

Attorneys Allen Roberts of Camden and Whitney Moore of Little Rock represented the school district in federal court in El Dorado before U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey.

"I realize we are on a timeline, and I plan to make a decision before the end of the week," Hickey told the attorneys.

Also taking part in the hearing was Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, representing the district's black students.

"I have been on this case since 1965," said Walker, who is the attorney of record in the district's 45-year-old desegregation order.

According to the school district's attorneys, subjecting El Dorado schools to the School Choice Act will result in a large number of white students leaving the school district to attend school in nearby districts in which the student body is predominantly white.

The motion was the result of the Arkansas Board of Education's decision July 14 to allow a family that lives in the El Dorado School District to send its children to school in the adjoining Parkers Chapel School District.

The McAuliffe family had appealed to the Education Board after the Parkers Chapel district denied the transfer request based on the El Dorado district's claim to be exempt from participating in Arkansas School Choice Act interdistrict transfers because the transfers conflict with directives in the district's 1971 federal school desegregation order.

The School Choice Act permits students to transfer out of the districts in which they reside to schools in other districts if there is room for them in the desired district.

The statute does provide an exemption for districts in which student transfers would be in conflict with federal desegregation orders or plans.

Sixteen of Arkansas' 235 traditional school districts have claimed exemptions to the School Choice Act. Those include El Dorado, Pulaski County Special, Jacksonville/North Pulaski and the Garland County school systems. U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. earlier this month ruled that the transfers are in conflict with a 2014 settlement agreement in the Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit, affecting both the Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville districts.

Attorneys for the school district said in a 14-page motion filed earlier this month that the El Dorado district "was ordered to -- and did -- merge its black and white schools and eliminate its dual system" in a case titled Kemp v. Beasley and Townsend v. Watson.

"The order entered by this Court on August 2, 1971 ... specifically states: All vestiges of 'freedom of choice' is eliminated and any further use is prohibited," the attorneys said in the motion, also citing U.S. Supreme Court decisions that found that freedom of choice plans are inadequate to convert a dual school system to a unitary, nondiscriminatory school system.

Former El Dorado Superintendent Bob Watson testified Tuesday that during his 29 years at the helm of the school district, parents were in his office every week wanting to move their children to Parkers Chapel or Smackover-Norphlet.

However, because of the desegregation order, students were not allowed to freely move between districts.

Watson said the El Dorado schools are approximately 50 percent white and 50 percent black, while Parkers Chapel is 90 percent white and Smackover-Norphlet is 80 percent white.

"There were transfers, but we had to look at them to see that they were in line with the court case," Watson said.

"So essentially, it was impossible to move across district lines if a white student is wanting to move to a predominantly white school?" Roberts asked.

"That is correct," Watson replied.

"Based on my experience the past three years, there would be a drastic 'white flight,'" said current El Dorado Superintendent Jim Tucker, when asked by Roberts what the result would be if the district were to open its borders to interdistrict transfers.

Tucker testified that the day after the July 14 ruling by the state Board of Education, white parents were in his office wanting to transfer their children.

Also testifying on behalf of the El Dorado School District was Dr. Jerry Guess, superintendent of the Pulaski County Special School District.

Guess has been over the Pulaski County schools for six years and also spent 13 years as the superintendent in Camden.

"Given the opportunity for free choice, schools would quickly re-segregate," Guess said.

Information for this article was contributed by Cynthia Howell of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

State Desk on 08/31/2016

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