Jacksonville 3 ask court to expedite separate school district’s birth

— Jacksonville residents used poetry in asking a federal judge to establish a process for creating a separate Jacksonville school district should the North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts be declared desegregated.

Reedie Ray, a former School Board member in the Pulaski County Special School District; Ben Rice, a retired lawyer; and state Rep. Mark Perry, all of Jacksonville, made the request in an amicus curiae, or a friend-of-the court brief, submitted Tuesday and posted Wednesday to U.S. District Judge Brian Miller in the 27-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit.

Quoting from the English poet William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus” about wanting to be “master of my fate” and “captain of my soul,” the three asked Miller to set a date for an election on detaching Jacksonville and north Pulaski County from the rest of the Pulaski County Special School District.

Miller has scheduled two sets of court hearings for next month to determine whether the North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special districts have met their desegregation obligations and are entitled to release from federal court monitoring of their compliance with desegregation plans.

The North Little Rock hearing is set for the week ofJan. 11, and the Pulaski County Special district hearing is set for the week of Jan. 25.

On Wednesday, Robert Pressman, an attorney for black students known as the Joshua intervenors, asked for time beyond Dec. 28 to file pre-hearing briefs regarding the Pulaski County Special district hearing.

The motion for a new date indicates the magnitude of the forthcoming hearings. The county district has provided the Joshua intervenors with some 4,500 pages of documents. The North Little Rock district has provided some 12,700 pages, Pressman wrote.

The Jacksonville residents asked the judge to frame any decision that finds those districts to be unitary as a “global” order that would also recognize “the need for and establish a process for creating an independent Jacksonville-North Pulaski County School District.”

The brief notes that in 2003, U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson Jr. canceled a scheduled election on forming a separate Jacksonville district. The Pulaski County Special district had not yet achieved unitary status, and the creation of a new district at that time would have violated a 1989 settlement agreement between the state and the district.

That settlement obligated the state to take no action that would hinder desegregation efforts in the three Pulaski County districts. Since Wilson’s 2003 order, the Little Rock School District was declared unitary, and the North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special districts have petitioned the court for unitary status.

“In the event that this Court should rule that both PCSSD and the North Little Rock School District have achieved unitary status, then the reasons for Judge Wilson’s Aug. 19, 2003 ruling would be moot,” the friend-of-the-court brief states.

“A detachment election should be authorized and scheduled by this Court,” the brief continued.

Miller has the authority to decide on issues regarding a new school district and on whether a new district would be in the best interest of all parties, the friend-of-the court brief said.

Any outstanding issues not addressed by the court could be resolved in negotiations between Pulaski County Special and the new district “within a reasonable time frame set by the court,” it said.

If unresolved issues remain, state officials would be authorized to resolve those.

Perry referred questions about the brief to Rice, who did not immediately return a message left on his home phone Wednesday afternoon.

Sam Jones, an attorney for the Pulaski County Special district on desegregation matters, said Wednesday that he expects to ask Miller to permit him to respond to the friend-of-the-court brief after the judge enters a final order on the Pulaski County district’s request for unitary status, or at another time of the judge’s choosing.

“It would postpone any activities on the merits of the brief until the unitary issues are decided,” Jones added about his planned response. “That’s probably the most consistent position I can take with ... the last [action] of the School Board.”

In late July, the School Board for the Pulaski County Special district approved boundaries for a proposed Jacksonville school district and then voted to suspend negotiations with Jacksonville leaders on creating a separate district until the P ulaski County Special district is declared desegregated by the federal courts.

“The school patrons of the North Pulaski County-Jacksonville area have long suffered from neglect by the PCSSD asthey have watched their tax dollars being spent on school facilities located elsewhere in the PCSSD,” the friend-of-thecourt brief stated.

“The North Pulaski Jacksonville area invokes the poetic message of English poet William Ernest Henley in his poem ‘Invictus.’ The last four lines of that poem spell out what we seek:

‘It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments thescroll

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.’”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/24/2009

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