NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — Rogers and Springdale schools have had mixed results achieving racial and ethnic balances in schools, records show.
The largest minority population in Rogers schools, 80.7 percent, is at Russell D. Jones Elementary School. The lowest minority population, 13.6 percent, is at Garfield Elementary School.
Minority populations at Springdale elementary schools range from less than 16 percent at Shaw to 89 percent at Jones.
Under the neighborhood school model, students attend schools close to their homes. Middle and high school students attend larger schools that draw from wider areas.
School officials said the challenge is to draw boundaries for middle and high schools that balance the racial and ethnic mix.
“That’s very difficult to do in an area that has the demographics that Rogers has,” said Misty Newcomb, director of outreach and events in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.
The Hispanic population in Springdale and Rogers exceeds 30 percent, U.S. Census figures show.
Neighborhoods tend to be segregated by income, race and ethnicity, so some segregation in neighborhood elementary schools is inevitable, Newcomb said. The Rogers and Springdale districts attempt to maintain elementary school boundaries so students can attend a school close to their homes, officials said.
John Walker, a Little Rock civil rights lawyer and newly elected state representative, said he disagrees segregation in neighborhood schools is unavoidable.
“You can take the pencil and draw the line wherever you want to draw it,” he said. “If you want to draw it to be segregate it you can, and if you want to draw it to be inclusive, you can.”
Walker said he encouraged Northwest Arkansas schools to create more balanced schools in the coming years.
“All schools are supposed to promote the same outcomes for all students, and you don’t get that by concentrating the lower socioeconomic ones or the ones with the greatest language problems in one school,” he said.
Ideally, the elementary schools would have more even racial and ethnic profiles, said Bob Maranto, an education-reform professor at the University of Arkansas.
“But if you make the numbers into a fetish, you’re going to hurt the kids,” he said. “Do you really want to seem like we’re that focused on race?”
Janie Darr, superintendent of the Rogers schools, said administrators try to keep demographics at secondary schools balanced. They’ll keep an eye on the numbers and consider redrawing boundaries if necessary, she said.
In 2007, Rogers officials held public meetings to set up school boundaries and decide which elementary schools would feed which middle schools, and which middle schools would feed which high school. The district reworked its enrollment boundaries in anticipation of the opening of a second high school, Rogers Heritage High School, which opened in 2008.
Some parents were unhappy at the time. Several told officials giving both high schools an even mix of high- and low-performing feeder schools should be the priority. Greg Robbins asked the board to send the issue back to committee and to use academic performance to guide feeder patterns.
In the end, district officials considered a broader range of issues, including demographics and income levels, to arrive at the current feeder pattern.
Changing boundaries within a district is up to district officials, said Julie Johnson Thompson, a spokeswoman at the Arkansas Department of Education. School districts have discretion to draw attendance zones as they see fit, provided the district is not under a desegregation order.
Ashley Siwiec, a spokeswoman for the Rogers district, said the district tries to change boundaries as infrequently as possible, usually when the district opens a new school.
Springdale plans to change attendance zone boundaries for the east side elementary schools in 2011. The district is opening an elementary school in Sonora.