State board urges redo of School Choice Act

8/11/13
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STEPHEN B. THORNTON
Monica Barnett addresses the Arkansas Board of Education about her request to transfer her daughter from the Forrest City district to the Wynn School District during the board's meeting Monday morning in Little Rock.
8/11/13 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STEPHEN B. THORNTON Monica Barnett addresses the Arkansas Board of Education about her request to transfer her daughter from the Forrest City district to the Wynn School District during the board's meeting Monday morning in Little Rock.

Correction: The Arkansas Board of Education rejected Monday appeals from 12 families whose student transfer requests were denied by their local school districts. This article included an inaccurate number.

Members of the Arkansas Board of Education called on state lawmakers Monday to rewrite or replace the Arkansas Public School Choice Act of 2013, calling several parts of the newly approved school-transfer law difficult to interpret and apply.

The discussion came as the board rejected the appeals of 13 families who had asked it to overturn the decisions of local school districts that had denied the families’ requests to transfer their children out of their resident school systems under the act - the state’s broadest school-transfer law.

Parents at the meeting cited concerns about child care, health problems and academics in their appeals.

“I really don’t know what our options are if she is denied,” said Monica Barnett, a parent who unsuccessfully sought to transfer her daughter into the Wynne School District because she said she couldn’t find adequate after-school care in the Forrest City School District, where her family resides.

Board members told every parent present at the meeting that they wanted to grant the appeals, but they said they were bound by various parts of the new law. That law will expire in 2015 unless the state Legislature renews it.

Chairman Brenda Gullett of Fayetteville said the board would hold a work session to list suggestions that could improve the law, including incorporating “red flag” warnings of poor academic performance that should make it easier for students to transfer out of a district.

But the board must abide by the law’s limitations in the mean time, members said.

“We’re all frustrated by this situation, but it is the situation the Legislature has placed in our lap,” board member Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock said.

Some parents made appeals regarding transfers that were denied on the basis of a provision in the law that cap outgoing transfers at 3 percent of a district’s total enrollment and a stipulation that earlier applications receive priority in the event that cap is reached.

The board also rejected seven appeals Monday regarding transfer requests that were rejected on the basis of a section of the new law that allows districts to claim an exemption from allowing incoming or outgoing transfers if it is “subject to the desegregation order or mandate of a federal court or agency remedying the effects of past racial segregation.”

Attorneys for families who are appealing such denials in state and federal courts have said school districts around the state are using irrelevant and outdated desegregation cases to opt out of the law in an effort to prevent declining enrollment.

The state board determined last month - before refusing six appeals from families who had attempted to transfer their children from the Forrest City School District to the Palestine-Wheatley School District - that it does not have the authority to scrutinize the validity or the proper application of the desegregation cases that school districts cited when they approved resolutions exempting themselves from the law.

Forrest City cited in its exemption resolution - a factor in five appeals the board heard Monday - a 1969 federal court case in which black families challenged the district’s “racially dual school system.”

Lawmakers who support giving parents broad authority to transfer their children between school districts approved the 2013 act in the recently completed legislative session to repeal and replace a 1989 version of the law, which a federal court struck down last year.

That court found constitutional fault with a part of the 1989 law that prohibited school-choice transfers if the percentage of enrollment for the student’s race in the new district exceeded that percentage in the student’s resident district.

The 2013 law removed that provision and replaced it with the exemption rule to protect the state’s and districts’ interests in desegregation cases and to prevent “white flight” that could be enabled by completely unrestricted transfers, attorneys for the state and some southern Arkansas school districts have said. But attorneys have also said the exemptions are problematic because it is often unclear how decades-old court orders and since-settled cases apply to current student transfers. And the state has no centralized list of districts that are currently under federal desegregation orders, said Jeremy Lasiter, an attorney for the Education Department.

State board members said Monday that they understand the need to respect federal-court decisions related to desegregation. But the new restriction provides academically struggling districts an “ace in the hole” that allows them to retain students who may thrive elsewhere,board member Toyce Newton of Crossett said, adding that fixing problems in those districts or giving parents an option to choose better schools could help small towns retain people who may otherwise move away.

“Essentially, cities are dying on the vine based on something that needs to be attended to… It’s criminal,” she said.

But Ledbetter said some districts with more academically successful schools are also losing enrollment.

“All of these things are interrelated, no question about it,” he said. “But I don’t think re-segregating our schools is going to be the solution to the problems we find in the Delta.”

Pending court cases could provide further clarity about what desegregation issues are relevant in a district’s exemption claim. Several families who appealed those decisions are black, and their requests to transfer to majority white districts would have been allowed under the 1989 law.

In an added measure of complexity, school districts in Garland County are required to continue operating under the 1989 law and its race-based restriction as a provision of their inter-district desegregation agreement, a U.S. district judge ruled in a June 10 order.

The state board rejected Monday appeals of two Garland County families whose requests to transfer their children from Hot Springs to Lakeside schools were rejected because they identified their children as “white” on their school choice applications. The families, who identified Cherokee and Spanish relatives, said they would have selected “two or more races” on the form if they had known their race would be a factor in their transfers.

Beyond the racial issues, board members said they would seek clarity on the portion of the law that limits outgoing transfers to 3 percent of a district’s total enrollment. That discussion followed a decision to deny the appeal of LaShonda Hale, a mother whose request to transfer her son to the Marion School District was denied because the cap allowed just 11 students to transfer from the Hughes School District where she resides. Hale was 14th in line, her district said.

“It’s a red flag, I think, if everybody shows up to transfer out of a district before God gets the news,” Gullett said.

Some of the students whose transfers were approved may not follow through on those transfers, board members said. But it’s unclear if the law would allow Hale’s son to transfer if students ahead of him in line do not actually switch districts, Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said.

“It’s a difficult law,” he said. “We’ve got some problems to be worked out.”

Board member Jay Barth of Little Rock encouraged the department’s attorneys to work with parents to seek other methods of switching schools, including a legal transfer agreement, which allows a transfer in special circumstances if both districts approve it. He applauded parents who had explored their options and sought appeals.

“One piece of turning these schools around are the kind of engaged parents who would go through this effort,” Barth said.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/13/2013

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