The state Board of Education refused to overturn Friday the decisions of local school districts that had refused five families’ requests to transfer their children to other schools under the Arkansas Public School Choice Act of 2013.
Parents at Friday’s appeals included a mother who said she would have to withdraw from nursing school if her children couldn’t transfer to closer schools and a father who resigned as president of the Hartford School Board when he decided to transfer his son out of the district in search of more rigorous Advanced Placement classes.
That father, Terry Hearron, said he was glad for achance to speak to the board, even if his appeal was not granted, because he wanted to explain his concerns with the Hartford School District.
“I want to raise questions,” he said. “I want people to be involved and hold our system accountable.”
The state board has rejected all 23 appeals it has heard during three meetings since the law - which gives parents broad authority to transfer their children out of their residential school districts - was enacted this spring.
That law limits outbound transfers to 3 percent of a district’s total enrollment and requires districts to honor requests on a first-come, first-served basis. It also allows districts to exempt themselves from allowing inbound or outbound transfers if they are “subject to the desegregation order or mandate of a federal court or agency remedying the effects of past racial segregation.”
“The purpose of school choice is to allow families to choose what school is best for their children. … They are essentially denying me that choice,” said Angela Atteberry, whose request to transfer to her children to Gosnell schools was denied because the Blytheville School District, where she lives, claimed an exemption.
The transfer cap and desegregation restrictions applied to all parents who appealed denied transfers to the state board, which ruled that it didn’t have thediscretion to exceed the limit or to interpret whether cited desegregation actions were valid reasons for districts to opt out of allowing transfers under the law.
“Based on the way the statute is written, our hands are pretty much tied,” board member Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock said.
Board members on Friday encouraged parents to seek legal transfers - a more narrow and restrictive method under which the school boards of the sending and receiving districts both approve transfer requests from individual students who typically have special reasons for asking to switch schools.
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, attorneys said.
State board members have said they understand the need for some restrictions in the new law, but they find the rules difficult to interpret and apply.
Some families whose transfer requests were denied have filed suits in state and federal courts. Those cases are pending.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 08/17/2013