Desegregation wrap-up plan gets final-day Sherwood static

Monday’s deadline for reacting to a tentatively approved settlement of the state’s desegregation obligations in Pulaski County generated written concerns about restrictions in the agreement to the formation of new school districts.

Five groups or individuals submitted letters about the settlement Monday. There were an additional three letters submitted earlier this month.

Last month, U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. tentatively approved the settlement agreement that establishes a 2018 ending date for millions of dollars in state-paid desegregation aid to the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts.

The judge has scheduled a Jan. 13 and Jan. 14 fairness hearing to consider objections and the parties’ responses, after which he will decide whether to give the plan final approval.

“We are not surprised by the objections,” Aaron Sadler, a spokesman for the Arkansas attorney general’s office, said Monday in an email. “We believe they are unlikely to impair approval of the settlement.

“We look forward to demonstrating during the fairness hearing why we believe that this settlement is in the best interests of the State and the students in the three Pulaski County public school districts,” Sadler said.

Document set

School districts takeover and desegregation

The proposed settlement in the 31-year-old federal school-desegregation lawsuit was negotiated in recent months by the attorneys for the three Pulaski County school districts, the state, and the intervenor parties of school system employees and black students.

Marshall invited members of the public to submit to the clerk of the court their written objections to the settlement by Monday.

The proposed settlement calls for the state to pay a total of $65.8 million a year to the three districts over the next four school years, with the funding amount in the final year to be used solely for construction of academic facilities.

In addition to ending state desegregation aid after the 2017-18 school year, the proposed settlement includes provisions phasing out interdistrict student transfers to magnet and other schools.

It also authorizes the state to approve the formation of a new Jacksonville/North Pulaski school system in accordance with the requirements set in state law. But the tentative settlement prohibits the establishment of any other new school districts in Pulaski County until the Pulaski County Special district is declared unitary and released from federal court supervision of its desegregation efforts.

That provision attracted comments from the Sherwood Education Foundation, which was formed earlier this year to explore the possibility of carving a new Sherwood public school system out of the Pulaski County Special district. The provision also drew a joint comment from the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce and Fifty for the Future, and from an individual, Sharon Whitehurst, who lists a North Little Rock address but makes a reference to Maumelle.

“The Sherwood Public Education Foundation agrees with most Arkansans that a settlement is long overdue,” Sherwood foundation Co-Chairmen Beverly Williams and Linda Remele wrote in a four-page letter to the federal court system Monday.

“But we must express our profound disappointment with a last-minute change to this proposed desegregation settlement agreement,” they continued. “Specifically, the last sentence of Paragraph E allows the city of Jacksonville to pursue its own district but poses negative consequences for the Sherwood community. [T]hat last sentence … is a concern that we deem unfair.”

Remele and Williams went on to say that they are willing and available to speak to the judge about the issue if the judge should want to hear from them.

“The foundation does not wish to derail the efforts of this proposed settlement but merely wishes to be treated fairly,” they concluded.

Whitehurst wrote in sharper terms of her objection to the restriction on forming new school districts.

“I totally object,” Whitehurst wrote. “It is unfair [for]the state to tell other cities they cannot control the schools in their community.”

She said the Pulaski County Special district “has grown into a monster,”called it “dysfunctional” and added that it “needs to be dissolved completely.”

She also said that the 2011 state takeover of the financially troubled district has not helped at all in giving parents a voice in the way the schools are operated, causing parents of students in Maumelle to send their children to private schools.

The city of Maumelle, like Sherwood, has taken some steps toward creating its own school system.

“The wording is unfair,” Whitehurst wrote about the restriction in the settlement agreement.

“The state of Arkansas is trying to help PCSSD remain in control but the parents and communities are tired of the inadequate education that all our children are receiving in this district,” Whitehurst concluded.

Jay Chesshir is president and chief executive officer of the chamber and Fifty for the Future organizations that represent nearly 2,000 businesses. Chesshir told the judge in a Monday letter that the proposed settlement “is a very positive outcome for all stakeholders and is essential for establishing greater certainty for the continual development of a high quality public education system for all children.”

Chesshir said there are some reservations about parts of the agreement, “particularly, the provision… requiring thestate to oppose the creation of any other school districts from PCSSD’s territory.”

But Chesshir said there was no plan to push for that to be changed.

“We do not want to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good,” he wrote to the court. “Therefore, we are in support of the proposed settlement agreement, as it brings an end to the litigation and represents a positive step forward for the students, school districts, our community and the state.”

Allen Roberts, an attorney for the Pulaski County Special School District, said late Monday afternoon that he was very happy with the outcome.

“I haven’t seen anything that I think will matter,” Roberts said, adding that some of the letters to the court were written by “well-intended mamas who were worried as a well-intended mama ought to be.

“But I don’t know that they pointed out any problem with the settlement,” he said.

Samia Johnston, a parent of students living in Pulaski County Special School District but attending schools in Little Rock, submitted a letter Monday asking several questions about the settlement provisions that will end the current system of enrolling students in the Little Rock magnet schools or in the majority -to-minority interdistrict transfer program.

The Pulaski County Special district will allow up to 30 students a year to transfer to Little Rock and another 30 to North Little Rock using a different system - the state’s legal transfer system - in which the school boards for a student’s home district and receiving district must approve a student’s move.

Current magnet school students can remain in their schools until they complete all grades at the school, according to the tentative settlement. But students currently in the majority-to-minority program can remain in the district of their choice until they graduate from high school.

Johnston questioned why the differences for current magnet school versus majority-to-minority transfer students.

Chris Heller, an attorney for the Little Rock School District, said Monday the different provisions in the tentative settlement reflect the promises the districts made to those students when they signed up for the programs. Magnet elementary students have always had to enter the lottery again for an assignment to a magnet middle school and again for a highschool seat,” he said. “M-to-M students have always been treated as students of the host district and allowed to remain there until graduation.”

He noted in a Monday afternoon email to the Little Rock School Board that some of the submitted letters are not from members of the class of black students known as the Joshua intervenors, nor the class of school system employees known as the Knight intervenors. The fairness hearing is specifically meant to hear from class members, but Heller said the judge may agree to hear from other letter writers, too.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/24/2013

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