The Little Rock School District on Friday asked a federal judge to refuse to release the state from a 1989 settlement of the 30-yearold Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit.

An attorney for the 25,000-student Little Rock district, the state’s largest, asked U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. to instead direct the state to assist Pulaski County districts with remediation programs and transportation costs.

The school district’s filing Friday came in response to the state’s motion last year to be relieved from obligations in the settlement, which has cost the state about $1.1 billion.

The state continues to pay about $70 million a year in special desegregation aid to the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special districts, primarily for magnet schools, the majority-to-minority interdistrict student transfer program and for teacher health insurance and retirement costs.

Also on Friday, in the same desegregation case, the Pulaski County Special district sent to Marshall a 27-page status report on that district’s efforts to comply with the unmet provisions of its Desegregation Plan 2000. Marshall had asked for the status report in December with an eye toward scheduling court hearingslater this year.

The Arkansas attorney general’s office last year argued to Marshall that release from 1989 settlement obligations was warranted in part because the Little Rock and North Little Rock districts have been declared unitary or desegregated by the federal courts and that the Pulaski County Special district is partially unitary.

Chris Heller, who represents the Little Rock district, argued Friday to the contrary.

“The State was adjudicated a constitutional violator,” he said, “in part, because of its role in creating and maintaining residential segregation in Pulaski County.Thus, residential segregation is a vestige of the state’s past discrimination that must be eliminated to the extent practicable before the State may be released.”

Aaron Sadler, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said the state’s attorneys had received the Little Rock district response late Friday afternoon and were reviewing it.

In a Jan. 17 order, Marshall had denied the Little Rock district’s motion to dismiss the state’s request for release without a hearing. He said changed circumstances in the districts, including the fact that the North Little Rock and Little Rock districts are unitary and released from court supervision, warrant an evidentiary hearing on the motion for release.

The judge directed the Little Rock district to respond to the state’s motion to withdraw by Friday, and that all the parties in the case submit to him by Feb. 22 proposed dates for completing discovery, filing legal briefs and holding an evidentiary hearing.

Heller also argued Friday that the unitary status of the districts was an expected outcome of the 1989 settlement and does not justify terminating the magnet school and majority-to-minority transfer programs that promote student desegregation in the three districts. He said the unitary status “does notconstitute a changed circumstance” that would warrant the state’s release from the settlement.

In the 30-page response, Heller on behalf of the Little Rock district asserted that the state “has consistently interpreted the agreement to the detriment of LRSD and the defendant districts, forcing the districts to pursue remedies through litigation.”

Heller also argued that the state failed to maintain a constitutional public education system because it has failed to make financial adjustments in school funding that are rational or necessary. He said school districts are inappropriately funded based on available money and not on what is necessary for student achievement.

He also said the state has failed to identify or develop programs to remediate the racial achievement disparity among students. Instead of attempting to develop those programs, the state hired an expert to say that there was not a known program to lessen the disparity, he said.

“The state’s failure to make a good-faith effort cannot be excused simply because it might not have been successful,” Heller wrote.

He argued that the state has failed to monitor the districts as required by the settlement.

He also said the state has adopted a transportation funding system that funds the Pulaski County districts to a lesser degree than other districts in the state, a move he said that offends the antiretaliation provision of the settlement.

“Assuming finite funds, every dollar spent on transportation is a dollar that cannot be spent on direct educational programs needed to remediate the racial achievement disparity,” he said.

PCSSD STATUS REPORT

The Pulaski County Special district’s status report on Friday was in response to the judge’s request in December. The district had asked in November for court hearings on areas in which its leaders believed the 17,935-student school system is now in compliance and can be released from court monitoring.

“The District believes it has attained substantial plan compliance in the areas of Staffing, Special Education, One-Race Class Reports, and Secondary Gifted and Talented, Pre-Advanced Placement and Advanced Placement [courses] so as to be adjudicated unitary and eligible for release from court supervision,” Sam Jones, an attorney for the district, wrote in the introduction of Friday’s status report.

Jones proposed that hearings be conducted in a sequence starting with special education, then one-race classes, then staffing and, lastly, the gifted education/ Advanced Placement issue.

Even if the district is found after the hearings to be in compliance with its obligations in the four areas, it would remain under court supervision in areas such as student discipline, student achievement, school facilities, scholarships and monitoring.

In May 2011, U.S. District Judge Brian Miller, who has since stepped down as the presiding judge in the desegregation case, was particularly critical of the Pulaski County Special district, saying that compliance with the district’s desegregation Plan 2000 “seems to be an afterthought.”

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis in December 2011 upheld Miller’s finding that the district had not complied with many parts of its desegregation plan.

Friday’s status report to Marshall highlighted district efforts on each desegregation plan provision in areas that the district has yet to be released from court monitoring.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 02/02/2013