10-day timetable estimated for trial
The parties in the 30-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit anticipate that a federal court trial on the state’s request to be released from the 1989 desegregation-settlement agreement will take 10 days.
The attorney general’s office Friday submitted to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. a proposed timetable for completing evidence discovery and submitting written arguments in the case. The state’s lawyers prepared the proposed timetable in response to the judge’s request that it be done and after conferring with the attorneys for the other parties in the lawsuit.
Attorneys for the state last year asked Marshall to release the state from its obligations under the desegregation settlement. Those obligations include the state’s payment of about $70 million a year in desegregation aid to the three Pulaski County school districts.
The Little Rock district filed its opposition to that release earlier this month.
According to the proposed timetable, the fourmonth discovery period forgathering facts and evidence to support each side’s arguments would not begin until the Legislature adjourns, tentatively on April 19.
NLR district to get
eatery appraisal
The North Little Rock School District will seek an appraisal of the Waffle House restaurant adjacent to the North Little Rock High School-West Campus to determine a purchase offer.
The district’s School Board authorized Superintendent Ken Kirspel and his staff to get the appraisal.
The superintendent is also authorized by the School Board to discuss the possibility of purchasing the building through eminent domain. That is the right to take private property for public use without the owner’s consent but with just compensation to the owner.
The school district is planning to expand the high school campus so the school can serve grades nine through 12. It currently serves only 11th and 12th grades. The expansion is part of the district’s $266 million capital-improvement plan for construction or renovation at nearly every campus in the 9,000-student district.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 16 on 02/24/2013