Terms start for LR, NLR district chiefs
Monday will mark the beginning of a new era in both the Little Rock and North Little Rock school districts.
Dexter Suggs Sr. will be the Little Rock School District’s new superintendent, replacing Morris Holmes, who resigned in March, and Marvin Burton, who led the district in the interim.
Suggs was most recently chief of staff in the Indianapolis, Ind., public schools. He grew up in St. Louis.
In North Little Rock, Kelly Rodgers will take the helm, filling the vacancy created by Superintendent Ken Kirspel’s retirement. Rodgers, who grew up in Little Rock, has been a superintendent for 10 years in two Texas districts.
Both Suggs and Rodgers have already spent many days during the past few months in their respective new districts, familiarizing themselves with people in the communities, the schools and the issues.
Monitoring office shrinks its budget
The Office of Desegregation Monitoring, created by the federal court system to monitor school district compliance with desegregation plans in Pulaski County, has submitted a 2013-14 budget of $233,571 to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., which is $133 less than the 2012-13 budget.
The budget includes salaries for the office’s two staff members: Monitor Margie Powell, whose salary would increase from $105,356 this past year to $109,570, and Administrative Assistant Karen Banks, who would earn $35,000 a year. Their benefits would total $43,138.
Revenue for the office includes an annual payment of $200,000 from the state, $27,617 from the Pulaski County Special School District and $5,054 that the Pulaski County Special district paid this past year but was not spent.
North Little Rock and Little Rock school districts are unitary and no longer subject to court monitoring of their desegregation efforts. As a result, the two districts - unlike Pulaski County Special - are no longer required to financially support the monitoring office.
Delay sought in desegregation suit
Attorneys for black students known as the Joshua intervenors in the 30-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit are asking a federal judge to delay a series of court hearings in the case that are scheduled to start in August and go through December.
Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, the lead counsel for the intervenors, had surgery for lung cancer early this year, is continuing to undergo treatment and is unable to actively prepare for the hearings on whether the Pulaski County Special School District has complied with its desegregation plan in specific areas of district operations.
The intervenors are asking that the schedule for four hearings of three days each - tostart Aug. 20, Sept. 3, Sept. 17 and Oct. 1 - be withdrawn and that the parties propose a new schedule within 60 days.
The Joshua intervenors are also asking U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. to delay for the same reason a Dec. 9-20 court hearing on whether Arkansas can be relieved of its obligations contained in the 1989 desegregation settlement. The obligations include the total payment of about $70 million in desegregation aid to the three Pulaski County districts.
The intervenors are proposing that deadlines for events leading up to the hearing be delayed by 90 days and that the hearing be rescheduled in light of new pre-trial deadlines.
The Arkansas attorney general’s office says it is sympathetic about Walker’s health issues but that the request for delay of the December hearing “goes too far” in a case “of tremendous public significance.”
The state payments amount to as much as $6 million a month, the attorney general’s office said. The annual amount could make “an almost $2,000 scholarship available for every graduating senior from Arkansas public schools in 2013.”
Arkansas, Pages 15 on 06/30/2013