Attorneys for the Little Rock School District and an intervenor group asked a federal judge Monday to delay a December trial to determine whether the state should be released from a desegregation settlement agreement that requires it to pay about $70 million in annual aid to Little Rock and two other central Arkansas school districts.
The same attorneys previously made a similar request to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., asking him for a continuance, which would have stalled the trial while the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis considers whether the state’s authorization of independently run charter schools in Pulaski County violated that settlement agreement. Marshall denied that motion.
On Monday, the attorneys moved for a stay, a different legal mechanism that would also delay the court proceedings.
The request was made by attorneys for the state’s largest school district and the Joshua intervenors, which represent black students in the decades-old case.
Marshall previously ruled against the Little Rock School District in the charter school matter, disagreeing with its claim that the state approved open-enrollment charter schools without regard for their effects on district magnet schools and other court-approved desegregation efforts. The district has asked the appeals court to overturn that ruling.
The state - represented by the attorney general’s office - has argued previously that any delay in the December hearing could be costly because it pays the desegregation aid to the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts monthly.
But the appeals court’s decision in the charter school issue will be a factor in the December hearings, attorneys for the Little Rock district and the Joshua intervenors wrote. That’s because the state’s argument in its motion for release from the agreement is that it has complied “in good faith” with the terms of the settlement.
“The question of whether the State is currently violating the 1989 Settlement Agreement with respect to charter schools cannot be separated from the question of whether the state has generally complied in good faith with that same agreement,” wrote Chris Heller on behalf of the Little Rock School District and John Walker on behalf of the Joshua intervenors.
If the district court sides with the state and grants it a release from settlement obligations before the 8th Circuit rules, it risks legal confusion and a rehearing of the issue if the appeals court rules in Little Rock’s favor on the charter school issue, the attorneys wrote.
Little Rock filed the original lawsuit in 1982, arguing that the state and two other school districts had fostered segregation between the three Pulaski County school districts.
That suit led to a 1989 settlement under which the state pays about $70 million a year to help finance Little Rock’s six original magnet schools and all three districts’ majority-to-minority interdistrict student-transfer programs, some employee healthcare and retirement costs, and general operating expenses.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 09/24/2013