Interdistrict transfers declining in 3 districts

Even before attorneys in a long-running Pulaski County school-desegregation lawsuit proposed late last year to phase out the interdistrict components of magnet school and majority-to-minority programs, student enrollment in those programs is waning.

A total of 2,587 students are crossing school district boundaries this school year to attend Little Rock’s six original magnet schools or to attend other schools not in the districts in which they live - and in so doing aiding racial desegregation of the schools.

This year’s participation is down 208 students from the 2,795 who crossed district lines in the 2012-13 school year and down 1,450from the record high of 4,037 interdistrict participants 10 years ago.

Those numbers and many more are contained in the latest 51-page report from the federal Office of Desegregation Monitoring on the enrollment and racial composition of students in the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts.

The 2013-14 report also shows that enrollment in two of the three school districts decreased this school year as compared with last school year.

The Pulaski County Special School District enrollment of 17,626 this year is down 309 students, or 2 percent - a fact that portends a reduction in state aid to the district in the 2014-15 school year. The North Little Rock district at 9,113 students is down 34. The Little Rock School District count is up slightly - 53 - to 25,110, reversing four years of declines in the state’s largest school system.

The Office of Desegregation Monitoring produced its first enrollment and racial composition report for the 1988-89 school year - the year when parties in the federal lawsuit reached a settlement in which the state agreed to provide desegregation funding to the three districts.

Now a quarter of a century later, the parties have proposed a new settlement, which is pending before a judge, that would not only phase out the two types of interdistrict student-transfer programs but also allow the state to discontinue the desegregation aid to the districts - a total of $65.8 million a year - after the 2017-18 school year.

Additionally the proposed settlement would end a federal appeals court challenge to the state-approved, independently operated public charter schools in Pulaski County. Those charter schools enrolled about 5,100 students this year, according to data from the Arkansas Department of Education.

Federal Desegregation Monitor Margie Powell, who spearheads the annual compilation of the enrollment data as part of her duties for the court, said Friday that she sees the long-running lawsuit coming to what in her personal opinion is an unfulfilling conclusion.

“I’m sorry this case is ending with a whimper instead of a bang,” Powell said last week. “It is just petering out. There’s no glorious academic achievement in any of the districts in my opinion and, when you walk into any cafeteria - especially at the middle and high schools - you see students self-segregating, by race, for the most part.”

Powell also lamented in an interview the decline in the numbers of interdistrict transfer students participating in the six Little Rock magnet schools - Booker, Carver, Gibbs and Williams elementaries, Horace Mann Middle and Parkview High - as well as in the majority-to-minority program. The majority-to-minority program enables students to move from a district where their race is in the majority to a district and school in the county where their race is in the minority.

“This has all been about money,” Powell said about the recent settlement negotiations on ending state desegregation aid, “and not about the effects a program has or about the benefits to students. “Don’t get me started,” she added, calling it a “soapbox” issue for her.

There are different reasons for the decline in the interdistrict transfer students, she said, including the introduction of public charter schools to the county in the early 2000s and the changing demographics in the school districts.

“The charter schools have had a big effect on the [traditional public] schools,” she said. “People have choices now, and they exercise those choices with their feet,” she said, noting that sometimes families leave schools because the schools are low-performing. “Let’s face it,” she said, “quite a few of the schools in all three districts are low-performing. That makes a difference, too.”

She also said the racial makeup of the three school districts is similar now, more so than in the 1980s when the federal school desegregation lawsuit was filed. Agreements over the years in the lawsuit included the magnet schools and the majority-to-minority interdistrict transfer programs. The three school districts benefited financially from those programs by encouraging their students to transfer across district lines and by accepting transfer students from their neighbor districts.

“We couldn’t understand why they didn’t aggressively pursue that more, because they made way more money by sending students across district lines,” Powell said of the voluntary desegregation programs. “Both the sending district and the receiving district made money on that.

“But I think the districts are beginning to look more and more alike,” Powell continued, noting the changes in the racial composition of the districts, each of which has lost about half of their white enrollment since 1988-89. “I think they just can’t afford to lose white kids,” she speculated.

The Little Rock district enrollment this year is 66 percent black and 34 percent white or of other races and ethnicities, according to the Office of Desegregation Monitoring report. There were 16,573 black students, 4,642 white students and 3,895 students of other races and ethnicities.

The annual monitoring report singles out black student enrollment and percentages by school and district because the vestiges of the once legally mandated segregation of black students in the state is at the heart of the long-running lawsuit.

The annual report also gives the enrollment of white students by school and by district, and the enrollment of students of “other” races and ethnicities.

The Pulaski County Special district is 44 percent black and 56 percent white or “other” this year. That consists of 7,691 black students, 7,859 white students and 2,076 students of other races or ethnicities.

The North Little Rock district is 59 percent black and 41 percent white or other. That consists of 5,407 black students, 2,842 white students and 864 students of other races or ethnicities.

Enrollment numbers for the Little Rock and North Little Rock districts are included in this year’s annual report but are not scrutinized to the degree that they are for the Pulaski County Special district. The Little Rock and North Little Rock districts have been declared unitary and thus released from court monitoring, but the Pulaski County Special district has not.

In regard to the magnet and majority-to-minority interdistrict transfer students, the monitoring report notes that the Pulaski County Special district - out of the three districts - received the most transfer students this year and sent out the most, including students to the Little Rock magnet schools.

“Without sending or receiving majority-to-minority transfer students, the overall PCSSD enrollment would be 17,244, which is 382 students fewer than the current enrollment of 17,626, and the district would be 39 percent African-American rather than the current 44 percent,” the report said.

The monitoring report also notes that the Pulaski County Special district’s enrollment fills 65 percent of the district’s available seats, leaving space for as many as 9,379 more students. Baker, Oakbrooke, Chenal and Pine Forest elementaries and Maumelle Middle schools are at or above capacity this year. Harris Elementary, which gained 70 pupils this year, is only at 28 percent capacity. Crystal Hill Elementary outside Maumelle lost 12 percent of its enrollment this year - 98 pupils, according to the report.

College Station, Dupree, Harris and Taylor elementary schools have black enrollments that exceed the racial balance guidelines in the district’s desegregation plan. That guidelines cap for this school year is 50 percent black. Jacksonville Middle, Jacksonville High and Mills University Studies High exceed the 60 percent cap for black students prescribed under the plan.

The Office of Desegregation Monitoring report is not online but is available by calling that office at (501) 376-6200.

The tentatively approved settlement including the changes proposed to the interdistrict transfer programs is to be the subject of a fairness hearing Jan. 13-14 in federal court before U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr.

Marshall in a Friday court order invited individuals and groups who submitted objections and comments to the proposed settlement agreement to speak to the court at that time. Some of the responders have raised concerns about the limits to interdistrict transfers that are part of the plan.

The judge asked that the parties talk about specifics of the plan.

“Some brief testimony about the funding … and how it will affect district operations will be helpful,” he said in the order. “Some testimony, perhaps from LRSD, on the M-to-M and magnet school transitions would be informative.”