End to desegregation aid set

U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. gave final approval Monday to a settlement that will end the annual payment of millions of dollars in state desegregation aid to Pulaski County’s three school districts after the conclusion of the 2017-18 school year.

The judge said from the bench at the end of a daylong “fairness hearing” that the settlement met the legal standard for being fair, reasonable and adequate.

The newly approved settlement - negotiated late last year by attorneys for the state, the districts, the class of black students known as the Joshua intervenors and the class of school district employees known as the Knight intervenors - goes a long way toward ending the 31-year-old federal school-desegregation lawsuit.

The lawsuit, which has its roots in the 1957 court-ordered integration of Little Rock Central High, has cost the state more than $1 billion in payments to the three districts since 1989. That year, the parties reached an agreement that required state funding for interdistrict student transfer programs and other initiatives.

The new settlement sets a date for ending the state’s financial obligations to the districts. The 1989 agreement had no ending dates.

Of the three districts, only the Pulaski County Special School District has yet to meet all of its desegregation plan requirements and remains under court supervision. The judge on Monday declared the Pulaski County Special district unitary and released from court supervision in two areas: student assignment and gifted-education programs. That leaves seven areas - including inequitable school facilities and racially disparate student discipline measures - still to be remedied in cooperation with the Joshua intervenors.

“While it’s not the end of the matter … it takes us very far down the road,” Marshall told the attorneys for the parties and a full courtroom of observers about the new settlement.

“And with the exception of the 1989 agreement, it’s a far, far different place in the road than we have usually been when some or all of us have gathered to talk about an issue,” he said in reference to some of the hotly litigated issues in the long-running case.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, who was a teenager when the 1989 agreement was reached, was delighted with the newest settlement, calling it both “a great day for the state’s taxpayers”and a sign that “hearts have changed” and that providing the best quality education possible is a moral imperative.

“It’s hard for me to put into words how important this is to this state,” he told reporters after Marshall’s approval of the settlement. “Generations of kids were wronged by the intentional segregation of the races. That was wrong for all students, black and white. We also know that good people have worked very, very hard to bring an end to this litigation. It is time … to put this case in the books and be partners in education and not adversaries in court.”

State Rep. John Walker,D-Little Rock, the longtime attorney for the Joshua intervenors, called the settlement “significant” but also expressed disappointment that the lawsuit has not produced a better outcome for black students, who as a group score lower on tests than their white classmates.

“That gap is the same width now as it was 10, 20 years ago,” Walker said after the court hearing, blaming the districts and the state for not doing more to advance academic achievement for black and poor children.

“I’m glad it’s over,” he said about phasing out the state funding. “The state is no longer in the position of being a hypocrite. They no longer have to say they are doing things they were not doing. And the districts can no longer hide behind the state. They have to use their own resources and devote them to our children.”

The attorney general’s office, on behalf of the Arkansas Department of Education, had sought an immediate end to the desegregation aid. The judge had scheduled a court hearing on that motion for last month but then put it on hold until March after the parties reached a proposed settlement. Marshall gave preliminary approval to the settlement plan in November and scheduled the fairness hearing to give members of the classes represented by Joshua and Knight intervenors time to make any objections to the agreement.

On Monday, Marshall canceled the March hearing on the state’s motion to end the funding, calling it moot in light of the settlement. The judge also overruled objections submitted to him in writing by a Dec. 23 deadline and presented to him orally earlier in Monday’s court hearing.

The new settlement calls for the state to pay a total $65.8 million to the districts in each of the 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years. The funding in the final year is required to be used for the construction of academic facilities. The Little Rock district’s share of the funding will be $37.3 million a year. The North Little Rock district’s share is $7.6 million and the Pulaski County Special district’s share is $20.8 million a year.

After the 2017-18 school year, the three districts will receive only the state aid that all other Arkansas school districts receive.

Additionally, the settlement phases out the interdistrict student-transfer component to the Little Rock School District’s magnet-school program and it phases out the majority-to-minority program in which students could transfer from one Pulaski County district in which their race was in the majority to another district and school in which their race was in the minority.

Students currently in the student-transfer programs will be allowed to continue in those programs either until they complete all available grades at the magnet schools they attend or until they graduate from high school if they are in the majority-to- minority program.

And the agreement clears the way for the Jacksonville area to pursue the establishment of its own school district, consistent with state law requirements, that would be separate from the Pulaski County Special School District.

Sherwood Mayor Virginia Hillman and Sherwood Public Education Foundation co-Chairmen Linda Remele and Beverly Williams had filed an objection to one sentence in the settlement that obligates the state to oppose the formation of any new district in Pulaski County - other than Jacksonville - until the Pulaski County Special district is declared unitary and released from court supervision.

Marshall concurred with the attorneys for the parties that the Sherwood representatives were not parties in the case and did not have legal standing to cause a change in the settlement agreement.

The judge also said that the 1989 agreement protected the sovereignty of the Pulaski County Special district boundaries and, as a result, no new districts could be created. The protection of the Pulaski County Special district boundaries is relaxed in the new settlement, he said.Sherwood is not prohibited from ever forming its own district but must wait and even assist the Pulaski County Special district to become unitary.

“The law provides a route,” Marshall said about a new district. “The answer is ‘Not never.’ It is ‘Not yet.’”

Earlier Monday, Remele had told the judge that Sherwood was the state’s 13th-largest city and the largest without its own school district.

Walker told Marshall that the federal court did not have the authority to direct parties in the settlement to rearrange the terms of the agreement, and must accept it in its totality unless it was unethical or unlawful.

Steve Jones, an attorney for the North Little Rock School District, told the judge that cities don’t necessarily have their own school districts. The city limits of North Little Rock and the North Little Rock School District boundaries do not mirror each other at all. Much of the territory in the North Little Rock city limits - including that approaching Maumelle and along Arkansas 67-167 - is in the Pulaski County Special School District.

“The North Little Rock School District would love conterminous boundaries with the city,” he said.

The judge commended the attorneys and their clients for the hard work and unanimity in reaching the settlement, telling them how struck he was by the lack of objections from the “thousands and thousands” of black students represented by the Joshua intervenors or the thousands of employees in the three school districts.

A total of nine individuals or groups filed what were labeled “objections” but were really requests for limited changes in the settlement proposal. Those comments were submitted first in writing to the judge and orally to him during the earlier part of the Monday court session.

Each of the commenters on Monday said they said they did not oppose the settlement or did not want to derail it.

Samia Johnston, a parent, posed questions to the judge about the settlement provisions that will prevent most Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock students who attend Little Rock’s special program magnet schools from continuing in magnet middle and high schools after they complete the grades in the schools they now attend.

Jones, the North LittleRock attorney, and Chris Heller, the Little Rock attorney, said that their districts had wanted to allow greater numbers of interdistrict student transfers to occur in the future, but the restrictions were the result of negotiations.

Jones said that the interdistrict programs were exceedingly successful but “have had their day.” The numbers of participating students has declined in recent years and the transfer students are no longer affecting a desired change in racial make up in the schools, he said.

Leaders of the three school districts testified during Monday’s hearing that their districts could remain financially solvent and meet state educational standards if the settlement were to be approved.

Marshall said he was persuaded in part by Pulaski County Special district Superintendent Jerry Guess’ testimony. Guess described how the Pulaski County Special district would have to cut 12 percent of its expenses but would be able to operate and attain unitary status in most areas of its operation within a year - although achieving equitable school buildings would take longer and require a voter-approved property tax increase.

Guess told the judge that the possible detachment of Jacksonville would enable that community to receive state facility money to replace its old schools - money that the existing Pulaski County Special district is not eligible to receive. But if Jacksonville does not form its own district, Guess said the Pulaski County district would have the funds to address Jacksonville’s building needs.

Kelsey Bailey, the chief financial officer for the Little Rock School District, testified that there will be a net loss of students in the Little Rock district as the result of the settlement plan that phases out two groups - the majority-to-minority interdistrict transfer students and new magnet-school students from North Little Rock and PulaskiCounty Special districts.

He presented a spreadsheet showing that as many as 141 certified jobs and 86 support staff jobs will be eliminated by the 2019-20 fiscal year. The district anticipates cutting the budget yearly in amounts ranging from $2.2 million this school year to as much as $4.4 million in 2016-17 in employee and nonpayroll expenses to offset the loss of state desegregation aid.

North Little Rock School District Superintendent Kelly Rodgers testified that the settlement agreement will enable his district to continue to comply with state education standards and maintain financial solvency.

Rodgers told the judge that the district, which has 1,450 employees, will have to eliminate an average 27 positions each year for three years and seek out grants and other revenue sources to afford the district’s systemwide construction plan.

The district will cut $4 million in staffing costs, cut transportation and program costs by $1.6 million and raise $2 million from grants.

Marshall said the school case was the most difficult one on his docket. He pointed out that the state had a strong case in its request to end the desegregation funding after spending $1 billion over more than 20 years. But the Little Rock district and Joshua intervenors were forceful in arguing that the state had stumbled in meeting all of its obligations under the 1989 agreement, he said. He called the settlement that phases out the state funding over four years and allows planning to occur “very fair.”

“I think this is a day we can write in the books and put a circle around it,” Marshall said, “and remember that we did something important.”