County district makes strides, monitor says

Staffing, student discipline areas of concern, judge told

The Pulaski County Special School District is close to complying with some parts of its desegregation plan, but falls short in others, Desegregation Monitor Margie Powell said in a new report to a federal judge.

Areas of concern center on school staffing and on efforts to alleviate disparate rates of student discipline.

Facilities, student achievement and special education, in contrast, were noted for their improvements in the 18,000-student district.

"While there are still some real problems with fulfilling some of the provisions in ... [desegregation] Plan 2000, the PCSSD has made real progress toward unitary status since 2010-11," Powell wrote in the 37-page report to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr.

"For the most part, district personnel are making good faith efforts to comply with its desegregation plan and, in several areas, have produced positive results," she said. "This is all the more remarkable because the PCSSD has a relatively new superintendent, has seen several key personnel changes, and has been in 'fiscal distress' for the past few years."

Janice Warren, who serves as the district's chief desegregation officer in her role as interim assistant superintendent for equity and pupil services, organized the district's compliance presentations to Powell earlier this spring.

"We're pleased with what we got," Warren said about the findings in the monitoring report.

"She was complimentary about how we had made adjustments and changes," Warren said. "She was complimentary about how we had grown. She made suggestions, of course, for improvement."

The status report on compliance is likely to be the last from the federal Office of Desegregation Monitoring -- which Powell heads. By court order, the office will close at the end of this month after almost 25 years of tracking desegregation-plan compliance in the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special districts.

Marshall, who asked Powell to do the status report before closing the office, has said that in the absence of the office he intends to employ Powell on a part-time basis as a "court expert."

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis established the Office of Desegregation Monitoring in 1991. The Little Rock and North Little Rock districts in recent years have been declared unitary or in substantial compliance with their desegregation plans. Those two districts have been released from federal court supervision and monitoring, while Pulaski County Special has not.

The Pulaski County Special district, a defendant in a 31-year-old school desegregation lawsuit, remains under federal court supervision for failing to meet the provisions of its desegregation Plan 2000 that deal with school facilities, special education, staffing, student discipline, student achievement and self-monitoring.

Powell's report addresses each of the areas.

Equalizing the condition of school buildings in the district has been considered one of the biggest obstacles to achieving complete unitary status. That's because the district has some very new and modern buildings -- Maumelle High and Sylvan Hills Middle schools -- and considerably older buildings -- such as the campuses in Jacksonville.

In her report, however, Powell said she had no concerns about the district's approach to facilities.

"The district is meeting its obligation under Plan 2000 with respect to school facilities," she said and noted that the district has completed evaluations of all of its buildings, is using a Facilities Master Plan to guide its work on facilities and has strengthened its maintenance department. The stronger maintenance department has resulted in timely repairs, as well as better cleanliness and ground maintenance at the campuses.

"The district has done a good job renovating and refurbishing schools in the southeast quadrant of the district," Powell also said.

She called the building improvements at College Station Elementary "amazing" and a "Cinderella story." Additionally, "long overdue and costly" improvements in health rooms at College Station, Mills High and Jacksonville High have been completed.

And despite funding issues, Fuller Middle School, Harris Elementary and Robinson High are recipients of roofing and/or interior repairs, she said. Furthermore, plans have been prepared for new secondary schools in Jacksonville, as well as for a new Mills High School in southeast Pulaski County.

Jerry Guess, the state-appointed superintendent of the district since 2011, welcomed Powell's findings.

"You can put money in roofs, air-conditioning systems, and bathrooms and paint, and make a big visible difference in a hurry," Guess said. "We've worked really hard to do that because the district ignored facilities for so long. We've made a real strong effort on that."

In regard to student achievement in the district, Powell said the achievement disparities between black and white students on state-mandated exams "narrowed significantly in math, literacy, and algebra" between 2006 and 2013.

In third-grade math, for example, the achievement gap between black and white students went from a difference of 33 percentage points to 16 percentage points. On the End-of-Course algebra exam, the difference moved from 39 percentage points to 23 percentage points.

The report attributes the narrowing of the gap in part to the district's renewed commitment to work with the University of Memphis on evaluating student test data.

Additionally the district instituted summer school in 2012-13 for students who had failing grades in the southeast section of the district, which has a predominantly black student enrollment. At selected middle schools, the trial "Enrichment Time" intervention program provided students with extra instructional time and new instruction techniques in math and literacy.

Still, the student achievement gap continues to exist, Powell said, and evaluations of intervention programs for student achievement are lacking. She also said there is no apparent effort to involve black students and other disadvantaged students in extracurricular activities.

Warren said last week that district leaders are considering possible changes in the district's fees for extracurricular activities as a way to promote participation in activities by disadvantaged students.

Powell questioned the district's recently announced plans to do away with a dozen home-school consultants, which she said in an interview have a proven track record of success in working with students at risk of school failure and their families. The academy sounds good on paper, but the district "may have to rob Peter to pay Paul," to afford it, she said.

The district is asking the federal court to allow it to redirect the money now used for the home consultants, 14 Saturday School teachers and seven alternative learning center teachers to a proposed Donaldson Scholars Academy.

The district would pay $10 million to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to enable that university and Philander Smith College to host the academy. The academy would feature summer and Saturday programs to prepare district high school students, particularly black students, for enrollment in college without having to take remedial courses.

"There is not one program that we have put on the proposed list of desegregation budget cuts list that is not a great program," Warren said about eliminating positions and shifting the funds to the university.

She said the elimination of state desegregation aid to the district after the 2017-18 school year makes reductions necessary.

"You have to start looking at those things that are not required by the Arkansas Department of Education and state law and start there with cuts," she said.

Marshall has scheduled a hearing for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday on the district's motion to alter its desegregation plan to accommodate the Scholars Academy.

The longest section of the Office of Desegregation Monitoring status report deals with student discipline and the fact that black students in general, and black male students in particular, continue to be suspended and otherwise disciplined at rates disproportionate to their total enrollment in the district.

In 2012-13, a total of 1,635 black middle and high school students were suspended one or more times. That was 67 percent of all suspensions although black students make up about 48 percent of the secondary school enrollment.

"Several new initiatives have been put into place to address the district's seemingly intractable discipline disparity problems," Powell wrote, but she said they are too new to assess. In some cases, the programs are "already being watered down" as the result of a loss of staff positions, or they affect too few students "to make a real impact on black student discipline."

Powell also lamented the district's elimination a few years ago of a separate boys-only middle-school campus in Jacksonville. "That school showed real promise," she said, noting that her unannounced visits there found students to be "eagerly engaged in classroom activities," "displaying their work" and "acting like gentlemen."

Discipline is an ongoing area of need and concentration, Warren agreed, saying that more strides have been made at the elementary schools. Dupree Elementary, for example, has cut its discipline rate in half since last year, she said.

The district is using consultants to educate the secondary school staff, Warren said, on dealing with students who "are explosive or are disciplinary problems that are not necessarily the norm." Improving discipline rates will lead to higher achievement, she said.

In the area of staffing, the district increased the percentage of black teachers hired from 20.3 percent in 2010-11 to 24.4 percent this school year. But Powell said the gap between the percentage of black teachers and black students has grown significantly. She said there has been little growth in the number of black teachers in the areas of early childhood education, primary grades and secondary core courses.

She also said the number of black administrators in the district's central office has declined. Warren, who is black, is a half-time interim assistant superintendent who also oversees elementary education. Powell praised Warren's work.

"Each one of those positions is a full-time job," Powell observed about Warren's jobs. "Yet she has managed to shepherd the district to within reach of obtaining unitary status."

A section on 06/09/2014

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