School Board in NLR OKs attendance zones

Panel favors new lines in 5-0 vote

Friday, June 20, 2014

The North Little Rock School Board voted 5-0 Thursday night in favor of revised elementary school attendance boundary lines that will go into effect a year from now, in the 2015-16 school year.

The board approved the particular attendance zones based on the recommendation of a citizens' committee that worked over the past several months with a demographic consulting firm to design zones for the nine newly built or extensively remodeled campuses that will result from the district's $265.5 million capital improvement program.

Members of the committee told the School Board that the recommended plan is "not perfect," in terms of promoting racial and socioeconomic diversity at every campus. But they also said the proposal was the best it can be and still conform to School Board-established criteria for the new attendance zones.

The board set as its top priority that each of the attendance zones be contiguous, meaning that each school would serve its surrounding area and not any distant satellite area or pocket of students in another part of the city. The board also asked that planners seek a racial and socioeconomic mix of pupils at the schools and that the zones be drawn so that the schools are used effectively with neither overcrowding nor under-enrollment.

Deborah Rhodes, one of the committee members, said the committee worked hard at its task, even consulting the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision against racially separate schools in Topeka, Kan. She said that was done in hopes of finding ways to move the North Little Rock district forward in terms of racial desegregation of its schools.

"Most of our neighborhoods are not very diverse," Rhodes told the board. "The committee agreed over and over that the map we are sharing with you tonight is the best, contiguous scenario but, by no means, is it great."

"It would have been my personal desire to make more of a melting pot," Rhodes said. She noted that the nine schools to be served by the attendance zones have some widely varying percentages of black and white enrollments and an insufficient mix of students based on family income.

"The melting pot -- I wish it could be melting more," she said.

The anticipated racial makeup of the elementary schools is projected to range from 16.2 percent black at Crestwood Elementary to 87.6 percent black at Meadow Park Elementary.

The white enrollment is expected to range from 6.8 percent at Seventh Street Elementary to 75 percent white at Crestwood. The Hispanic enrollment is projected to range from 2.7 percent at Meadow Park to 22.5 percent at what will be Ridgeroad Elementary once it is converted to a kindergarten through fifth grade campus from its current middle school operation.

Patrick Lander, another committee member, told the board that he personally believes the plan as presented to and approved by the board is a workable plan that will allow for the future growth of the elementary school enrollment in the projected growth areas of the city.

"I do think it achieves a greater sense of neighborhood schools, which was part of the millage campaign that brought us to this exciting point," he added, referring to the 2012 public vote to raise the property tax rate to finance the school building improvements.

"I do think that demographically we are creating a challenge for the future," Lander added. "While all but one of our schools will qualify for federal Title I funds, I don't know that if you look at the demographics of each of the individual schools that it is an accurate reflection of our community and the world our children will grow up in."

Stephen W. Jones, an attorney for the school district, said in an earlier letter to Superintendent Kelly Rodgers that he sees no legal problems with the attendance zones or the anticipated racial makeup of the school enrollments.

The North Little Rock district was only recently released from federal court monitoring of its desegregation efforts. Regardless, Jones said that no particular level of racial balance is required in the schools, even if the district was still operating under court supervision.

Now that the district is unitary, or desegregated, and released from court oversight, the standard for court intervention is whether the district acted with the intent to cause racial segregation, Jones said and adding that there is nothing to suggest that is happening.

"In fact, the ultimate results are a more integrated student population rather than a more segregated one, with every zone having facilities of equal quality," he wrote about the new zones.

Board member Dorothy Williams on Thursday said she is comfortable with the new zones and the resulting racial mix.

"All of our schools have proven themselves," said Williams, who is black and a retired administrator in the 9,000-student system.

"Because a black child is in a classroom with a white child or vice versa, that doesn't make a child learn," she said. "It's the academic structure or the curriculum that we have provided. I see no prejudice because all of our schools are academically sound. That is the greatest praise that I can give to our administrators like Rosie Coleman who does her job as elementary education director to make sure that all of our schools are really doing well, elementary-wise."

The attendance zone map was developed in consultation with RSP & Associates, a Kansas City, Mo., area demographic consulting firm.

Only the elementary schools in the district require revised attendance zones. The district ultimately will have only one six-through-eighth grade middle school and one ninth through 12th grade high school.

Voting for the attendance zone plan Thursday were board members Williams, Scott Miller, Scott Teague, Luke King and Ron Treat. Board President J.T. Zakrzewski and board member Darrell Montgomery were absent.

A section on 06/20/2014