The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday authorized an election for Jacksonville-area voters to decide whether they want to carve a new Jacksonville/ North Pulaski County public-school system from the existing Pulaski County Special School District.

The election date wasn’t specifically stated in the board’s motion, but it will be Sept. 16, the day of this year’s annual school election, according to attorneys for the state Department of Education and the Jacksonville community’s leaders.

“There have been quite a few very important steps in this process,” Patrick Wilson,the attorney for the Jacksonville residents working for a new district, told the Education Board after the unanimous vote.

“Today is the best day,” Wilson said. “Our people are going to get to decide. All our supporters here are overjoyed.”

Even if a new school district is approved by voters, it could be up to two years before the district is fully operational with its own locally elected school board members and hired superintendent. In the meantime, Jacksonville-area schools would remain under the direction of the Pulaski County Special School District and its state-appointed superintendent.

The state Education Board cast the rare vote for an election in response to a petition signed by more than 2,000 Jacksonville residents. The petition to the board in July requested the opportunity to vote on forming a district, which is a part of the process set up in state law for forming a district.

Despite that law, the Education Board is far better known for approving mergers of school districts and reducing the number of total school districts in the state than it is for creating a new district.

The state board’s last vote approving an election for a possible new district was in 2003 - also at the request of Jacksonville residents.

That election was never held because the Pulaski County Special district opposed it and the federal judge presiding in the long-running Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit at the time issued an order negating it.

The judge said then that a new district would hinder school desegregation efforts in Pulaski County.

This time around, the leaders of the Pulaski County Special district are supportive of a Jacksonville/North Pulaski district, as is the federal judge now presiding in the desegregation lawsuit.

The boundaries of the proposed new Jacksonville/North Pulaski district would encompass about 100 square miles covering Jacksonville and its outlying areas. The system would include 10 of the Pulaski County Special School District’s operating school campuses, including Jacksonville and North Pulaski High schools, plus two currently unused campuses and one of the county district’s bus depots.

The School Board for the Pulaski County Special School District had approved boundaries for a new district before that board was dissolved in 2011, when the state Department of Education took control of the district over unrelated financial problems.

The people who would be eligible to vote in the Sept. 16 election are the registered voters who live within the approved boundaries. Residents in the remaining Pulaski County Special district would not be eligible to vote.

The new district - if approved - would have an estimated 4,400 students. The Pulaski County Special district has about 18,000 students this school year.

Education Board member Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock on Thursday commended the Jacksonville/North Pulaski Education Corps and other civic leaders who are working for the establishment of the district.

“If every community was as committed to public education as Jacksonville, our job would be a lot easier,” Ledbetter said. “The perseverance for the last 15 years on this is really amazing. I have no doubt this will succeed.”

Daniel Gray, the spokesman for the Jacksonville/ North Pulaski Education Corps and chairman of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, said the next steps will be to get the word out about the election through public meetings and other means.

“Every organization in Jacksonville will get behind this. We’ll come together to organize, but it will be a grass-roots effort,” Gray said.

Wilson, the attorney, said that if the district is approved, it will be the first to be formed through detachment from an existing school district.

“It’s uncharted territory, for sure,” he said.

If the district is approved, the state Education Board would appoint a seven-member board to begin the planning process.

Ivory Tillman, a member of the Jacksonville NAACP, asked the state board Thursday to be vigilant in appointing a racially diverse board to serve until locally elected school board members are selected in September 2015.

Bobby Lester, a retired superintendent in the Pulaski County Special district and a longtime Jacksonville area resident, welcomed the progress toward a new district.

“We can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said of the efforts that he believes will benefit the city and result in improved school facilities in the Jacksonville area.

“Losing enrollment and the perception of the district has been bad,” Lester said. “If we have local control and we get us a good leader, we’ll turn that perception around. A lot of the people who would ordinarily consider moving somewhere else will stay with us - a lot of young people.”

The path for the state board’s decision to approve an election was made easier by the fact that the Pulaski County Special district and U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. are not opposing the move.

Jerry Guess, superintendent of the state-controlled Pulaski County Special district, has said that the detachment of the Jacksonville area will be beneficial to both the Jacksonville community and to the Pulaski County Special district.

That’s because a new Jacksonville/North Pulaski County district would be eligible for millions of dollars in state school construction money to help pay for the repair or construction of schools.

The Pulaski County Special district, a property-tax wealthy district, is ineligible for that state school-construction money. If the new district is established, the Pulaski County Special district would be released from obligations in its desegregation plan to improve Jacksonville’s older campuses. Under the desegregation plan, the Pulaski County Special district is obligated to improve Jacksonville’s schools to the level of the newer schools in Maumelle and Sherwood.

A settlement recently negotiated by the state, the three Pulaski County school districts and other parties in the long-running Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit authorizes the establishment of a Jacksonville/North Pulaski County system in accordance with the requirements in state law.

In January, Marshall - the judge currently presiding in the federal school desegregation lawsuit - approved the settlement with its provision on a Jacksonville area school district.

Efforts by Jacksonville residents to operate their own school district go back decades and include the passing of state laws on forming a district.

Arkansas Code Annotated 6-13-1501 through 1505 requires the planners of a district to do a feasibility study on a proposed district and petition the state Education Board for an election date.

The Jacksonville/North Pulaski Education Corps within the past few years commissioned the study on a possible new district, held community forums on the study results, and then conducted a petition drive asking the state to set an election.

The petition presented to the state Education Board in July had 2,079 signatures.

A new district would assume the same millage rate as the Pulaski County Special district. It also would be entitled to take the school property of the school district from which the territory is taken as deemed proper by the state Education Board.

The state Education Board by law may allow a transition period of up two years for a new district to become fully operational.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/21/2014