A team of attorneys led by civil-rights attorney John Walker on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit to reverse the January state takeover of the Little Rock School District and stop the development of both traditional and charter schools in west Little Rock.
The suit, filed against state and Little Rock School District leaders on behalf of a group of parents, students and two displaced Little Rock School Board members, also seeks an end to "unconstitutional policies and practices" in the Little Rock district in regard to the condition of school facilities, student discipline, distribution of student computers, configuration of high school attendance zones, faculty-member and student assignments to schools, the operation of the Hamilton Learning Academy, and other facets of the district's operation.
"This is an action to secure a remedy for the subjecting of black students enrolled in the Little Rock School District to intentional racial discrimination, in the period after courts held that the LRSD had achieved unitary status," the 71-page lawsuit begins.
The Little Rock district was declared unitary, or desegregated, by a federal district judge in 2007, and that ruling was affirmed by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009.
"This action also seeks a remedy for the state's takeover of the LRSD and the ouster of the democratically elected LRSD [School Board]," the suit continues. "Plaintiffs allege that these actions violated the United States Constitution (denial of freedom of speech, prohibited racial discrimination, conspiracy to violate rights, badge of slavery, and denial of due process of law)," the suit says.
The suit was filed late Wednesday afternoon and has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, who is a former presiding judge in the long-running 1982 federal school desegregation lawsuit involving all three Pulaski County school districts. Wright stepped down from that case in 2002.
Wednesday's federal lawsuit was filed on the eve of an Arkansas Supreme Court hearing at 9 a.m. today in a Pulaski County circuit court lawsuit that also is challenging the Jan. 28 decision by the Arkansas Board of Education to assume control of the Little Rock district. The Supreme Court hearing centers on whether state leaders can be sued under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
The state Education Board dismissed the seven-member elected School Board and placed the district's superintendent under the direction of the Arkansas education commissioner. The takeover was the result of six of the district's 48 schools being classified by the state as academically distressed because of chronically low test scores on state math and literacy exams.
Two of the plaintiffs in the suit are displaced School Board members Joy Springer and Jim Ross, both elected in contested elections in September 2014, just before the state takeover.
Other plaintiffs are a grandparent, four parents and their children, all of whom are black and all of whose identities are withheld with the exception of the grandparent, Claudius Johnson.
The parents are listed as Lakesha Doe, Evelyn Doe, Candice Doe and Sonya Doe. The reason for listing the plaintiff families as Does "is to prevent the minor students who are still enrolled in LRSD from being subjected to adverse treatment from students or district employees because of their participation in this action," the suit said.
The lawsuit describes some details of each student's schooling and ways in which they have been treated unequally compared with white students in the Little Rock district.
Student "Dennis Doe" for example is 15 and a student at Central High. Last year, he was enrolled in a high school labeled as academically distressed, according to the case.
He was subjected to discipline "for false reasons" during the 2014-15 school year. He and "approximately 37 other black students" were recommended for school suspensions because of accumulated citations for tardiness, the result of which would be missed instruction. His mother was not notified of the citations and had to go through multiple levels of appeals to set aside the suspension.
Further, the suit says that "Dennis Doe" sought to attend schools not labeled as academically distressed, but that white students from surrounding districts were given priority for enrollment at those schools. The suit says the schools that "Dennis Doe" and the other plaintiff students attend or did attend are unequal to those attended by white students in the northwestern and western parts of the school district.
In other cases the plaintiff students and their parents complained that the students were subjected to physical and verbal abuse from a teacher; provided with deficient instruction in reading; left to watch television and play games in class; suspended for six days for a verbal altercation with another student; and discouraged from remaining at Forest Heights when the middle school became a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade science and math academy.
The students attend schools that are in various stages of deterioration, the suit also says. Water leaks and mold, unreliable air conditioning, bad odors, broken furniture, exposed wiring, dim lighting and the presence of insects and rodents were cited as problems with facilities. In contrast, the suit described Roberts Elementary School on LaMarche Drive, the district's newest school having opened in 2010, as "beyond the state of the art" and 58,000 square feet larger than the next largest elementary campus.
"These actions and the condition of schools serving black students show that the LRSD gave greater priority to its white student population and to attracting white students not attending public schools of the LRSD, than it did to addressing the manifest facility needs of schools with high black and other minority enrollments," the suit says.
The suit says that the minor plaintiffs are seeking relief from the denial of education and unequal treatment.
The defendants in the lawsuit include Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key and Little Rock Superintendent Baker Kurrus, who was appointed to that job by Key with authorization from the state Education Board. The remaining defendants are the state Education Board members Toyce Newton, Jay Barth, Joe Black, Charisse Dean, Mireya Reith, Vicki Saviers, R. Brett Williamson and Diane Zook.
Kurrus said Wednesday night that he had not read the lawsuit and therefore had no comment about it.
Walker, 78, the lead attorney in the case, is a Democratic member of the Arkansas House of Representatives. He has been and continues to be the lead attorney for the class of black students known as the Joshua intervenors in the federal Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit. Other attorneys for the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit are Austin Porter Jr. and Gale Stewart of Little Rock, and Robert Pressman of Lexington, Mass.
The lawsuit criticizes the state-approved establishment of taxpayer-supported but independently operated charter schools in the district, particularly the eSTEM Public Charter Schools Inc., which the suit said has diverted some $15 million away from the Little Rock district in the last school year. Last year's opening of Quest Middle School in west Little Rock also is cited as a problem in the lawsuit.
The suit also recaps the lengthy history of school-improvement initiatives and events in the school district, leading to the state Education Board's takeover of the Little Rock district last winter. Those actions included plaintiffs Springer and Ross advocating for equal educational opportunities for students and against the district "manner favoring white persons and disfavoring black persons."
The suit contends that the state did not properly monitor the Little Rock district's use of federal School Improvement Grants to ensure that teachers were being rewarded and evaluated in part based on student achievement. Additionally, the suit argues that the state routinely failed to distribute federal Title I money to eligible schools until late in the school year, which adversely affected the ability of the schools to address the educational needs of large numbers of black students.
The state takeover of the Little Rock district and the subsequent appointment of Kurrus as superintendent in May "replaced a majority African-American LRSD School Board with an all white governance structure," the lawsuit contends, adding that the state actions were racially motivated and not credible.
"Baker Kurrus and Johnny Key have no plan by which to address academic achievement other than to prioritize construction and enhancement of West Little Rock schools and to superimpose upon those schools a plan whereby students in southwest Little Rock can exercise freedom of choice to leave failing schools," the suit says.
The case also describes how the academically distressed schools were so identified based on results from the Benchmark and End of Course student exams. The changes the state has made in state education standards and the math and literacy exams for students will prevent a year-to-year comparison of student achievement, which will delay the return of the school district to local governance, the lawsuit contends.
The lawsuit argues that there were "powerful interest groups and persons in the community who have favored the interests of white students and the white community who were influencing and cooperating" with state Education Board members in the district takeover.
"Their goal was to continue the ability to operate the system for the primary benefit of the white students and white community," the plaintiffs' attorneys wrote.
They said those involved "included the Chamber of Commerce and its affiliate, Fifty for the Future, John A. Riggs and Melanie Fox, former board members of the LRSD among others."
Metro on 10/08/2015