After win in court, district seeks fees
The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District is seeking $13,224 in legal fees and costs from the state for its successful challenge to an Arkansas Board of Education decision to allow a student transfer out of the district.
Scott Richardson, an attorney for the district, submitted the motion asking U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. to order the state to pay the legal fees and costs. Marshall is the presiding judge in an almost 34-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit.
Marshall ruled from the bench on Aug. 8 that the state Board of Education must honor the Jacksonville district's claim to an exemption from participating in Arkansas School Choice Act student transfers -- as was envisioned as part of a January 2014 settlement agreement in the long-running desegregation case. The judge reversed the state Education Board's decision to allow a student to transfer from Jacksonville, where she resided, to a Cabot School District campus.
Jacksonville/North Pulaski "prevailed on the only claim it asserted in the motion," Richardson wrote to the judge. "Thus [the district] is entitled to be fully compensated for its counsels' time spent prosecuting this motion."
Richardson said he worked 43.7 hours on the matter for the Jacksonville district and should be paid at his prevailing hourly rate of $300 an hour, equaling $13,110. He also incurred $114 in case costs.
Richardson charges the district a discounted rate of $250 an hour.
Brand new district has 3,698 enrolled
The 2016-17 school year marks the first year of independent operation for the Jacksonville/North Pulaski school district, the planning for which had to be done with some uncertainty about how many students would attend.
The new district's preliminary enrollment recorded at mid-week last week was 3,698 in kindergarten through 12th grades, Chief of Staff Phyllis Stewart said. That would make it one of the state's 30 largest districts.
The Pulaski County Special School District, from which the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district was carved, had a kindergarten-through-12th grade student count Friday of 12,041.
Student enrollment is a factor in calculating state foundation aid that is distributed to districts to help pay their operating costs. Arkansas districts are assured of at least $6,646 per student this year through a combination of state aid and local property tax revenue.
The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School Board will meet today for budget planning after a meeting on school improvement with Arkansas Department of Education leaders. The school board work session begins at 5 p.m. at the Jacksonville Police Department, 1400 Marshall Road in Jacksonville.
El Dorado parents given appeal date
U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey has set a 10 a.m. Aug. 30 hearing on whether the El Dorado School District's 1971 federal desegregation order prevents the district from participating in Arkansas School Choice Act student transfers.
The Arkansas Board of Education on July 14 granted an appeal from a family that sought to send their children to Parkers Chapel School District schools although the family resides in the neighboring El Dorado district.
The Parkers Chapel district had denied the transfer in deference to the El Dorado district, which had claimed an exemption to the state's interdistrict student transfer program. The El Dorado district said the transfers would conflict with the federal desegregation order that all vestiges of "freedom of choice" in school assignments had to be eliminated and "any further use is prohibited."
Attorneys for the district filed a motion Aug. 14 asking for a declaratory judgment on the transfer. They argued that the district cannot attain unitary status, or complete desegregation, if the mechanics of school choice allow students to move freely among districts.
An attorney for the plaintiffs in the case told the judge that he supports the El Dorado district's position.
Metro on 08/23/2016