District gets student-transfers waiver

Blytheville Superintendent Richard Atwill (left) and Attorney Jennifer Davis of the Arkansas Department of Education attend Thursday’s state Board of Education meeting regarding legal transfers in the district.
Blytheville Superintendent Richard Atwill (left) and Attorney Jennifer Davis of the Arkansas Department of Education attend Thursday’s state Board of Education meeting regarding legal transfers in the district.

The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday granted the Blytheville School District a legal waiver that will allow "legal transfers" of students into and out of the district.

Richard Atwill, the superintendent of Blytheville schools, late last year asked the Education Board to exercise its authority to waive Arkansas Code Annotated 6-18-317.

The statute prohibits a school board from granting "legal transfers" of students if the district has, or ever had, federal court desegregation obligations and if the student transfer would negatively affect the racial balance of that district.

Legal transfers -- in contrast to state School Choice Act transfers -- are those in which school boards in a resident district and a receiving district decide on student transfers on a case-by-case basis.

The Blytheville district has had one legal transfer in its history, Atwill said. He also said the Education Board's unanimous vote for the Blytheville waiver gives leaders of a district that has been embroiled in desegregation and student-transfer litigation some peace of mind about allowing legal transfers in the future.

"There are things coming from every direction, litigiously," Atwill said about the reason for the waiver request. " I want more time to concentrate on those things that help children and my community to grow -- not things that happened 50 or 60 years ago," Atwill said about racial matters.

"That's why we are making the request to remove something that somebody might hang their hat on loosely and move it out of the way," Atwill said.

The Blytheville district was initially one of 18 Arkansas school districts that claimed an exemption to allow students to transfer out of the district as permitted by the state's School Choice Act, which was first approved in 1989 and revised in 2013 and 2015.

The School Choice Act allows up to 3 percent of students to transfer out of a district and does not require school board action on a case-by-case basis for those transfers.

The 18 districts claimed exemptions to the School Choice Act based on their federal court-imposed desegregation obligations.

The Arkansas Department of Education initiated a review of desegregation obligations in the state's school districts last year.

Kendra Clay, the Education Department's attorney, said in a letter to Atwill late last year that based on the review of the Blytheville district information, "it appears that the Blytheville School District is no longer under active desegregation orders or under the supervision of the court in Franklin v Blytheville School District," which was the district's desegregation lawsuit.

That freed the district to begin participating in the School Choice Act student transfers.

But Clay also acknowledged at the time that Blytheville district leaders were concerned that Arkansas Code 6-18-317 that deals with the specific category of "legal transfers" -- which are dealt with separately from School Choice Act transfers in the law -- would continue to prevent some students from transferring.

Atwill believed that the legal transfer language in the law could be a barrier to the district's full participation in student transfers.

Clay disagreed with that but offered the waiver option as a resolution.

"While we do not believe this presents a conflict, to the extent that it does, the District may apply for a waiver of the prohibitions in 6-18-317" as permitted by Arkansas Code Annotated 6-18-318, Clay wrote to Atwill.

That law says a district may apply for a waiver if it is not currently under a desegregation-related court order but has been in the past and has a student requesting a transfer that would negatively affect the racial balance of the district.

"The State Board of Education may grant such ... a waiver from the provisions of 6-18-317 if it is determined that the district's desegregation status would not be adversely affected by allowing a legal transfer that would negatively affect the district's racial balance," the law adds.

Education Board member Jay Barth of Little Rock on Thursday questioned whether the Education Board needed data to see what the racial impact of the legal transfers would be in Blytheville. The 2,238-student enrollment is about 79 percent black and 21 percent white, Hispanic and American Indian.

Atwill and Jennifer Davis, an attorney for the Education Department, said there is not a pending request for any legal transfers.

Board member Diane Zook of Melbourne questioned whether the Education Board waiver was necessary, prompting Atwill to say that his district has been to court multiple times and that he felt like he was tiptoeing through a minefield of statutes and lawsuits.

Davis told the Education Board that regardless of the waiver, the Blytheville School Board will continue to consider requests for legal transfers on a student-by-student basis, and, as required, will submit each legal transfer decision to the state agency.

A Section on 01/15/2016

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