Jacksonville district sets school timeline

To meet desegregation duties, it plans for all facilities to be equitable by ’35

The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District has sent a federal judge a school construction timeline that "represents the quickest schedule on which the district can achieve the goal" of replacing its high school and six elementaries.

U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. had asked earlier this year that district leaders supplement plans for building a new high school and elementary school with plans for replacing four other elementary schools so that all the elementary schools in the district are equal.

The timeline envisions the construction to take place over time as state school-construction money and bond issue revenue becomes available to the district, resulting in the final school being completed in 2035.

The Jacksonville/North Pulaski district is a party in a 34-year federal Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit that predates the district's existence. As a condition of establishing the new district, it must meet the same desegregation obligations as the Pulaski County Special School District, from which it was carved. Those desegregation obligations -- contained in the Pulaski County Special district's desegregation document, Plan 2000 -- call for older schools to be made equitable with the Pulaski County Special district's newer campuses in Maumelle and Sherwood.

"Accordingly, [the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district] asserts that its 2017 Preliminary Master Facilities Plan keeps faith with Plan 2000; promotes the elimination of whatever vestiges of past discrimination may remain in the District and does so as soon as practicable," Scott Richardson, an attorney for the new district, said in the report to the judge.

The report, sent Wednesday, comes in advance of a Dec. 7 status conference Marshall scheduled with attorneys for the Jacksonville and Pulaski County Special districts and the Joshua intervenors. The Joshua intervenors represent black students in the two districts in the desegregation case.

The construction timeline starts with a replacement school for the current Arnold Drive and Tolleson elementaries, which would open in August 2018, and a new Jacksonville High to open in August 2019.

Additional components of the plan:

• Repairs to Jacksonville Middle School, which is in the former North Pulaski High School building.

• Replacement of Dupree and Pinewood elementaries with a single new school once funding becomes available. The estimated completion date for that school is August 2022. In the meantime, temporary walls will be installed at Pinewood over the Christmas break to delineate main hallways and spaces but not separate the classrooms in the "open-space" building.

• Taylor Elementary, built in 1981, the district's youngest building, would be expanded with the addition of a multipurpose room. District leaders estimate funding for replacing the school could become available in 2034 and the building completed by August 2035.

• Bayou Meto Elementary School, built in 1967, would be replaced by August 2035.

Richardson wrote to the judge that the building plan is subject to several contingencies.

"Most significant among those is the availability of state funding to assist in the District's facilities projects," he wrote.

"For example, [the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district's] Master Plan anticipates projects costing $72.9 million. Partnership Program funding [from the state] is expected to provide $30.6 million or roughly 42% of the total construction cost. If for some reason the State does not fund the Partnership Program to a level needed to reach [the Master Plan's] projects, then the District would have to substantially scale back its building program.

"In Plan 2000's terms, the resulting facilities plan would produce safe and clean schools, but not equal schools," he said.

Richardson also said that within seven years of the detachment of the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district from the Pulaski County Special district, all but 24 percent of the district's students will attend new, state-of the art schools that "will be comparable to any school facility in Pulaski County or neighboring school districts."

He said that by the end of 2023, as many as 76.4 percent of the district's students overall and 80 percent of its black students, in particular, will attend new or newly renovated schools.

The district's enrollment this school year is 3,927, of whom 1,994, or 50.8 percent, are black.

Metro on 11/27/2016

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