A five-day hearing on whether the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District is entitled to be released from federal court supervision on staffing practices and facility plans ended Friday with the judge's pledge to make a prompt decision.
"I like when I can to rule from the bench, but I cannot do that here," U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. told representatives of the district and the Joshua intervenors at the end of a day of testimony and closing arguments. The Joshua intervenors represent black students in the district.
"I need to read and reread these exhibits, and I need to go through my notes and reflect on what I heard from the witness stand and what I saw in these people, and let my mind come to rest on how these issues come together," Marshall said.
The Jacksonville district's request to be declared desegregated, or unitary, on facilities and staffing is the first made to the court by the nearly 4,000-student district that only began operating in July 2016 but inherited the desegregation obligations of the Pulaski County Special School District from which it detached.
The Pulaski County Special district, an original party in the ongoing 35-year-old desegregation lawsuit, was declared unitary in staffing last year and has not requested that designation on facilities. Both districts have yet to show that they have met equity obligations in the Pulaski County Special district's desegregation plan, Plan 2000, in regard to student achievement and discipline.
A unitary district is not subject to reporting to the federal court or to the Joshua intervenors, nor does it have to continue to justify to the court any changes it wants to make in its operations.
Scott Richardson, an attorney for the Jacksonville district, asked Marshall to release the district on staffing or, in the alternative, give instructions on how better to comply. He said the Plan 2000 staffing provisions are not a great fit for the new district.
Richardson also asked the judge to release the district in regard to facilities or, in the alternative, modify the district's obligations to make the district's state-mandated 2018 Facilities Master Plan the prerequisite for unitary status rather than Plan 2000, which calls for schools to be warm, safe and equal.
"It simply can't be overstated how big and difficult a task that it was to build the district from zero to full operation in essentially one year," Richardson told the judge. "Layering on top of that the requirements of Plan 2000 and all the things the district did to ensure compliance with Plan 2000 while hiring a staff of almost 500 people shows tremendous good faith to Plan 2000 and to equal education opportunities for all its students."
The district's work has included the ongoing construction of a high school, a new elementary school to replace Arnold Drive and Tolleson elementaries, and two multipurpose room additions at other campuses.
The district is also in the early stages of planning replacements for Jacksonville Middle School and for Dupree and Pinewood elementaries all to be done in the early 2020s at the site of the existing high school. Finally the district is planning to replace Bayou Meto and Murrell Taylor elementaries with a new school by the mid 2030s.
The Joshua intervenors, represented in court by Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, and Austin Porter Jr., opposed the district's request on both staffing and facilities.
Walker proposed on Friday that the district remain under court monitoring at least through the 2018-19 school year, during which time district efforts to have a racially desegregated staff would be put in writing, analyzed, shared and discussed with the Joshua intervenors.
At the end of that period, the district could either work out an agreement with the Joshua intervenors for unitary status as the Pulaski County Special district did in regard to staffing, Walker said, or the district could petition the court again for release.
The Joshua legal team members complained Friday and throughout the hearing that district leaders have expressed good intentions on staffing but kept substantive information to themselves or "in their heads," away from the intervenors.
"Intent is not what you can measure," Walker said. "It is not something that a class member can rely on. It is subject to variance and interpretation."
Walker further urged the judge against releasing the district from court monitoring of school construction. He asked the judge to direct the district to explore options for replacing elementary schools more quickly than the 2034 deadline envisioned by district leaders. That's so current children can enjoy the use of school buildings that are equal to the conditions of schools in more affluent, predominantly white parts of the county, he said.
"You have to continue to monitor so that what is promised is delivered," Walker said, referring again to the Pulaski County Special district where attorneys recently reported to the judge that construction plans for a new Mills High School were downsized compared with what had been originally conveyed to the judge.
Marshall this week has repeatedly questioned the late date for a replacement school for Bayou Meto and Murrell Taylor elementaries and the district's seeming to put a priority on expanding classroom space at the new high school and middle school over the new elementary school.
The federal judge had previously ordered that all elementary schools be replaced as a way to make them equal but didn't set deadlines.
On Friday, Richardson committed to the judge on behalf of his client district to build the final elementary campus as quickly as it can, but the attorney also said the district must balance that against its other fiscal responsibilities. He noted that the district doesn't have a financial history on which to make financial predictions.
"It would do nothing for the students to build the schools all at once and bankrupt the district," he said.
Richardson discounted the Joshua intervenors' call for the district to obtain a loan from the state to allow for a more rapid construction of new schools, saying that the most allowed in statute for a loan would be $500,000.
Walker has criticized Jacksonville's former superintendent, Tony Wood, for failing to seek a state loan similar to a $20 million loan awarded the Little Rock School District in 1989 because Wood wanted to avoid debt.
Richardson reminded the judge of Wood's testimony that he had appealed to state lawmakers to ensure that the 2017-19 Facilities Partnership Program funding would be large enough to cover Jacksonville's request for a share of building costs. The state's share of the district's $70 million high school, $16 million elementary school and the $2.7 million multipurpose rooms is about $27 million.
Richardson in his arguments to Marshall advised against requiring the new Jacksonville schools to be totally equal to other schools to allow for customizing programs to students' needs and interests. The new Jacksonville High will have a student-run restaurant as part of its career education program, for example.
The Plan 2000 requirements on staffing calls for the district to recruit applicants for administrative and teacher positions in ways that create racially diverse pools of applicants from which to select employees.
It calls for ongoing programs, policies and procedures that result in an increase in the number of black teachers in early-childhood education programs, primary elementary grades and core academic subjects in secondary schools.
The plan further requires assignment of teachers and other professional staff in a manner that avoids the racial identification of schools. It prohibits any cap on the proportion of black teachers.
The Joshua intervenors argued that Wood and human-resources consultant Beverly Williams hired a slate of virtually all white directors for the new district and that Wood violated the plan requirements when he chose a white man, Bobby E. Lester, for an assistant superintendent job over the recommendation of a biracial committee's choice of a black woman, Janice Walker.
Richardson told the judge that the district leaders sought experienced directors to get the new district up and running. They also hired a 50-50 mix of black and white principals and assistant principals. The directors and school leaders were actually hired through the Pulaski County Special district, which has since been declared unitary in staffing.
Wood also consulted with the Pulaski County Special district leaders about his preferring the biracial committee's second choice for the assistant superintendent job. Ultimately, that choice was turned down by then-Pulaski County Special Superintendent Jerry Guess.
The new district currently is led by Bryan Duffie, who is white, and Assistant Superintendents Tiffany Bone and Gregory Hodges, who are black.
Metro on 02/10/2018