Attorneys for the two remaining school districts in a decades-old lawsuit filed motions for unitary status Thursday, taking them one step closer to a federal court trial next summer and to a possible end of one of the nation's oldest school desegregation cases.
The Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville/North Pulaski school districts said in federal court filings Thursday that they have complied with or are working to comply with all the stipulations laid out in Plan 2000, the districts' desegregation plan.
The districts are the last under court control in a case that began in 1982 when the Little Rock School District sued the state and the North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special districts, seeking consolidation. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the consolidation order, and the districts began operating under various desegregation plans. Little Rock became unitary in 2007 and North Little Rock in 2011.
Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., who is presiding over the 36-year-old lawsuit, requested that the Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville/North Pulaski districts submit motions for unitary status ahead of the 2020 trial. After the July and August 2020 hearings, Marshall will decide whether the two districts are unitary.
"I think this is a historic point," said Scott P. Richardson, the attorney representing the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District. "If we get through these trials and Judge Marshall rules in our favor, that's the end of the Little Rock desegregation case with one caveat."
Richardson said the caveat is that the judge has mandated that Jacksonville/North Pulaski replace all buildings in the district, a project that is scheduled to be completed in 2030.
State Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, however, who is the lead attorney representing black students who are known as the "McClendon intervenors" said the districts have not met the requirements.
"They aren't," Walker said Thursday. "We will be filing a response in due course."
Walker declined to comment further Thursday and referred questions to his previous court filings.
The Jacksonville/North Pulaski district was created during the 2014-15 school year and inherited the Pulaski County Special district's court supervision, according to the filing. The court still supervises the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district's academics, student discipline, staffing incentives and monitoring, Richardson wrote in the filing.
The July and August court hearings are designed like five mini-trials organized by each subject that the court still supervises for the district. Marshall blocked out an entire month for the process, Richardson said.
Richardson said the district has "fully complied" with the Plan 2000 requirements in those areas in a 21-page summary of the school district's efforts to unify.
If Marshall declines to release Jacksonville/North Pulaski from the court oversight, Richardson's filing asks that he instead modify the district's obligations to better address whatever deficiencies found in the district.
Federal courts still preside over the Pulaski County Special School District in the areas of discipline, student achievement, monitoring and facilities. In a nine-page notice concerning unitary status, the attorney representing the district, M. Samuel Jones, argues that the district has met those goals.
The court filing quotes a report from Desegregation Monitor Margie Powell, saying that after "years of perfunctory initiatives and poorly designed behavior programs," district leaders joined together to make a research-based, student centered discipline system.
"With its interconnected discipline programs system, the district administration has demonstrated that eliminating discipline disparities is a priority and, based on data for the past three years, it seems to be doing just that," Powell wrote.
A Section on 10/25/2019