The Pulaski County Special School District has submitted to a federal judge a $19 million proposal for "squaring up" the Mills University Studies High School campus and a request for unitary status.
"[T]he Court has declared PCSSD unitary in all remaining areas, except for facilities," a team of attorneys for the 12,000-student district wrote to the judge in describing the Mills plan, which includes a 2,200-seat arena and 10 new classrooms.
"By submitting the Proposal ... PCSSD believes that full unitary status would be justified. Therefore, PCSSD respectfully believes it appropriate to enter a complete and final declaration of unitary status, which would include the finding that PCSSD is unitary in facilities."
Unitary status is a court ruling that a school system has complied with its desegregation plan and is released from federal court monitoring. The Pulaski Special district has been operating under the terms of its desegregation plan known as Plan 2000.
In May, Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. ruled that the Pulaski County Special district has met its desegregation obligations and is able to operate without court oversight -- with the exception of some facilities and possible legal-fees issues.
[DOCUMENT: PCSSD Facilities Proposal » arkansasonline.com/83proposal/]
Marshall is the presiding judge in the 1982 federal school desegregation lawsuit in which the Pulaski County Special district is one of two remaining defendants.
The judge directed in his May 6 order that the Pulaski Special district propose to him by Aug. 1 a plan "to comply ... and square up" the construction differences between the Mills High and what he said was the "superior" Robinson Middle School campuses. The two schools were built simultaneously and opened in 2018. Mills is in a lower-income area of the district with a higher percentage of Black students and Robinson is in a more affluent and higher-percentage white area of the district.
The judge said the initial building plans for Mills were "squeezed" by the district's simultaneous construction of Robinson. Classroom sizes were reduced to the state minimum at Mills, he said. Hallways shrunk in width and by 3 feet in height. Overall capacity was reduced from 750 students to 700.
The judge said that if the Mills construction rated an A grade, Robinson Middle rated an A++.
"PCSSD believes that the facts presented in this Proposal show its good faith, and also show changed circumstances such that modification of Plan 2000 is appropriate," the district's team of attorneys wrote in a 17-page motion accompanied by more than 400 pages of exhibits.
The proposed enhancements to Mills -- approved by the district's School Board at a July 13 meeting -- are:
• Ten additional classrooms attached to the main Mills building that will expand the capacity of the school from 700 to 800 students, with each room being approximately 870 square feet and technology-enabled.
• Improvements to the existing, stand-alone ROTC building, including the expansion of one of the two classrooms by removing sheet rock walls, establishment of two administrative offices and the continued use of the Mills indoor practice facility for drill space.
• Construction of a regulation-size softball field that is comparable with the field at Robinson, with two dugouts, bleachers, lights and scoreboard.
• Construction of a 2,200-seat multipurpose arena that will exceed the seating capacity required for hosting 4A regional and state tournaments but will accommodate the possibility that Mills will grow to be classified as a 5A school.
In contrast, the Robinson Middle School arena holds 1,136 people, attorneys wrote. Earlier assertions that the Robinson arena had a capacity of more than 2,000 were wrong, they said.
Attorneys for the Black students in the district -- known as the McClendon intervenors -- will have a chance to submit to the judge a response to the Pulaski Special plan in the coming weeks.
Marshall directed that the district develop its Mills plan in consultation with the intervenors. The district's motion gives a timeline for that interaction and is accompanied by exhibits of correspondence between the attorneys for the intervenors and district.
In a July 28 letter, McClendon attorney Austin Porter Jr. wrote to Devin Bates, an attorney for the district, to say that the intervenors did not receive a definitive proposal on Mills.
"The July 13th written presentation [to the School Board] overstates the extent to which lntervenors have been presented 'a plan' to which to react," Porter wrote. "The administration's most detailed presentation to Intervenors, of concepts being considered, included this text: '[n]othing in this letter is final. All details herein are subject to change.'
"Therefore, a statement that counsel for the intervenors have been presented 'a plan,' is not accurate, and should be corrected to the Board of Education," Porter also wrote. He went on to say that he disagreed with the district's attorney saying that the intervenors didn't object to the proposal.
"The written presentation refers to "the lack of objection received from Intervenors," which again is an inaccurate assertion. Intervenors have, in substance, made multiple objections," Porter wrote.
The points raised by the intervenors, Porter said, called for the 10 new classrooms to be attached to the main building at Mills, that the new Mills arena be equal in quality to the new arena at the district's Sylvan Hills High and that the ROTC building be similar to the one at Jacksonville High School in the neighboring Jacksonville/North Pulaski Special School District.
The Mills proposal -- still in the early stages of design and budgeting -- is expected to cost $19 million. That is an amount that will not "hobble" the district, attorneys said.
Marshall had directed that the effort to "square up" Mills and Robinson Middle not hobble the district's operations, including its efforts to improve other campuses.
The district's School Board has taken the beginning steps to issue second-lien bonds to raise $15 million, the attorneys wrote, and the district will also ask the Arkansas Department of Education for permission to use $4 million of its federal covid relief money for the project. The district is scheduled to receive almost $39.5 million in the special federal money.
The attorneys also noted that the district does not intend to be bound by the exact funding plans in the event that an alternative, "more fiscally responsible way," to raise the money becomes available.
The second-lien bonds will cost the district about $860,000 a year -- from 2023 to 2048 -- in debt payments. That annual amount is approximately the cost of 16 teachers.
The Mills projects will take about three years to complete but could be affected by supply chain issues and other unexpected obstacles. The components of the proposal would not necessarily be developed or built simultaneously.
"It bears emphasizing at this stage that the new Mills project will not be identical to Robinson," wrote the legal team made up of Bates, Sam Jones, Amanda Orcutt, Jay Bequette and Cody Kees.
"First, in a legal sense, PCSSD is tasked with remedying past wrongs 'to the extent practicable.' Given some of the differences between Mills and Robinson, for example the width of hallways and height of ceilings, there is necessarily an element of practicability to the Proposal.
"Second, a meaningful distinction must be drawn between equality and equity. In one sense, once again considering the width of hallways, strict equality is impossible at this point short of demolishing Mills and starting over.
"Further, pursuing strict equality as between existing Robinson and the new Mills has the potential to lead to inefficient and unhelpful outcomes. Indeed, in some sense, pursuing strict equality would be shortsighted at this point," the legal team wrote.
The legal team noted that Robinson was built before the covid-19 pandemic, while the enhancements at Mills are being planned with awareness of the pandemic and with the availability of updated technology systems.
"All of these factors and others inform PCSSD's goal of achieving equity as between existing Robinson classrooms and new Mills classrooms. They also illustrate why pursuing strict equality might actually result in inefficient use of school resources, lest PCSSD be expected to build pre-pandemic middle school level classrooms to meet post-pandemic high school needs."