Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

2 LR-area school districts call for city-limit turfs, 2 pan idea

- CYNTHIA HOWELL

The superinten­dents of the Little Rock and North Little Rock school districts on Wednesday urged a state committee to consider expanding their district boundaries to their city limits, while Pulaski County Special and Jacksonvil­le district leaders argued for keeping existing district lines intact.

The superinten­dents of the four districts made their appeals to an Arkansas Board of Education committee that is studying the boundary lines in the county and will report its findings and make any recommenda­tions for changes to the entire Education Board, probably in June.

“They all want pieces of my pie!” Pulaski County Special district Superinten­dent Jerry Guess said lightheart­edly about the Little Rock and North Little Rock proposals, which would add tax base and students from the Pulaski County Special district to their districts.

“I think the districts should be left, at least in the short term, as they are,” Guess told Education Board members at the Wednesday session. “For the first time in a long time, the districts here are poised to be able to act as other school districts in Arkansas act.”

But Guess also suggested that at least some of Pulaski County’s districts could be governed most efficientl­y and effectivel­y by the state education commission­er and the Arkansas Department of Education instead of locally elected boards. The Pulaski County Special and Little Rock districts, two of the three biggest districts in the state, are currently operating under state control — Pulaski County Special since 2011 and Little Rock since Jan. 28.

The Education Board committee listened to the reports of the superinten­dents and reviewed district and city maps provided by the Metroplan council of local government­s,

but took no action Wednesday.

The committee will meet again April 8 to hear from legislator­s and representa­tives of the Sherwood, Maumelle, Scott and Shannon Hills communitie­s, which have interest in how school systems in the county are organized.

Guess told the Education Board committee and its chairman, Jay Barth of Little Rock, that the Little Rock and North Little Rock districts are no longer under federal court supervisio­n for their desegregat­ion efforts and, while Pulaski County Special and Jacksonvil­le/North Pulaski remain under that supervisio­n, they are working toward release from court oversight.

“For the first time in a long time, the school districts will be able to operate without the many complicati­ons of that court supervisio­n and the attendant … attraction it has brought,” Guess said in defending current boundary lines. “It’s kind of a hard thing to say, but I think the worst thing that ever happened to education in this county was the desegregat­ion litigation and the desegregat­ion settlement, surpassed only perhaps by the 1957 Little Rock Central High crisis.

“The first and foremost problem was the image that that brought to the county,” he said of the desegregat­ion case. “Everyone else in the state hates the Pulaski County school districts,” Guess said.

The Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special districts have received well over $1 billion in special state desegregat­ion aid over the course of the 32-year-old school desegregat­ion lawsuit, and the special funding will continue through the 2017-18 school year. The state in 1989 and 2014 settlement agreements committed to the payments to compensate for its part in violating the U.S. Constituti­on and promoting racial segregatio­n of students among the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special districts.

Guess said he wasn’t disparagin­g the need for the desegregat­ion litigation and the corrective actions but noted that when he was appointed to his job in 2011, he found a district “mired in a culture of inefficien­cy, waste and corruption” that he attributed to having an enormous amount of money and no restrictio­ns on how it should be spent.

He said the Pulaski County districts should be allowed to operate educationa­lly like other districts, but “because of the history here,” state oversight should continue as a way to correct problems.

“I don’t know any other governance model that would help the districts recover to normal operations more quickly,” Guess said, adding that further fragmentin­g of the districts is not the answer.

In the alternativ­e to leaving the existing boundaries intact, Guess said there should be just one countywide school system in Pulaski County, governed by the state.

Kelly Rodgers, the superinten­dent of the North Little Rock district since July 2013, described for the committee the different areas surroundin­g his school district that are in the North Little Rock city limits but in the Pulaski County Special district. That includes the Union Pacific Railroad yards that jut into the heart of the North Little Rock district but are in the Pulaski County Special district tax base. Other areas are along Maumelle Boulevard, which is west of the district, and areas that are east of the district, including new housing developmen­ts toward the Scott community.

“We are interested in securing our boundaries consistent with the city of North Little Rock,” Rodgers said, noting that the district is in the midst of a capital-improvemen­t program that will result in one high school for 3,000 students, one middle school and nine elementari­es, each of which will house 500 or more pupils.

“We have room for growth, and we have room to bring in some of those areas,” Rodgers said.

He also said families in some of those areas outside the district boundaries have expressed interest in becoming part of the North Little Rock district.

Rodgers said the district’s patrons would not be supportive of losing the North Little Rock system to a larger, countywide district.

Dexter Suggs, the Little Rock superinten­dent since July 2013 who was made interim chief as the result of the state takeover, told the committee that the Little Rock district’s greatest area of enrollment growth is on the western edge.

As a result, the district has “a great need” for a new middle school as well as another new elementary school in the area and possibly a high school. He said expanding the western boundaries to the city limits would be helpful.

Bobby Lester, the superinten­dent for the Jacksonvil­le/ North Pulaski system that was created by the state board in November, described for the committee the 30-year effort by leaders in the community to establish their own district.

“To throw us back into the mix [of reorganizi­ng school districts] would be a huge blow,” Lester said. He asked that the state Education Board stand with its earlier decisions on the Jacksonvil­le/North Pulaski School District.

Barth asked the school district leaders for the pros and cons of establishi­ng one district south of the Arkansas River that would be a combinatio­n of the Little Rock district and a part of the Pulaski County Special district.

Guess said a district south of the river would have a greater percentage of minority students, including black and Hispanic students, and a greater percentage of poor students than would one or more districts north of the river. He said the schools north of the river would be majority white and middle class.

Education Board member Diane Zook of Melbourne said the Little Rock district has a much higher property-tax base than the rest of the county, an estimated $2.6 billion compared with Pulaski County Special’s $1.94 billion, North Little Rock’s $582 million and Jacksonvil­le’s $299 million, according to Metroplan figures for 2014.

The state Board of Education voted to study Pulaski County’s school district boundary lines at the same Jan. 28 meeting that it voted 5-4 to take over the Little Rock district on the basis of he district’s having six academical­ly distressed schools.

If the Education Board proposes any changes to school district lines within the county, it would need approval from U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. because the Pulaski County Special district remains under federal court supervisio­n in the 34-year-old desegregat­ion case.

A January 2014 settlement in the Pulaski County school desegregat­ion lawsuit obligates the state to “oppose the creation of any other school districts from PCSSD’s territory until PCSSD is declared fully unitary and is released from federal court supervisio­n.”

 ?? Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHA­L ?? Interim Little Rock School District Superinten­dent Dexter Suggs (left) watches a presentati­on by North Little Rock School District Superinten­dent Kelly Rodgers on Pulaski County school district boundaries during a Wednesday meeting. Leaders of the...
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHA­L Interim Little Rock School District Superinten­dent Dexter Suggs (left) watches a presentati­on by North Little Rock School District Superinten­dent Kelly Rodgers on Pulaski County school district boundaries during a Wednesday meeting. Leaders of the...

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