County district again facing suit by official

Filing seeks release of records

The lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court lists as defendants the district and its superintendent, Charles McNulty.

LITTLE ROCK — A Pulaski County Special School District administrator who has an ongoing employment discrimination lawsuit filed a new lawsuit against the district on Wednesday over access to public records.

Janice Warren, the district’s assistant superintendent for equity and pupil services, argues through her attorney, Sarah Howard Jenkins, that certain records are public and should be provided, according to the lawsuit filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court.

The district, represented by the Bequette, Billingsley and Kees firm, has told Warren and her attorney that the district did not have records responsive to the request and that Warren’s attorney can go through the process of discovery to get records for the the federal court case, according to emails between the attorneys.

The emails were filed as exhibits with the lawsuit.

The dispute began after Warren filed Freedom of Information Act requests for records that included letters, emails and text messages between the School Board, its attorneys and memos on designated subjects.

The lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court lists as defendants the district and its superintendent, Charles McNulty.

Warren asks that a judge schedule a hearing within seven days, order the district and its attorneys to make available to Warren the requested documents, and to pay Warren’s attorney’s fees and litigation expenses.

In September, Warren sued the district, its School Board members and its superintendent in U.S. District Court for declining to interview her when she applied in 2018 for the superintendent’s job.

Warren said in her federal court lawsuit that she was not interviewed for the top job in the district because of sexual discrimination by board members and in retaliation for her disclosing that the district had deviated from its federal court-approved desegregation plan in regard to construction of the new Robinson Middle and Mills High schools.

Warren was the district’s interim superintendent in the 2017-18 school year after the School Board’s July 2017 termination of then-Superintendent Jerry Guess for his refusal to fire the legal team that was representing the school district at the time.

The district is in the second day of a multiweek federal court trial on a different matter: to determine whether the 12,000-student Pulaski County Special district has met its desegregation obligations on student discipline practices, student achievement, condition of school buildings and self- monitoring of desegregation efforts, in order to be released from court monitoring in a 37-year-old school desegregation lawsuit.