School chief: Goal is success for all

LITTLE ROCK — Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District Superintendent Bryan Duffie told a federal judge Wednesday the future of the district hinges on the academic and behavioral successes of its Black students.

“I’ve just basically set forth that we need to do anything we can — of course taking into account what we can afford to do — anything that we can to improve achievement of all of our scholars,” Duffie said about his approach in the district that continues to show racial disparity gaps on student test scores and in discipline rates.

Duffie testified on the seventh day of a hearing in which U.S. District Chief Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., is to decide whether the nearly 4,000-student district has met its desegregation obligations and can be declared unitary and released from further court monitoring in the areas of student achievement, discipline practices, staffing incentives and self-monitoring of its desegregation efforts.

The Jacksonville district that is only now in its fifth year of operation was carved out of the Pulaski County Special School District with the condition that it would meet the same desegregation Plan 2000 requirements as required of the Pulaski County Special system.

Plan 2000 includes the “Ross education plan” that sets goals for improving educational achievement of all students, particularly Black students and others at risk of education failure. The Ross plan goals also call for the district to decrease the performance gap between white and Black students and reduce the number of classrooms problems and classroom disruptions caused by students.

Scott Richardson, an attorney for the Jacksonville district, “rested” the district’s case for unitary status Wednesday afternoon after the testimony from Duffie and court desegregation expert Margie Powell.

Austin Porter Jr., an attorney for the McClendon intervenors, who are Black students in the district, began the case for the intervenors later Wednesday and is expected to conclude the presentation of witnesses today — in advance of both sides in the case making their closing arguments to the judge Friday.

The McClendon intervenors are challenging the district’s assertions that the system complies with the desegregation plan provisions and is arguing against a declaration of unitary status.

Duffie is in his fifth year as superintendent of the district that has a 56% Black student enrollment and a poverty rate that qualifies the district to provide breakfast and lunch to all students at no cost to the students. He told the staff upon his arrival that the district — where 80% of the students scored below grade level in reading — had a “tough” demographic and that working in the system was not for everyone.

On Wednesday, Duffie said in court that working in the district “takes guts,” and has required strong teachers and leaders to overcome the challenges that included every one of the district’s schools acting as a “kingdom” — each trying to “one-up” the other.

Duffie said there is greater unity in the district now and that the morale has improved in part because of new school buildings.

He praised assistant superintendents Tiffany Bone and Gregory Hodges for their leadership on initiatives to attack on all fronts the district’s low achievement and achievement disparities — which have caused the district to linger in Level 4 of the state’s five-level accountability system. Level 5 would put the district in jeopardy of a state takeover of operations.

The district’s initiatives, described in earlier parts of the court hearing, include Response to Intervention, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support, new teacher mentorships, Advancement Via Individual Determination, Ford Next Generation Learning model of career education, and alternative learning environments for students who are not successful in traditional schools.

In response to questions from Richardson, Duffie said he had never seen such extensive data collection and reporting as is done by the district’s director of student services, Jacob Smith, in an effort to identify students and teachers who need support in regard to discipline.

Duffie assured the judge that should the district be released from court monitoring, the discipline and achievement initiatives would continue.

Powell, who is Marshall’s appointed desegregation expert in what is now a nearly 38-year-old lawsuit, took the stand regarding her November report on the district’s discipline and self-monitoring of its desegregation measures.

“They’ve done an excellent job,” Powell said about the district’s collection and use of discipline data that drills down to individual students and teachers. She praised the system even though there is still a double-digit disparity in the discipline rates for Black and non-Black students, and Black students are disciplined disproportionately to their enrollment percentage.

Porter for the intervenors told the judge that he was able to present much of the case through his cross-examination of district witnesses over the past 1½ weeks.

Porter asked Duffie if poverty is an excuse for disparities. Duffie said no, but also told Richardson that poverty is a factor — that students who are from poor families often have to be provided with help to catch them up to their more affluent peers.

Rep. Joy Springer, D-Little Rock, one of the monitors of the district’s efforts to meet its desegregation obligations, testified Wednesday about the limited responses she received over the years from the Jacksonville district to requests for its plans to meet desegregation requirements.

Springer said the intervenors/desegregation monitors of the Jacksonville plan were “shocked” to learn through preparations for trial that the district has been in the Level 4 category of the state accountability system.

Springer said she wished the Jacksonville district had been as responsive and inviting to the desegregation monitors as the Pulaski County Special School District has been.