Judge terminates college prep school

LITTLE ROCK — A federal judge on Thursday agreed to end the decade-old Dr. Charles W. Donaldson Scholars Academy that was meant to ease Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville/ North Pulaski school district students into college.

U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., the presiding judge in a long-running Pulaski County federal school desegregation lawsuit, directed that all remaining funds from the original $10 million for the academy be refunded to the two school districts after June 30.

The remaining estimated $1.45 million will be split 80/20 percent between the Pulaski Special and Jacksonville systems to be used for court-ordered school construction projects, the judge said.

In May 2014, the Pulaski Special district and attorneys for the class of all Black students in the district, received approval from Marshall to expand the existing Donaldson initiative at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to help high school students — with special attention to Black students — overcome academic and socioeconomic barriers to college enrollment.

The districts, prompted by the university, asked Marshall earlier this year for an end to the academy and for the refund.

However, attorneys and other representatives of Black students, known as the McClendon intervenors, had opposed the proposal. They asked instead that the remaining money go toward another college preparatory program and for scholarships for former Donaldson Academy participants who had left college but were willing to reenroll.

“No perfect solution exists for this unanticipated development,” Marshall wrote in a three-page order in which he said the academy “did not survive COVID and personnel attrition.”

He noted that $10 million was initially committed to the academy as part of an effort to achieve unitary status in student achievement. The two districts have since been found by the court to be unitary, or desegregated, in student achievement.

In contrast, the two districts remain under court supervision in their efforts to reach unitary status for equitable school facilities.

“So the Court must hesitate at imposing any new obligation,” Marshall wrote about the money. “Both the PCSSD and JNPSD have comprehensive college preparatory programs … (that) track the original goals of the Donaldson Academy. The duplicative program proposed by Intervenors is unlikely to add much,” he said.