Caucus backs King/Lee split
Black lawmakers vote to support second try at legislation
The Arkansas Legislative Black Caucus voted to support a Republican legislator’s renewed attempt to end the state’s tradition of celebrating the birthdays of Martin Luther King Jr. and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on the same day.
They also expressed concern Monday about the state takeover of the Little Rock School District.
During the caucus’s meeting, Rep. Nate Bell, R-Mena, said that he would try again with House Bill 1113, which would move the celebration of Robert E. Lee from the third Monday in January to late November, and that he wanted the caucus’s support when the bill is heard in committee.
On Friday, the legislation was voted down by a voice vote following an hour of one-sided testimony against the legislation.
“This combined holiday is being used to enhance racial division. … There is no question… that there was a racial element to the reason they were combined [in the 1980s],” Bell said. “I’m doing this because I want to see a tool of racial division taken away from people on both extremes.”
Initially, Bell’s legislation, which mirrored legislation filed on the same day by Rep. Fred Love, D-Little Rock, simply struck the observance of Lee’s birthday.
An amended version of Bell’s bill, the one that was shot down by the State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee last week, would also eliminate the state’s observation of Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ birthday on June 3.
It would then create a Southern Heritage Day on Nov. 30 to celebrate the legacy of Lee and Patrick Cleburne, a Confederate general who lived in Arkansas and is buried in Helena-West Helena.
Arkansas is joined only by Alabama and Mississippi in celebrating the civil-rights hero and Confederate leader’s birthdays on the same day.
While speaking before the caucus, Bell also said that he wanted the bill to succeed in order to eliminate the negative stigma the dual holidays present to those not in Arkansas.
Because of the dual holiday, Bell said Arkansans have been portrayed by some as “backwoods hicks” who “can’t move out” of the 1800s.
Given the state’s need to attract new businesses, such perceptions can hamper economic development.
“I have personally seen a negative impact of the current situation. Removing that eliminates a barrier,” Bell said. “In [the] economic development world … perception is reality. It’s too easy [for a business] to go somewhere where that perception doesn’t exist.”
This year, Arkansas drew much negative attention from national media, including MSNBC and Slate Magazine, for its combined King/Lee holiday.
Caucus Chairman Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, said her membership would support efforts by Bell and Love, to change the holiday.
“We do not want to be viewed as a state that is retrogressing. We want to be viewed as a state that is progressing,” Chesterfield said. “I know there were some good things about [Lee]. … But it is important, I think, that we get off Facebook and off social media talking about Arkansas being a regressive state.”
Bell’s commitment to moving the Robert E. Lee holiday has drawn criticism from his own district, where the head of the Mena chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Joel Hinton, has questioned his fitness for office. He’s also unhappy that the Jefferson Davis celebration would be derailed.
“We don’t get involved in politics, but when people in the political arena start erasing our heritage… we get involved,” Hinton said. “The majority of people who elected him are terribly opposed to the entire waste of taxpayer money to even bring up [a bill like that].”
In other business, the caucus also discussed the state’s decision last week to take over the Little Rock School District during its meeting Monday.
Commissioner of the Arkansas Department of Education Tony Wood and Chairman of the State Board of Education Samuel Ledbetter, who cast the tie-breaking vote last week to initiate the state takeover, spent almost an hour answering questions from the caucus.
Chesterfield, whose district is in the Pulaski County Special School District, which was taken over by the state in June 2011, said it’s been four years since she as a voter has had any say in how her school district has been run. She said some Little Rock parents are concerned that their district could be under state control for the next 15 years — five each for academic, fiscal and facility distress issues.
“Having been barred from voting for the last four years as a citizen in Pulaski County, let me tell you there is no place you can go. I can’t vote out Tony Wood,” she said.
In the Little Rock School District, Baseline Elementary, Cloverdale and Henderson middle schools, and J.A. Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools were designated as academically distressed because fewer than half their students scored at proficient levels on state tests over a three-year period.
But Chesterfield said because of the state of some of the school facilities, and because of the desegregation money drying up, the district could also qualify for facilities and financial distress in the future.
Wood “was already talking about after they’ve taken over Little Rock, we have to see what plan they have to replace the money from [desegregation], which raises the issue of not only academic distress, but fiscal distress,” she said. “Are you going to keep them five years in academic and five years in fiscal? Little Rock’s buildings are old, they could be held in facilities distress.”
Other members of the caucus said they were disappointed that the Department of Education and State Board of Education did not have a plan in place before the vote to take over the district. Some lawmakers also questioned whether the decision to take over schools was applied evenly across the state.
In addition to Pulaski County Special and Little Rock school districts, the state is currently in charge of the Lee County and Helena-West Helena School District. Rep. Vivian Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, said schools in her district have been deemed academically distressed and wanted to know how the decision to take over a school is made and how the Education Department applies its resources to those districts.
“My concern is that you may have to take over numerous school districts without the resources to do anything more than what you already have the resources to do, and what you have already been doing for years,” she said.
Ledbetter said it’s the department’s and the board’s responsibility to make sure every school district has the resources to operate adequately. Chesterfield said the caucus will likely hold more hearings on the issue of school takeovers and the schools that are in distress.
“We do believe that the state Department of Education has not done what they should be doing to create the capacity within their department to help turn those school districts around,” she said, after the meeting. “We do have concerns.”
“We do not want to be viewed as
a state that is retrogressing. We want to be viewed as a state that is
progressing.”
— Linda Chesterfield