State requests dismissal of lawsuit on LR district takeover
Attorneys for the state defendants in a lawsuit challenging the Jan. 28 takeover of the Little Rock School District, including the dissolution of the School Board, asked a Pulaski County circuit judge on Monday to dismiss the case.
Arkansas Department of Education attorneys argued to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen that the Board of Education and the state education commissioner acted “wholly within their legal authority” in taking control of the district and are entitled to protection from the lawsuit.
“The amended complaint sets forth no facts establishing that they acted in an arbitrary, capricious, bad faith, or wantonly injurious manner,” Education Department attorneys Lori Freno and Jeremy Lasiter wrote. “The defendants are entitled to sovereign immunity from the suit under Article 5 … of the Arkansas Constitution. Consequently, the present lawsuit must be dismissed.”
The motion to dismiss is one of the latest in a flurry of motions and decisions
in recent days as the lawsuit moves toward a 10 a.m. Wednesday hearing on a temporary injunction that could put on hold the takeover of the state’s largest district.
Displaced Little Rock School Board members Dianne Curry, C.E. McAdoo and Jim Ross along with school district voters Doris Pendleton and Barclay Key sued the Education Board members and Education Commissioner Tony Wood last month after the Education Board voted 5-4 to take over the district.
That decision was based largely on the fact that six of the district’s 48 schools are labeled by the state as being in academic distress. Fewer than half of the students at those six schools — Baseline Elementary; Cloverdale and Henderson middle; and J.A. Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools — scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy tests over a three-year period.
Marion Humphrey, Willard Proctor Jr. and Rickey Hicks, attorneys for the plaintiffs, argued in the lawsuit that state officials acted outside their legal authority in taking over the district and dismissing the School Board.
They said the School Board is constitutionally required to fulfill certain responsibilities regarding the setting of budgets and tax mills for voters to consider. The attorneys for the plaintiffs also argued that the state did not properly notify lawmakers of the reasons for the takeover and the steps necessary for the local district to regain control. Education Department officials have said that some notice was given to legislators.
Also on Monday, attorneys for both sides in the lawsuit filed their witness lists for the hearing Wednesday on a temporary injunction.
The plaintiffs list 33 names, including all seven displaced Little Rock School Board members; the state Board of Education members; Wood and some members of his staff; Little Rock Interim Superintendent Dexter Suggs and some members of his staff; and two attorneys for the Little Rock School District.
Also included on the plaintiff ’s witness list are Gary Newton, executive director of the Arkansas Learns parent school-choice advocacy organization; Scott Smith, executive director of the Arkansas Public School Resource Center that works with charter and rural schools; and Ray Simon, a former U.S. deputy secretary of education who is from Arkansas.
The state’s list of potential witnesses for the Wednesday hearing includes Wood, Education Department Chief of Staff Deborah Coffman and Education Board Chairman Sam Ledbetter of Little Rock.
Griffen issued an order Monday concerning a Friday telephone conference he had with attorneys for the parties in the lawsuit. The teleconference was called, the judge wrote, to address a letter he received earlier in the day from Lasiter, asking that Griffen withdraw his order from the preceding day denying the state’s request that the judge step down from presiding in the lawsuit.
Lasiter made the request for the withdrawal of the judge’s Thursday order because Griffen issued it before receiving the state’s reply brief on the issue.
“After the reply brief was filed, the Court read it, studied the legal authorities cited in it, and considered the arguments advanced by the Arkansas Board of Education Defendants,” Griffen wrote Monday.
“On March 13, 2015, the Court issued a supplemental order reaffirming its denial of the recusal motion,” Griffen wrote.
The state Education Department attorneys had asked Griffen, who was randomly assigned the lawsuit on Feb. 20, to step down from the case because of a statement the judge made Jan. 28 to the Education Board.
In the written statement, Griffen strongly urged that the Little Rock School Board be left intact as it was working to undo years of discrimination to provide a quality education to the district’s 24,800 students, saying that its dismissal would disenfranchise the voters who had elected the School Board. The statement was published by the Arkansas Times blog that day.
In his initial Thursday order refusing to step down from the case, Griffen said there was nothing unethical about what he said or did.
“As such, the recusal motion is a naked ploy by Defendants to have this lawsuit heard and decided by an impartial judge they favor, as opposed to an impartial judge with whom they disagree,” Griffen wrote.
On Monday, Griffen noted that Lasiter had in his letter requested a postponement of the Wednesday hearing because of a previously scheduled medical procedure for a member of his family.
Griffen denied the request for the delay, saying that Freno, who has worked as an attorney for 23 years, including two years for the state Education Department, is an experienced attorney and is able to represent the state defendants.
Also Monday, Griffen dismissed Baker Kurrus as a defendant in the case. Kurrus is a state-appointed chairman of a Little Rock district budget-study committee. Griffen dismissed Kurrus at the request of attorneys for the plaintiffs. Information for this article was contributed by Aziza Musa of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.