Jacksonville district asks U. S. judge to reverse state’s student transfer OK
The Jacksonville/ North Pulaski School District on Thursday asked a federal judge to find that the Arkansas Board of Education violated a 2014 settlement in a long- running school desegregation case by allowing a Jacksonville student to transfer to Cabot.
The motion sent to U. S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., the presiding judge in the 33- year- old federal Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit, asks the judge to enforce the settlement by ordering the state Education Board to rescind a July 14 vote that allowed the student transfer and, in effect, removed the Jacksonville district’s exemption from participating in the Arkansas School Choice Acts of 2013 and 2015.
The brief refers to the Jacksonville district as JNPSD.
Scott Richardson and Patrick Wilson, attorneys for the Jacksonville/ North Pulaski district, told the court that the Education Board’s decision was a breach of the January 2014 agreement among parties in the lawsuit, one of which is the state.
The settlement, in part, allowed the creation of the Jacksonville/ North Pulaski district out of the Pulaski County Special School District. When Jacksonville/ North Pulaski became a new district, it also became “a party to and bound by” the settlement agreement.
The settlement committed the parties in the case to abide by the Arkansas Public School
Choice Act of 2013, which includes a provision exempting districts from participating in interdistrict student transfers if the student transfers would put a district in conflict with a federal court desegregation order or plan.
“The State Board of Education has breached the 2014 Settlement Agreement by allowing a school choice transfer from JNPSD to the Cabot School District over JNPSD’s exemption from school choice,” Richardson and Wilson wrote in a brief in support of their motion to enforce the settlement agreement.
“This Court’s August 21, 2014 Consent Judgment and the 2014 Settlement Agreement allow JNPSD to be exempt from school choice transfers and require the State of Arkansas to uphold that exemption,” the attorneys continued.” Instead, the State Board of Education has decided that it may nullify this consent decree requirement and allow whatever transfers it chooses.”
The attorneys noted that a number of students had filed earlier this year for school choice transfers from Jacksonville to surrounding districts, including the Cabot School District. All of the requests were denied because of the Jacksonville district’s claimed exemption.
The state Board of Education acted on eight appeals from those transfer denials, affecting 14 students, the attorneys said in the documents sent to the judge Thursday. And all the appeals were denied by the state Education Board except the one on July 14. More appeals are scheduled to be heard by the Education Board at its Aug. 11 meeting, the attorneys said.
The attorneys said the Education Board generally recognized the authority of the settlement agreement. In the most recent appeal, however, “the State Board ruled that it was not bound by this Court’s Consent Judgment and the 2014 Settlement Agreement and that it could grant the transfers despite the Court’s Consent Judgment,” the attorneys said.
Education Board members
voted 5- 3 to grant Nacesha Dulaney’s appeal to permit her daughter to attend school in Cabot.
Board member Diane Zook of Melbourne said at the time that the Jacksonville and Pulaski Special districts had not been declared unitary by the federal court in all areas of their operations — but they have been released from federal court oversight in regard to their plans for assigning students to schools.
“I’m erring on the side of the parents,” Zook said.
“The State Board of Education has set itself in position to grant any and every school choice request,” Wilson and Richardson wrote. “Not only that, it has sent a message to the school districts that they may grant school choice transfers despite the Consent Judgment’s required exemption. It has, additionally, left JNPSD in the untenable position of attempting to comply with the 2014 Settlement Agreement while the State Board reverses those efforts in violation of the 2014 Settlement Agreement and Consent Judgment.
The attorneys also said the student transfers will create fiscal instability in the Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville districts, and that the loss of students in Jacksonville will have the effect of making the district wealthier on a per student basis. The greater per student wealth could reduce the amount of state aid that will be available to Jacksonville starting in 2017 for school construction projects.
The court has ruled that the school construction projects — a new high school and a new elementary, to start — are needed to equalize the condition of Jacksonville schools with schools in Pulaski County Special district. Improving the condition of school buildings is one of the conditions to be met before the Jacksonville and Pulaski Special districts can be declared unitary, or desegregated by a federal judge, and released from court supervision.
Richardson and Wilson reported to the judge that the 2016- 17 school year starts Aug. 15, and they requested “expedited consideration of this motion.”