After win in court, district seeks fees

The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District is seeking $13,224 in legal fees and costs from the state for its successful challenge to an Arkansas Board of Education decision to allow a student transfer out of the district.

Scott Richardson, an attorney for the district, submitted the motion asking U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. to order the state to pay the legal fees and costs. Marshall is the presiding judge in an almost 34-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit.

Marshall ruled from the bench on Aug. 8 that the state Board of Education must honor the Jacksonville district’s claim to an exemption from participating in Arkansas School Choice Act student transfers — as was envisioned as part of a January 2014 settlement agreement in the long-running desegregation case. The judge reversed the state Education Board’s decision to allow a student to transfer from Jacksonville, where she resided, to a Cabot School District campus.

Jacksonville/North Pulaski “prevailed on the only claim it asserted in the motion,” Richardson wrote to the judge. “Thus [the district] is entitled to be fully compensated for its counsels’ time spent prosecuting this motion.”

Richardson said he worked 43.7 hours on the matter for the Jacksonville district and should be paid at his prevailing hourly rate of $300 an hour, equaling $13,110. He also incurred $114 in case costs.

Richardson charges the district a discounted rate of $250 an hour.