Desegregation-case judge asks for disciplinary data

The federal judge presiding in a hearing this month to determine whether the Pulaski County Special District can be declared unitary and released from a 37-year-old school desegregation lawsuit took steps Wednesday to get clarity on whether the district has narrowed over time the racial disparities in student discipline.

“I want to get to the truth,” U.S. District Chief Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. told attorneys for the district and the Black students known as the McClendon intervenors in asking for year-to-year numbers and percentages of disciplined students.

“It’s a challenge for me to work through this data,” Marshall said, breaking into the cross-examination of Assistant Superintendent Janice Warren. “If folks with expertise like Dr. Warren — this is her professional life — have already done this and put it in a form that is helpful, then the Court needs to see it and the intervenors are entitled to it.”

The question of whether the district has reduced the racial gap in its application of student discipline — primarily out-of school suspensions — has been the subject of some debate in the hearing. District leaders and the court’s own desegregation expert, Margie Powell, have testified that the gap is shrinking between Black students and their classmates who are white or of other races and ethnicities, but haven’t produced records on that point to satisfy the intervenors and the judge.

Marshall is conducting the hearing on whether the 12,000-student Pulaski County Special district has met its desegregation obligations not only in regard to student discipline but also student achievement, the condition of school facilities and the self-monitoring of its desegregation work.

The district’s attorneys and leaders contend that the school system has in good

faith substantially complied with their desegregation plan, Plan 2000, and should be declared unitary and released from further court monitoring in the 37-year-old lawsuit.

Attorneys for the McClendon intervenors argue that the district has not met its obligations and/or has initiatives to do so that are too new to evaluate, and so is not ready for release from federal court supervision.

Student-discipline practices and student achievement have so far been the focus of the hearing that started July 14.

Marshall’s comments Wednesday came after an exchange between McClendon attorney Austin Porter Jr. and Warren, who as assistant superintendent for equity and pupil services, had testified about the district’s years of employing consultants to work with Black male students. She also described district surveys of students, teachers and parents about school conditions that were done in an effort to meet desegregation plan provisions.

In response to questions from Porter, Warren said the district’s racial disparity gap in terms of discipline has improved as a result of the efforts.

Warren pointed to an annual report that showed that there were 2,198 Black students suspended in the 201718 school year compared with the smaller number of 1,894 Black students suspended in the more recent 2018-19 school year. There were 1,216 non-Black student suspensions in the 2017-18 school year compared with 1,100 suspensions of non-Black students in the 2018-19 school year.

Warren said she likes to look at the numbers for multiple years.

“What we do in our office is we create charts and graphs because I like to look at it from a five-year span,” Warren said. “I look to see if I can actually see a decrease in closing the gap.”

“I haven’t seen those, Dr. Warren,” Porter said. “I’ve asked for it. If you have those, I’d like for you to bring it.”

Marshall asked if he understood Warren to say that she has compiled the trend data.

“That’s correct,” Warren said.

“That strikes me — as it appears to strike you — as an important thing.” Marshall said to Porter. “I think this is something that needs to be ventilated,” the judge said, proposing that the attorneys for the district and the intervenors get together to introduce Warren’s information into the lawsuit record.

“I’m a little concerned about the midtrial discovery,” school district attorney Amanda Orcutt responded while also agreeing to cooperate. Attorneys for opposing parties typically request and exchange documents in advance of a trial.

“I understand your concern,” the judge said but added that he had “no doubt” that the intervenors had asked prior to the court hearing for the district to provide its annual reports and records about discipline.

“And I understand, too, there is a whole lot of paper and people make mistakes and maybe not everything that existed was provided, but if these reports exist and they were prepared long ago as part of the district’s work, they should have been produced before now because, again, we are after the truth here,” he said.

Earlier Wednesday, Orcutt had called as part of the district’s case on discipline practices Powell, the court expert, and Nickey Nichols, who is the coordinator of the district’s Response to Intervention and Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports initiatives.

Powell late last year had prepared a report for the judge in which she said the district had — after years of perfunctory initiatives and poorly designed behavior programs — more recently designed a research-based effort that seems to be working.

From the stand, Powell said the district isn’t required to eliminate the racial disparity and that the problems students bring with them from outside the school — poverty, undiagnosed mental illness and violence — make it “impossible” to do so.

“Schools aren’t designed to deal with those problems and unless you do something with those problems, no matter what you do will be ineffective or have little impact on the students.”

She said schools can’t afford to resolve all the social ills that students carry with them to school because it would require mental-health providers and income assistance to families.

The government doesn’t give them that kind of money, she said about schools.

Porter, in his cross-examination of Powell, noted that the district had received special desegregation funding in amounts of up to $20 million a year for several years to help fund desegregation efforts. That desegregation aid from the state ended after the 2017-18 school year as the result of a settlement agreement with the state in the current lawsuit.

The hearing resumes at 8:15 a.m. today.