Judge visits district schools
Tour conducted as part of federal desegregation case
Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. spent 67 hours over three weeks in July hearing testimony about the practices, programs and schools in the Pulaski County Special School District.
On Tuesday, the judge personally put eyes and feet on three of the district’s campuses, spending about five hours total in the hallways, classrooms and athletic and theater spaces at Mills High, Sylvan Hills High for grades 10 through 12, and the Sylvan Hills High North freshmen campus.
Marshall is the presiding judge in the 37-year-old school desegregation lawsuit in which the defendant Pulaski County Special district has said it has, in good faith, substantially complied with its desegregation requirements and deserves to be declared unitary and released from further federal court monitoring of its operations.
Attorneys for Black students known as the McClendon intervenors are challenging the district’s claim of unitary status, saying that the district has not complied with provisions, including those on school buildings in its desegregation Plan 2000 and related documents, or has implemented initiatives to do so that are too new to be evaluated for their effectiveness.
Austin Porter Jr., an attorney for the McClendon intervenors, had asked Marshall to visit the campuses — which Marshall had visited previously in 2018 when Mills was just completed and the Sylvan Hills project was just getting underway.
On Tuesday, after the big yellow school bus tour, Porter said he believed the visits showed the judge “the inequity” of the schools, built in a community with a relatively higher percentage of Black students, versus those in a predominantly white section of the district.
“Under Plan 2000, the facilities are supposed to be equal, and this demonstrates that they are not,” Porter said.
Devin Bates, an attorney for the Pulaski County Spe
for the Pulaski County Special district, had a different takeaway: “Enrollment of students is important when making comparisons,” he said, as is the fact that the 1,500-student Sylvan Hills High is divided over two campuses 3 miles apart in the Sherwood and Gravel Ridge areas of the county while the 600 ninth-through-12th graders at Mills High are together under one roof.
The Mills High building opened in the 2018-19 school year, and Sylvan Hills’ new three-story core academic classroom, dining and library addition to the existing school opened this past school year. A new 40-yard indoor practice facility and weight room will open in a few days at Sylvan Hills High, and a performing arts facility and athletic arena will follow in December at the Sherwood campus.
Marshall did not express any opinions Tuesday about differences between Mills and the Sylvan Hills campuses. But after hearing about Mills in recent court testimony, the judge was ready with a list of what he wanted to see at the school, which is on East Dixon Road in the southeast section of the 12,000-student district.
The list included the school’s 700-plus-seat concert hall, the added tile backsplashes behind the water fountains, the hard vinyl panels that are in the process of being added to protect the gypsum-board walls in school hallways, the choir and band rooms, the school’s rotunda with its one curving stairway, and the school’s seminar room for large-group presentations and meetings.
Mills Principal Duane Clayton and Michael Hansberry, project manager for Baldwin & Shell Construction Co., pointed out the acoustical panels, the handicapped-accessible stage, and the added stage rigging in the concert hall — which will hold all of the school’s enrollees and faculty members at one time. The facility is available for and has been used by community orchestra groups, School Board President Linda Remele said.
The judge complimented the “bright and cheery” seminar room but asked Hansberry about the dull roar of the air handler in the room.
“Isn’t it a problem?” Marshall asked.
Clayton said he does use a microphone when speaking in the room, which has been used for after-school staff meetings as well as for the school’s family consumer science course this past year.
The judge also visited the band room that has been used for band, orchestra and choir — as the choir room has been used for the Pulaski County Special district’s only Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. That ROTC program will transition this coming school year to a separate concrete brick building with three classrooms behind the main building. That space has been painted and floors waxed in preparation, district representatives said.
The judge questioned Hansberry about when the installation of the hallway wall panels would be completed and whether Hansberry was familiar with initial plans to have two curving stairways in the school’s rotunda. He noted the round skylight over the two-story rotunda and asked if there were other skylights in the building. That came after hearing in court that the features to enhance natural light at the school had been eliminated to cut costs.
Mills does have classrooms that feature whole walls of windows.
The judge, attorneys, and school district and intervenor representatives stopped briefly Tuesday at the 400-student Sylvan Hills High North freshmen campus — which has been in operation for five years at the former Northwood Middle School to accommodate the large student numbers in the Sherwood area.
Principal Yvone West called the 1980-constructed campus, with its full-size gymnasium but no auditorium or stage, “small and quaint” and an excellent means of transitioning students into the larger high school as 10th graders. New ceilings and floors were part of the enhancements for the building.
The entrance to the new Sylvan Hills High academic building, like Mills, includes a showcase stairway and window feature but on a larger scale. Sylvan Hills’ entranceway is a two-story wall of tinted glass panels, and there is a set of wide, deep architectural stairs across from the front doors that can double as seating for large-group presentations. The school’s 144-seat seminar room — to be used this year to check and isolate students for covid-19 symptoms — is next to the stairs.
Sylvan Hills Principal Tracy Allen called the academic classroom building “a wonderful space” and said he wished there were room for the ninth graders in addition to its 1,100 10th-through-12th graders.
The new classroom building — with its concrete block walls, windows in nearly every classroom, seven science laboratories and Bear Necessities store and snack bar — is being used in conjunction with the older classroom building, now known as Building One, which houses most elective courses including family consumer science and foreign languages.
Allen said the academic building along with the performing arts theater, the arena, and the indoor practice field were made possible by voters who approved a property tax extension that raised $65 million.
To fulfill the promise to voters, Allen said, the planners had to “squeeze” the resources. That included delaying the completion of the auxiliary buildings and shrinking the size of the performing arts center from 1,200 seats to no more than 999 seats, which will not hold the entire student body at one time.
Seat-back chairs planned for the arena had to be changed to bench seats. The band building space is small for the district’s largest band, which as 180 students, he said.
At the conclusion of the tour, Marshall thanked Allen and the other district hosts at the different sites for their hospitality.
“I’ve benefited from seeing the facility, the new parts of it,” Marshall told Allen. “You should be proud of it. It’s an amazing school, just amazing,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed the whole day, from start to finish.”