Schools get rules for status reporting
Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008
A legislative committee on Wednesday signed off on proposed state Department of Education rules requiring school districts that haven’t been declared “unitary,” or desegregated, to file reports with the department about their situation by each Sept. 15.
The rules also give the state Board of Education the option of placing the districts on probation.
The department proposed the rules to comply with Act 829 of 2007, which requires the board in its school-accreditation standards to include a provision regarding attainment of unitary status for districts that haven’t been released from court supervision of their desegregation obligations.
The Little Rock School District has been declared unitary, a ruling that is being challenged at the 8 th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis by John Walker of Little Rock, an attorney representing the class of all black students in the federal desegregation lawsuit.
The Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock districts have asked for unitary status, requests that are on hold pending the outcome of the Little Rock case at the 8 th Circuit.
Tripp Walter, an attorney for the department, told the Legislative Council’s Administrative Rules and Regulations Committee that the legislation and rules are aimed at getting the districts closer to attaining unitary status.
But Sen. Kim Hendren, RGravette, said the state keeps “sending them $ 60 million [to ] $ 70 million a year and they don’t want to get out of it.”
“What are we going to do about this ?” he asked Walter. “Does it help get us out of that ?”
Legislators from outside the Pulaski County area have often chafed over the years at the payments to the three districts, viewing it as money that otherwise would have been distributed to their local school districts.
Walter said the rules require any school district not declared unitary by court order to file a report with the department by each Sept. 15 “stating whether in the district’s opinion the school district is in unitary status or not.”
Under the rules, any district that believes it’s in unitary status also is required to provide a written report by Sept. 15 containing a detailed plan with proposed timelines of how the district has complied with any desegregation plan or obligations and how it will seek a determination of unitary status and release from court supervision.
If by July 1, 2009, and each school year thereafter the department is unable to verify the district’s attempts to comply with the plan for obtaining unitary status and release from court supervision, the department is required to make certain reports to the state education board.
The rules require the department to report whether the failure of the district to obtain unitary status “is having a negative impact on the state’s overall obligation to provide a general, suitable and efficient school system” and whether the district should be placed on probationary status. The board is required to consider the report.
“But that’s after we go home from next legislative session,” said Hendren, referring to a session scheduled to start in January and, if history is an indicator, likely to end by May.
Hendren said he’s willing to draw up a bill to end the state’s desegregation payments of almost $ 70 million a year to the three Pulaski County school districts.
As of June 30, $ 850. 5 million had been paid to them by the state apart from regular school funding since fiscal 1988-1989, Lori Bowen, fiscal analyst for the Bureau of Legislative Research, said after the committee meeting.
The desegregation payments have paid for magnet schools, the interdistrict student transfer program and to help pay for teacher retirement and healthinsurance costs.
“Now I know they are going to say, ‘ Oh, you got to be scared some judge is going to throw you in jail, ’” Hendren said. “But if you are going to go to jail, it’s nice to go to a federal prison rather than a state [prison ].
“ I think it is time to take some definitive action,” he said.
Walter said the districts are talking about a proposed settlement of the desegregation lawsuit.
“I would have to defer to the General Assembly as to how it chooses to address this matter,” he said.
The desegregation money is required by a 1989 federal court settlement between the districts and the state, but there is no end date.
The state was named as a defendant in the lawsuit when the Little Rock School District filed the current version of the case Nov. 30, 1982, Gabe Holmstrom, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said after the meeting. The Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock districts were the other defendants, he said.
The settlement agreement was a comprehensive attempt by the state, the districts and Joshua intervenors “to address the remedy phase of the litigation,” he said.
The state was released from the claims by all of the parties in the settlement agreement, Holmstrom said.
However, the court retained jurisdiction to enforce the terms of the settlement agreement, Holmstrom said. “Clearly, the terms of the settlement agreement continue to be litigated, and the litigation has never really ended,” he said.
Rep. Tracy Pennartz, D-Fort Smith, asked “what hammer” the department had to enforce a probationary status on a district and whether the department can withhold any money from the district and whether that would conflict with the settlement agreement.
Walter said he doesn’t believe the department “would be talking about a withholding of funds.”
“If the instance were serious enough, are you telling them that the department would not consider such action ?” Pennartz said.
Walter said he can’t say what action the department would recommend other than to place the district on probation for a year with a continuing review.
Pennartz asked if the department placed a district on probation for a year and the district didn’t comply with the probationary status provisions, “what hammer then do you have to withhold the funds ?”
Walter said the state education board would have “a kind of menu of possible sanctions” against a district under state laws if the district goes on probation for a second year.
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