A federal court hearing on the Pulaski County Special School District's desegregation efforts will enter its third week on Monday with the attorneys for Black students beginning their case for keeping the district under court supervision.
Attorneys for the 12,000-student district completed their presentation of witness testimony on Friday, the ninth day of the hearing before Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., who is tasked with deciding whether the district has met its desegregation obligations and can be declared unitary, or desegregated, and released from court oversight of its operations.
At issue is the district's compliance with provisions with its desegregation Plan 2000 and related agreements on student achievement, student discipline practices, the condition of school buildings and the district's self-monitoring of its own desegregation efforts.
In recent days, attorneys Devin Bates and Amanda Orcutt have put on witnesses in support of their contention that the Pulaski district has, in good faith, substantially complied with its mandates in the 37-year-old lawsuit. The attorney teams have disagreed over the past two weeks whether the district has to eliminate racial disparities in student achievement and discipline versus making the efforts to do so.
Those efforts have included the construction of a new Mills High campus and renovated Mills Middle School, as well as the establishment of the $10 million Donaldson Scholars Academy, which is a weekend, after-school and summer college-introduction program for the district's high school students.
Austin Porter Jr., an attorney for the Black students known as the McClendon intervenors -- formerly the Joshua intervenors -- told the judge Friday at the conclusion of the district's case that the district failed to prove it has met its obligations in any of the four areas.
Porter made a motion for "a judgment as a matter of law."
"The Pulaski County Special School district has a duty to eliminate those racial disparities that exist between Black and white students and the district has conceded, your honor, that -- No. 1 -- there still continues to be discipline disparities that exist between Black and non-Black students," Porter elaborated to Marshall.
"They conceded that point," Porter said. "They conceded the point there is much work to be done as it relates to student achievement. They recognized those disparities still exist between Black students and, as they put it, non-Black students. Those disparities still exist."
Porter further argued that the district has not met its burden of proof or show of good faith on the Plan 2000 requirement for clean, safe, attractive and equal school buildings. He said a district leader acknowledged it failed its obligation to make the construction of Mills High equal to the construction of Robinson Middle and Maumelle High, and that Mills High is an inferior structure.
Orcutt, on behalf of the district, opposed Porter's motion, and the judge opted to take the issue "under advisement."
Marshall has not determined which side has the burden of proof in the case -- be it the district or the intervenors. He has reserved that disputed issue for the attorneys to argue -- or present their positions -- at the conclusion of all the witness testimony.
Earlier Thursday, Janice Warren, the district's assistant superintendent for equity and student services, concluded her testimony on the procedures the district uses to monitor its desegregation efforts.
Those efforts include the establishment of school committees of teachers, administrators and parents who are trained to use the district's school monitoring document to evaluate school performance in some 15 areas, including student assignment, staffing, curriculum, talented and gifted education, extracurricular activities, student discipline and facilities.
The school committee provides the information to the principal and then meets with the principal, who attaches a response to the report. Warren and John McCraney, who is the district's coordinator of equity initiatives, process and compile the school reports into the annual Monitoring and Compliance Report that is submitted to the district's School Board for approval and distributed to other interested parties.
In response to Porter's questions about concerns of lack of multicultural materials at a school, a racial disparity in student suspensions or racially segregated student seating cited in the individual school reports, Warren said that if the findings at a school showed that everything was perfect, she would be suspicious.
Marshall's court-appointed desegregation expert, Margie Powell, testified that the district has met the requirements of the Plan 2000 in regard to self-monitoring.
Porter questioned Powell on why -- after so many years -- district schools still have issues with racially segregated student seating or a lack of multicultural materials and displays.
"Everything is a moving target," Powell said. "You have new teachers and new students all the time. For all of them to be on the same page at the same time, it would be a miracle."
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