HOT SPRINGS - Parents seeking to strike down the state's School Choice Act, which has prevented their white children from legally transferring to mostly white schools, are now suing the state Board of Education and four more school districts.
A federal judge Monday agreed to add the state board and the other districts to the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the 1989 act that bans transfers if they would lead to further racial segregation. The parents say the race provisions violate their civil rights.
Reader poll
Should parents be able to move their children from a school district regardless of race?
- Yes - race should not be a factor
- No - without race limits parents would segregate children
- No - transfers should not be allowed to anyone
4 total votes.
During a hearing Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert T. Dawson also delayed hearingarguments to dismiss the case in light of the shift in the lawsuit, which originally named the Malvern School District in Hot Spring County.
He said the matter is important for students, parents and the state of Arkansas and vowed to make the case a priority.
Chief Deputy Attorney General Justin Allen said he anticipates his office will defend the act now that a state entity has been named in the lawsuit.
"I would expect ultimately we will defend it the best we can," he said, noting that Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has not yet taken an official position on the constitutionality of the law. Allen said extensive research needs to be done.
The parents of roughly 50 white students sued in October, hoping to prevent their children from having to attend Malvern schools despite living within the district's geographic boundaries.
The students had been improperly attending smaller, less racially diverse schools. Then last summer Malvern school officials began threatening legal action if the students did not return.
The district was hoping to boost enrollment figures to cash in on state dollars tied to individual students.
Malvern's attorneys have argued that the parents never should have sued the district because it neither created the transfer rules nor denied thetransfers based on race.
Andi Davis, a Hot Springs attorney representing the parents, said naming the state Board of Education and other districts - Bismarck, Glen Rose, Magnet Cove and Ouachita - was an important change in her strategy to get the case to trial.
Those districts are the ones her clients want their children to attend or keep attending but can't without moving because of the race restrictions.
"I think we're standing on much more solid ground," she said Monday after a brief hearing in federal court in Hot Springs.
The student bodies of the districts named in the lawsuit Monday range between roughly 90 and 98 percent white. Malvern's student body, by contrast, is just more than 60 percent white.
The parents have testified that racial prejudice was not part of their decision to send their children elsewhere but rather for safety and the quality of education. One mother testified last year that her daughter was sexually assaulted while at Malvern and got permission from a previous superintendent to transfer. Now, her daughter is back at Malvern and not doing as well, she has said.
Superintendents of three of the four districts now being asked to defend the school-choice rules said Monday they don't fully support them.
Gail McClure at Magnet Cove, Ronnie Kissire at Ouachita and Nathan Gills at Glen Rose said they think the law needs to be altered but said until then they have no choice but to abide by it.
"I think there's some issues with the law ... that don't make it fair to all students," Kissire said.
Officials with the Bismarck School District didn't return a call for comment.
The state Department of Education hasn't taken a position on whether the school race provisions should be altered, said JulieJohnson Thompson, a spokesman for the department. She declined to comment on the case developments, and the chairman of the education board, Randy Lawson of Bentonville, did not return a call seeking comment.
The board is made up of nine governor appointees who set policy for the education department and public schools.
At least two legislators plan to meet with McDaniel in coming days to discuss possibly changingthe school-choice act in light of the lawsuit and recent U.S. Supreme Court cases that restrict race-based school assignments.
Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, D-Crossett, who will head the Senate education committee this session, said it was too early to speculate on what kind of changes could be proposed.
"We'll know more about it when we talk to the attorney general," Jeffress said Monday.
He has said it might be prudentfor the legislature to refrain from taking up the matter until the Malvern case is resolved.
During Monday's hearing, however, Dawson suggested that perhaps lawmakers would change the law and render the lawsuit pointless.
If it proceeds in court, there will be no quick resolution, the judge said.
"I do believe whatever this court does, there will be an appeal," he said.
Arkansas, Pages 7, 12 on 01/06/2009