U.S. District Court Judge Robert Dawson struck down the Arkansas School Choice Act of 1989 in a Friday ruling that found the state law in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.
The decision created concern in school districts throughout the state.
Dawson, who sits in the Hot Springs Division of the Western District of Arkansas, found that one subsection of the act is unconstitutional and ordered the state to stop applying the act after determining that the section is not severable from the rest of the law.
Section 6-18-206(f)(1) of the act states that a student’s transfer to a district other than their home district is dependent upon whether the non-resident district has a higher percentage of children of the student’s race than the percentage in the student’s home district.
Lawmakers passed the act in 1989 to give parents more options over where to have their children educated and to prompt school districts to try to prevent students from wanting to leave by becoming more competitive with neighboring districts.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Dawson’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed by several white families who wanted to transfer their children from the Malvern School District to the Magnet Cove School District and were denied under the race-based component of the Act.
Dawson wrote that he fully expected the ruling to be appealed owing to the important issues presented in the case.
Local reaction
White Hall School District superintendent Larry Smith was not sure what to think about the ruling in the immediate aftermath of the announcement.
“We’re going to have to wait and see what direction the Arkansas Department of Education gives us,” Smith said. “I understand that Commissioner [Tom] Kimbrell is looking at it now.”
Smith said that as of Friday, the White Hall district had about 62 school choice applications pending and could not say what the ultimate outcome would be.
In an April 2011 interview Smith expressed concerns over what could happen if the act were declared unconstitutional.
“The Malvern suit attacks the portion of the law that reflects race, the part that says you should be using race as a determining factor,” Smith said then. “If it goes through the court system, and is found unconstitutional, the 115 or so students we have in the White Hall district as a result of school choice would immediately have to return to their home district as I understand it at this time.”
“We have roughly 115 to 120 students per year in the White Hall School District as a result of school choice and that translates into an additional $6,023 per year in funding to the district,” Smith said in April 2011. “I build my budget for the year based on those students. If the end of school choice means all of those kids return to their home districts this will cause real problems.”
Watson Chapel School District superintendent Danny Hazelwood was also in a holding pattern as to what the next steps would be after the Friday afternoon ruling.
“Everyone’s sure that it is going to be appealed but for the time being no one really knows what that does,” Hazelwood said. “If this means that students have to return to their home schools I’m not sure where that leaves us.”
Hazelwood said that his district had between 90 and 100 school choice applications pending as of Friday.
Watson Chapel has particularly benefitted from school choice because it is under a desegregation order and due to an exception to the act that allows any student who wants to transfer to the district to do so regardless of race if the district is under a desegregation order.
The exception to the act provides that in any case where the race-based provision of the act conflicts with a desegregation order or court-approved desegregation plan, the terms of the order or plan prevail over the act.
The Pine Bluff School District challenged this in federal district court several years ago alleging that the exception for the Watson Chapel district had the effect of siphoning even more of the already shrinking population of white students in the Pine Bluff district.
“Pine Bluff alleged that Watson Chapel was allowing kids to transfer based on race, but under the provisions of the desegregation order we are allowed to take any kid that wants to transfer to Watson Chapel,” Hazelwood said in an April 2011 interview.
The Pine Bluff district ultimately lost the case.
Of the four Jefferson County school districts, White Hall and Watson Chapel have the most to lose from an end to the School Choice Act, officials said.
Both districts have been the beneficiaries of parental concerns of those living in the Pine Bluff and Dollarway school districts over issues of school safety and quality of education that led them to decide to send their children to one of the other two Jefferson County districts, officials said.
Dollarway School District superintendent Bettye Dunn-Wright could not be reached and Pine Bluff School District interim superintendent Linda Watson did not return a telephone call seeking comment for this article.