Suit: Halt state takeover of Little Rock School District
Filing calls for LR School Board’s return, claims racial bias
A team of attorneys led by civil-rights attorney John Walker on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit to reverse the January state takeover of the Little Rock School District and stop the development of both traditional and charter schools in west Little Rock.
The suit, filed against state and Little Rock School District leaders on behalf of a group of parents, students and two displaced Little Rock School Board members, also seeks an end to "unconstitutional policies and practices" in the Little Rock district in regard to the condition of school facilities, student discipline, distribution of student computers, configuration of high school attendance zones, faculty-member and student assignments to schools, the operation of the Hamilton Learning Academy, and other facets of the district's operation.
"This is an action to secure a remedy for the subjecting of black students enrolled in the Little Rock School District to intentional racial discrimination, in the period after courts held that the LRSD had achieved unitary status," the 71-page lawsuit begins.
The Little Rock district was declared unitary, or desegregated, by a federal district judge in 2007, and that ruling was affirmed by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009.
"This action also seeks a remedy for the state's takeover of the LRSD and the ouster of the democratically elected LRSD [School Board]," the suit continues. "Plaintiffs allege that these actions violated the United States Constitution (denial of freedom of speech, prohibited racial discrimination, conspiracy to violate rights, badge of slavery, and denial of due process of law)," the suit says.
The suit was filed late Wednesday afternoon and has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, who is a former presiding judge in the long-running 1982 federal school desegregation lawsuit involving all three Pulaski County school districts. Wright stepped down from that case in 2002.
Wednesday's federal lawsuit was filed on the eve of an Arkansas Supreme Court hearing at 9 a.m. today in a Pulaski County circuit court lawsuit that also is challenging the Jan. 28 decision by the Arkansas Board of Education to assume control of the Little Rock district. The Supreme Court hearing centers on whether state leaders can be sued under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
The state Education Board dismissed the seven-member elected School Board and placed the district's superintendent under the direction of the Arkansas education commissioner. The takeover was the result of six of the district's 48 schools being classified by the state as academically distressed because of chronically low test scores on state math and literacy exams.
Two of the plaintiffs in the suit are displaced School Board members Joy Springer and Jim Ross, both elected in contested elections in September 2014, just before the state takeover.
Other plaintiffs are a grandparent, four parents and their children, all of whom are black and all of whose identities are withheld with the exception of the grandparent, Claudius Johnson.
The parents are listed as Lakesha Doe, Evelyn Doe, Candice Doe and Sonya Doe. The reason for listing the plaintiff families as Does "is to prevent the minor students who are still enrolled in LRSD from being subjected to adverse treatment from students or district employees because of their participation in this action," the suit said.
The lawsuit describes some details of each student's schooling and ways in which they have been treated unequally compared with white students in the Little Rock district.
Student "Dennis Doe" for example is 15 and a student at Central High. Last year, he was enrolled in a high school labeled as academically distressed, according to the case.
He was subjected to discipline "for false reasons" during the 2014-15 school year. He and "approximately 37 other black students" were recommended for school suspensions because of accumulated citations for tardiness, the result of which would be missed instruction. His mother was not notified of the citations and had to go through multiple levels of appeals to set aside the suspension.
Further, the suit says that "Dennis Doe" sought to attend schools not labeled as academically distressed, but that white students from surrounding districts were given priority for enrollment at those schools. The suit says the schools that "Dennis Doe" and the other plaintiff students Suit: Halt state takeover of Little Rock School District:
