El Dorado Promise Extends To School Choice Students

Students who attend school in the El Dorado School District now will be eligible for the El Dorado Promise Scholarship even if they don’t live in the district.

According to a press release from the program’s director, Sylvia Thompson, the Promise will be available to non-resident students starting with this year’s graduating class. The original scholarship required students to live in the district continuously starting in the ninth grade.

Created and funded by the Murphy Oil Corp., the Promise pays up to 100 percent of college tuition and mandatory fees for El Dorado graduates. The scholarship can be used to attend any two-year or four-year college or university in the United States. Maximum awards equal the highest resident tuition for an Arkansas school.

There currently are 75 students enrolled in El Dorado under the state’s school choice law. That law, which states that non-resident students can transfer into another district, was declared unconstitutional in a district court last year because of its race-based provisions. In an effort to prevent resegregation, it forbade students from transferring to districts where there was a higher percentage of their own race than the one they were leaving.

The case is under appeal. Legislators are debating a fix for the school choice law as they await that decision.