Hearing To End Deseg Case Is Dec. 9, LRSD Offers To Settle

The state will begin a two-week trial Dec. 9 in U.S. District Judge Price Marshall’s court that Attorney General Dustin McDaniel hopes will “bring about a tangible end to the Pulaski County desegregation case.”

Speaking to a joint meeting of the Senate and House Education committees, McDaniel said he has received a settlement offer from the Little Rock School District requiring the state to continue payments for seven years starting next year along with a number of conditions he told legislators were unacceptable. Following his testimony, McDaniel told reporters the conditions included the district being exempted from being taken over by the state due to fiscal or academic distress for seven years – a promise McDaniel said he could not make. It also included a requirement that the state take no punitive actions toward the district.

McDaniel told legislators he would like to settle the case but would accept no conditions outside of a dollar amount “because if there is any condition in it, the record has proven that this school district will fight us and litigate us about it until the end of time.”

He told reporters afterward that this was the first settlement offer he has received from the district as attorney general, but he did not believe the case would settle.

The Little Rock School District has filed a motion that the state breached the 1989 agreement by authorizing open enrollment charter schools in the district. That motion was denied but has been appealed to the Eighth Circuit. The district is asking for a stay of the Dec. 9 hearing in anticipation of the ruling. McDaniel said he does not anticipate a delay.

McDaniel said 20 depositions have been taken and 55,000 pages of documents exchanged. Richard Weiss, director of the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, was to be deposed today.

Currently, the state pays $70 million a year to the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special School Districts as part of the settlement.