Ark. Leader: Ruling shouldn't affect plans for Jacksonville School District

The Arkansas Leader examines the recent race ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to determine whether it hinders the future of a proposed Jacksonville school district. That point is debated in the article. Any efforts to create such a stand-alone district for Jacksonville can't occur until unitary status is achieved by the Pulaski County Special School District. U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson has ruled that Jacksonville may not secede from PCSSD because all three districts in the county had not achieved unitary status and had not been released from the desegregation-consent decree.

Good read, and one that is of interest to the legislature. We've appropriated over $700 million since 1989 for payments to the districts involved in the desegregation lawsuit. An additional $60 million is budgeted for fiscal 2008 and $66 million for 2009. Such large appropriations have given the school districts involved little incentive to be released from the suit.

Act 395 of 2007, sponsored by Rep. Will Bond (D-Jacksonville), requires the state to hire a consultant by Oct. 1 to determine what needs to be done to achieve unitary status and release from the courts. The act requires both PCSSD and NLRSD to file petitions for unitary or partial unitary status by Sept. 30 and to be declared unitary by June 14, 2008 to be eligible for financial incentives. $250,000 was appropriated to reimburse costs of lawyers in moving forward. Hopefully, this will help put an end to federal oversight of the case. Whether Thursday's ruling will change the way school districts assign students in Pulaski County is to be seen.