Board denies transfers

Public comment on transfer requests not permitted

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

— School board members voted to deny six students transfers out of the Decatur School District at the July 16 meeting.

The six students - from three separate families - applied for school board to school board transfers, requesting approval from the resident and receiving school boards.

The Decatur School Board considered each family’s request on a case-by-case basis, according to board minutes. One family requested to send children to theGravette School District and the other two families requested to send their children to the Gentry School District.

Two of the families attended the July 16 meeting, but the Decatur School Board passed a motion not to allow comments from the public.

Parent John Ward - who attended the meeting with his wife, mother and stepfather - said he was disappointed he did not get to address the school board. He said the transfer request form he turned in didn’t even have a space provided for his address andphone number, let alone a reason for the request.

Ward said he would have liked to explain to the board that his daughter has hearing and speech problems and that he felt her special needs would be better served by the Gentry School District.

He also said his daughter had been attending the Gentry Head Start for three years, and he felt that it would have a negative impact on her if she were taken away from her friends.

Ward explained that his property lies along the border between the two school districts, and it was only when he built a new home on his farm that his address fell within the Decatur School District.

Ward said he has three older children who have graduated from Gentry High School. He also has a son still attending Gentry schools after transferring there under the school choice law three years ago. The board’s decision will leave him with one child attending school in Gentry and another in Decatur, he said.

The school board, without hearing the details of his situation, voted 3-1 to deny Ward’s request.

“If we could have spoke our mind and said our piece, maybe we would have had another vote in our favor,” Ward said.

The Decatur School Board Policy Manual requires citizens wishing to address the school board to make a request for an audience with the superintendent 10 days before a regular meeting so the agenda can include them in the meeting. The policy also limits individual speakers to 5 minutes and delegations to 20 minutes.

Ward said he was not made aware of the policy when he met with Decatur superintendent Larry Ben in April about his daughter’s transfer or when he spoke to Ben on Monday, although Ben did tell him the date of the board meetings.

Ward explained that he first filed a school choice application but was told it was denied because his daughter is Caucasian. He then filed the board-toboard transfer request on April 19.

“What is the sense of having a school board meeting with the public coming in, when the public has their hands tied and they can’t speak or have an opinion? To me that seems pretty cut and dry on their behalf. The school board says ‘we’re not going to listen to a darn thing anybody else is going to say’ and they wonder why they are having trouble with people not wanting to go to Decatur Schools,” Ward said.

Since July 2011, a total of 16 students have been denied school board to school board transfers out of the Decatur School District. Two students, who were already attending Gentry schools, were allowed to transfer out and continue attending Gentry schools last December.

Ward said that when he met with Ben in April, Ben told him the board was not accepting any transfers.

On Monday, Ben said he couldn’t comment on the reasons the board has denied so many transfers over the past year, since the decision is made by the board members on a caseby-case basis.

“Evidently, the board feels that if a student lives in our district, they are responsible to educate that student and that we can provide a quality education for those kids,” Ben said.

The Decatur School Board did accept seven student transfers into the district under the Arkansas School Choice Act of 1989 at the July 16 meeting.

School Choice

Parents have a myriad of reasons for wanting to transfer their children from one school district to another, but for students living in the Decatur School District there are few options.

At its July 16 meeting the Gentry School Board declined to act on eight student transfers from the Decatur School District under the racial restrictions of the School Choice Act of 1989 Two school choice applications were accepted.

The Gravette School District approved one school choice application from the Decatur School District at its July 16 meeting.

The Arkansas Public School Choice Act of 1989 has recently caught national attention since U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson ruled that a race-based restriction in the law wasunconstitutional on June 8 and struck down the entire law.

Under the school choice law, students can transfer to an outside school district if they submit an application by July 1. However, the law contains an exception to protect against segregation. It prevents any students from “transferring to a nonresident district where the percentage of the student’s race exceeds that percentage in the student’s resident district” unless both districts fall into an acceptable range determined by the Arkansas Department of Education for the county.

Dawson later issued a stay on his ruling until a panel of judges can consider appeals, allowing students to continue transferring under the law and attending schools they have transferred to in the past.But in Decatur, transferring to another school district remains difficult, especially for Caucasian students.

Decatur fell outside of the acceptable range for Caucasian students for the first time last year and the Decatur School Board has consistently voted to deny almost all board-to-board transfers regardless of race - which is the only other option for students who would like to attend school in another district without physically moving into that district.

News, Pages 1 on 07/25/2012