DECATUR — Superintendent Larry Ben urged school board members and patrons to contact their state representatives about school choice because it could have a big impact on the Decatur School District.
The Arkansas Public School Choice Act of 1989 will be coming up this legislative session, Ben told board members at the Jan. 21 meeting. The law allows parents to transfer their students to another district without going through the school boards, if they file a petition by July 1.
In June, U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson issued a ruling that the current school choice law is unconstitutional because it has racial restrictions to prevent resegregation. The parents who started the litigation wanted to have the racial element removed from the law. The Arkansas Department of Education took the opposite stance.
In the end, neither got what they wanted, Ben said. In the ruling, the judge decided race was not severable from the school choice law and it was unconstitutional to make decisions based on race, he said.
In July, Dawson ordered a stay to keep from creating chaos for students heading back to school, but there is still no school choice law.
Ben said Dawson’s decisions left a lot of questions for school administrators, such as what will happen to students who have already been granted school choice and how transfers will be handled in the future.
The current thought among school administrators around the state is school choice will be an all or nothing issue, he said. Either there will be no choice and students will attend the district they live in - unless they are granted a transfer by both school boards - or there will be open choice and students can attend any school they choose without any restrictions on race or poverty.
For the past two years, Decatur Schools have fallen below the acceptable range of Caucasian students for Benton County under current school choice law. Consequently, the only local district to which Decatur Caucasian students are eligible to transfer is the Rogers School District, which is the only district in Benton County with a lower percentage of Caucasian students than in Decatur.
Open choice has the potential to impact Decatur Schools in several ways, Ben told the school board. There is concern that schools across the state will be resegregated between the affluent and disadvantaged because transportation is not included for students who choose to attend another district. It would be impossible for some low income parents to drive their children to another district, while more affluent parents could afford the extra expense, Ben explained.
“To me, this stands to leave the disadvantaged behind,” he said.
Open choice would also impact planning efficiency, because there would be no way to plan staffing in early spring if the district doesn’t know how many students it will have until July. It would also be difficult to plan an education tailored to a student population, when it changes year to year, Ben said.
It is important to have a voice and to speak for disadvantaged students who may not have a voice, Ben said.
“These are the things our representatives need to be made aware of,” he said.
Board member Kevin Smith said he recently attended a legislative breakfast in Bentonville, and all four local representatives were against open school choice.
After the meeting, Ben said he is also concerned about House Bill 1040. The bill is opposed by many, including the Arkansas Association of Education Administrators and the Arkansas School Board Association.
It would allow out-of-state charter school companies to take over “low performing” public schools with no definition of what would constitute low performing. The result would be the loss of local control of schools with input from parents and the community, according to the Arkansas School Board Association website, http://arsba.org.
Ben listed the local state representatives as Mary Slinkard, District 92; Dan Douglas, District 91; Bart Hester, District 1 and Jim Hendren, District 2.
News, Pages 4 on 02/06/2013