30 Years in Court: LRSD v. PCSCD

As a consequence of desegregation busing in the 1970s, the percentage of white students in the Little Rock School District (LRSD) dropped from 61 percent to 36 percent as parents moved their children to private schools or out of the district into neighboring ones. Concerned that this "white flight" was to soon result in LRSD becoming a virtually all-black district, the LRSD school board filed suit in federal court against the Pulaski County Special School District (PCSSD), the North Little Rock School District (NLRSD), and the state of Arkansas on November 30, 1982, seeking the consolidation of all school districts in Pulaski County. The suit alleged that PCSSD, NLRSD, and the Arkansas Department of Education had helped cause segregation in LRSD by providing "black schools only in certain areas." The suit also faulted PCSSD for refusing to alter its borders and relinquish students to LRSD as Little Rock's city limits had expanded westward. The defendants asserted that consolidation had encouraged even more white flight and was a merely a ploy by LRSD to increase its property tax revenues.

In 1984, Judge Henry Woods ruled that the three districts were indeed segregated and ordered that the districts be consolidated and that the state pay for most of the costs of busing and other measures due to its responsibility in creating and perpetuating segregated schools. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals approved intervention in the case by African American students, represented by attorney John Walker. His clients were known as the Joshua intervenors. A group representing teachers, known as the Knight intervenors, later joined the suit. The Reagan administration's Justice Department joined the case on behalf of the defendants.

In 1985, the Eighth Circuit overturned Judge Woods' decision on consolidation, but did order that the boundaries of LRSD be made identical to the city limits of Little Rock. This ultimately resulted in LRSD gaining 14 schools and over 7,000 students (68 percent of them white) from PCSSD. The court also ordered that the three districts establish magnet schools, allow majority-to-minority transfers, take other steps to attract white students, and mitigate the harmful effects of racial discrimination on black students. The exact plans were to be approved by the district court but the state was ordered to bear most of the cost and to monitor implementation. Many of the state's legislators vehemently opposed this and 131 of the state’s other school districts filed an appeal, but the ruling stood.

In 1989, the three districts, along with the state and other involved parties, worked out an agreement to remedy the effects of segregation. The 1989 Settlement Agreement obligated the state pay up to $118 million (later increased substantially) over ten years to the three districts. Though not entirely happy with its terms, Governor Bill Clinton successfully lobbied the General Assembly to approve the settlement. Upset with the settlement and its approval by the Eighth Circuit, Judge Woods recused himself from the case and was replaced by Judge Susan Webber Wright. Judge Wright kept pressure on the school districts to fully comply with the settlement and oversaw a new desegregation agreement in 1998, then withdrew from the case in 2002. Her replacement, Judge William "Bill" Wilson Jr., released LRSD from court supervision, except in its obligation to increase black achievement levels.

In 2007, Judge Wilson declared LRSD to be completely unitary, the legal term for a desegregated school system, although the state was to continue to pay for LRSD’s ongoing programs related to integration and remediation. In 2011, NLRSD was declared unitary, except for one area, while the court determined that PCSSD was not unitary in nine of twelve areas. The district court ruled that the state be released from its funding obligations, but on appeal, the Eighth Court ordered the state to continue its payments of about $70 million per year until a final resolution was reached.

In 2014, the latest federal judge assigned to the case, Judge D. Price Marshall, approved a deal between all parties that state payments to the districts slated to end in 2018. By then, the state will have paid about $1.5 billion to the three districts over almost thirty years. Despite the money spent and optimistic predictions made in 1989, the achievement gap between white and black students remains very wide. Further, although about one third of school age children in Little Rock are white, the percentage of white students in LRSD has dropped to just below 18 percent. About 64 percent of LRSD’s students are black, 14 percent are Latino, and 4 percent are classified as other ethnicities. New and ongoing challenges face the public schools in Pulaski County, including the influx of Hispanic students, the rapid growth of public charter schools, and a state takeover of LRSD in 2015.