Arkansas school dist. wants to be released

by Cynthia Howell
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A hearing on the North Little Rock School District’s request to be declared desegregated and released from federal court oversight focused on the hiring of black teachers.

U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller told assistant Superintendent Bobby Acklin that a line of questions from an attorney representing black students in the district about the district’s failure to set goals and timelines for hiring black faculty members and administrators prompted the questions from the bench.

"Just explain to me. Did you agree with it?" the judge asked Tuesday. "Were you involved in the decision making? Did you say, yes, this is what I want? Or did you just do your job - go along with the district with what it wanted to do? I don’t want to get you in trouble, but I want you to tell me the truth."

Acklin, the assistant superintendent for desegregation, in his testimony described the district’s inaction on setting required hiring goals as a group decision that he was "probably in on."

"Everybody knows, including myself, that you are shooting yourself in the foot when you say you can come up with a percentage of (black) teachers when you know that you haven’t been successful with that and the pool is constantly dwindling," Acklin elaborated.

"Yes, we could have set a timetable, but we would be here today explaining why we didn’t make it. Instead, we are here saying why we didn’t set the goal. We would have been confronted with it either way."

The exchange took place on the second day of a court hearing on whether the 9,660-student North Little Rock District has substantially complied with its desegregation plan and should be released from federal court supervision of its desegregation efforts.

The Little Rock School District was released in 2007. The Pulaski County Special School District has petitioned for release, and a court hearing is set for Feb. 22 on that request.

Acklin told the judge that efforts to recruit black faculty members were ongoing and that a recruiting brochure and slideshow, as well as out-of town recruiting trips, were undertaken as promised in the plan but that competition was stiff for the small number of black teachers graduating from colleges of education.

Gregg Thompson, the district’s human resources director for the past 3 1 /2 years, said the average number of black graduates from Arkansas’ teacher-education programs in recent years is 89, a number that must be shared by the state’s 244 school districts and other school systems.