Week In Review

State Capitol Week in Review

LITTLE ROCK – The state Board of Education last week approved a new charter school for Little Rock, but only after attaching conditions that the new school must be for low-income and under-achieving students.

The conditions reflect the state Board's recognition that adding charter schools within the Little Rock School District could affect integration efforts ordered by federal courts. For decades the state has been a defendant in a Pulaski County desegregation lawsuit.

Of the 19 open enrollment charter schools in Arkansas, 12 will be in Little Rock or Pulaski County. The charter for the newly approved school in Little Rock is the first to come with such similar conditions. The Board required that at least 80 percent of the charter's students come from low-income families or have less than proficient scores on state Benchmark Exams. Students are considered to be from a low-income family if they qualify for free or reduced priced lunches.

Charter schools must get approval from the state before they can open. They receive government revenue, therefore they are public schools. However, they do not have to meet all the rules and requirements that public school districts have to, and they have greater leeway to innovate. The state allows them to operate as long as they comply with their contract, or charter, to adequately educate their students.

Attorneys for the Little Rock School District have said that state approval of so many charter schools in Little Rock may adversely affect the district's efforts to desegregate.

There is a financial effect, as well. State aid "follows the child," meaning the charter school rather than the local school district receives the $5,940 in state minimum per pupil funding.

The state sends extra funding amounts to the three school districts in Pulaski County under a 1989 settlement in the desegregation case. A federal court judge is expected to rule within a year whether they have achieved desegregation. However, few observers, if any at all, would be surprised if the case continued to drag on in federal court for several more years.

Every school in Arkansas has a stake in the Pulaski County desegregation case. Under the 1989 settlement, the state is required by federal court order to pay the three districts in Pulaski County extra funding for desegregation efforts. This year the state will pay them an estimated $67 million.

Within the next year or two, the total amount of state payments to Pulaski County schools in the desegregation case will exceed a billion dollars. Much of that amount would otherwise have been distributed to public schools throughout Arkansas.

Poultry Litter Ruling

Arkansas poultry corporations are defendants in a federal lawsuit filed by Oklahoma, which contends that poultry litter used on pastures as fertilizer pollutes the Illinois River and its watershed.

The poultry companies got some good news last week when the judge ruled that bird litter is not solid waste, as defined by a 1976 federal anti-pollution law. However, the lawsuit is still in litigation so it's too soon to gauge the economic implications for Arkansas livestock producers.