Just days away from completing the construction of six replacement campuses in six years, the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District on Monday asked a federal judge to declare the district fully unitary and release it from any further court monitoring of its desegregation efforts.

Since May 2021, equalizing the school buildings has been the 4,000-student district’s final hurdle to meeting the desegregation obligations it assumed when, in 2014, it detached from the Pulaski County Special School District — also a defendant in a long-running federal school desegregation lawsuit — to become an independent district in July 2016.

“Without question, JNPSD has complied in good faith with its desegregation obligations in the area of facilities,” Scott Richardson, an attorney for the school district, wrote Monday to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr.

Marshall is the presiding judge in the federal school desegregation lawsuit filed by the Little Rock School District in 1982. The Jacksonville and Pulaski County Special districts are the remaining defendants in the lawsuit.

Attorneys for the class of Black students in the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district — the McClendon intervenors — will now have the opportunity to respond to the district’s request for unitary status before the judge issues any decision on the motion.

“JNPSD’s facilities obligation was to build in as timely a manner replacement facilities for the high school, middle school, and elementary schools,” Richardson wrote in requesting final unitary status. He listed the projects as: m The new Jacksonville High School that opened to students in August 2019.

⏹︎ The new Jacksonville Middle School that opened in August 2021.

⏹︎ The Bobby Lester Elementary that opened in August 2018, replacing Tolleson and Arnold Drive elementary schools.

⏹︎ Jacksonville Elementary School that opened in July 2020, replacing Dupree and Pinewood elementary schools.

⏹︎ The new Bayou Meto Elementary School that will be completed July 23 for opening for the 2024-25 school year,

⏹︎ The new Murrell Taylor Elementary School that will be completed July 18, also for the 2024-25 school year.

“The schools were all designed by the same architecture firm and constructed by the same construction company,” Richardson wrote in the motion for unitary status and court release.

“They are safe, attractive, and equal,” he said. “Indeed, they are excellent, modern educational facilities,” he wrote.

In September 2018, Marshall found that the Jacksonville district was “unitary” or had met its desegregation obligations with an exception in staffing and a showing of compliance with its court-approved school building building plans.

“Is it time? Yes,” Richardson wrote, quoting wording from Marshall in a May 2021 order in releasing both the Jacksonville and Pulaski County Special school districts from court monitoring of parts of their school system operations.

In a written brief in support of the two-page motion for unitary status, the Jacksonville district on Monday referred to Plan 2000, the desegregation plan prepared by the Pulaski County Special School District for achieving desegregation. The Pulaski County Special district’s obligations under Plan 2000 were applied to the Jacksonville/ North Pulaski district when the district detached from the Pulaski Special system.

“Desegregation decrees like Plan 2000 were never intended to continue forever,” Richardson wrote, citing an Oklahoma City School District desegregation decision.

They are “a temporary measure to remedy past discrimination,” Richardson continued.

And, “A desegregation decree should not continue any longer than necessary to remedy the identified constitutional violation; i.e. to remedy the effects of past discrimination addressed by the consent decree ‘to the extent practicable,’” he added, citing the U.S. Supreme Court decision Milliken v. Bradley, regarding the Detroit, Mich., schools.

And, from the Oklahoma City Dowell decision: “Once the constitutional violation is remedied, control of children’s education must be returned to local school officials.”

Richardson invited the judge to physically tour the new campuses, which has been a past practice of the judge in overseeing the facilities in both the Jacksonville and Pulaski Special district. “The facilities benefited from all being designed by the same architecture firm (WER Architects) and built by the same construction company (Baldwin & Shell). This has helped to maintain consistency across all facilities. If the Court tours the facilities (he) will find them to be safe, attractive, and equal,” Richardson wrote.

The attorney also told the judge that the district is moving forward with other projects that go beyond the court-required changes.

Those include converting the former Taylor Elementary into a pre-kindergarten center, an in-house day care program for district employees and a community health center primarily for students and for the community if it has capacity.

The relatively new, 2018 multipurpose building at the former Taylor campus will become an alternative learning environment for kindergarten through fifth grade students.

“The District is adjusting and planning its facilities to provide educational opportunities to scholars that surpass what the surrounding districts provide,” Richardson said.