admin Educators and community activists in Little Rock are mobilizing to push Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the State Board of Education to reconsider a plan for the city’s public schools that they say will establish separate governing structures for majority white schools and majority black schools.
The organizing group, Grassroots Arkansas, is urging residents, educators, parents and community members across the state to call and email Hutchinson’s office and tweet at him. They also plan to picket Monday evening on a bridge that crosses Interstate 630, the dividing line between majority black schools located south of the highway and majority white schools north of the highway.
On Tuesday they’re launching a social media campaign in which educators and parents will post online short videos about what Little Rock schools mean to them. On Wednesday they’re holding a candlelight vigil.
At issue is the state’s plan to relinquish only partial control of the city’s schools after a controversial decision five years ago to take over the public school system. The state took control of the city’s schools as part of a five-year plan to improve the academic profile of the system and introduce stable leadership.
The new plan, which was never made available for public comment, was approved last week by the governor-appointed State Board of Education during a meeting announced only hours before it occurred. It would relinquish control of the best schools in Little Rock – those concentrated in the north and west parts of the city that have the highest enrollment of white students – allowing them to be run by a locally elected school board. The worst schools in the city – those concentrated in the south and east parts of the city that have the highest enrollment of black and Latino students – would continue to be run by the state or some other outside entity.
Those crying foul argue that the plan would effectively catapult Little Rock back into an era of school segregation by creating a two-class system in which some parents, teachers and community members have a say over their schools and others don’t This, in a city that’s home to the Little Rock Nine, a major flashpoint of the civil rights movement when nine black students were escorted inside the all-white Central High School by the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army at the direction of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957. Their initial attempts to desegregate the school were blocked by then-Gov. Orval Faubus, who mobilized the National Guard to prevent them from entering the school and by protesters who hurled slurs and spat in their faces.
Magazine 
