02 Sep 2021 How PCCSD came to be in the 501

Posted at 6:10 PMh in Features by

By Jessica Duff

The Pulaski County Special School District has  provided quality education for Central Arkansas children for nearly 95 years. PCSSD was created in July of 1927 as a result of a statewide effort to consolidate small, rural school districts, which were often poorly funded.

1975-1976 Sylvan Hills High School Bears Band.

In the early 1920s, D.T. Henderson was superintendent of the Pulaski County Board of Education and studied the benefits of a single countywide school system, similar to what had already been established in neighboring states.

In March of 1927, the Arkansas State Legislature passed a bill allowing counties with a population higher than 75,000 to vote on the creation of county–level school districts. Under this legislation, the district would be called Pulaski County Special School District. Cities with a population higher than 10,000 would be exempt from the consolidation, which included Little Rock and North Little Rock. Pulaski County voters overwhelmingly voted in support of the consolidation of 38 school districts into the Pulaski County Special School District.

For more than five years, PCSSD was governed by the Pulaski County Board of Education, but in 1933, the state legislature abolished county–level boards of education and the PCSSD School Board was established.

In May of 1954, the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ordering the desegregation of schools across the country. But the Supreme Court failed to place a timeline on segregated schools. In 1959, Air Base Elementary School became the first PCSSD school to be integrated.

Through the years, PCSSD continuously worked to close achievement gaps, eliminate disparities, place high expectations on all of our staff and students, and ultimately be declared unitary by the courts. In May 2021, Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. declared the district unitary, with the final issue to be resolved relating to facilities discrepancies between Mills University Studies High School and Joe T. Robinson Middle School.

Currently, PCSSD spans more than 600 square miles and serves nearly 12,000 students with 27 schools, including a new completely virtual option for the 2021–2022 school year called DRIVEN Virtual Academy. Nearly 3,000 students attend schools in the Maumelle feeder zone. The Maumelle feeder within PCSSD includes three elementary schools (Crystal Hill, Oak Grove and Pine Forest), one middle school (Maumelle Middle), and one high school (Maumelle High School).