Bill to place audio recording devices in Arkansas school locker rooms headed to governor's desk
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A bill to place audio recording devices in Arkansas school locker rooms is headed to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' desk.
was first introduced by State Rep. Keith Brooks (R-District 78) on March 20 after learning of a bullying incident at Quitman Schools.
Mothers allege mishandling of bullying in Quitman school locker room
Under the bill, also known as Eli's Laws, all public and open-enrollment charter school districts would be required to install audio recording devices in all locker rooms by the 2027-2028 school year.
The recordings would be held for a minimum of 90 days, but no longer than a year, and could be used in the event allegations are made about bullying or any sexual or physical harassment.
'Our primary objective in this committee and as a legislative body when it comes to educating our students is to ensure their safety number one and to ensure that the student's needs are put before everyone else's,' Brooks said. 'If leadership within a school district is not doing that, I want them to know and hear very clearly that we will ensure that that is done.'
Working 4 You covered the allegations of bullying inside the Quitman locker room first in November of 2024.
At the time, former Quitman School parents Angie Edwards and Stephanie White accused district staff of mishandling allegations of bullying in the football locker room.
Edwards and White claim their 7th-grade boys were harassed for months, and nothing was done to stop it.
'Our kids went in day after day knowing what was waiting on them on the other side of the door,' White said during an interview in November. 'The abuse consisted of being bull-whipped, sometimes with the whip and sometimes with just the stick of the whip. They were shot at close range with BB guns and told to run from one side of the campus to the other.'
DeWitt student alleges classmate made racist comments after painting face black
In a House Committee meeting, State Rep. Brooks called the situation at Quitman 'Beyond Awful' and 'There really are no words to describe it.'
Eli's law passed through the full House on April 8. It passed through the full Senate on April 9.
Opponents of the bill say they have concerns with students' privacy and the cost of the devices.
The bill states that school districts, 'May use available state funding to implement the requirements, including, without limitation, funds set aside by the General Assembly for school safety.'
State Rep. Brooks says there are also several grants available to districts to help pay for the device.
Texas family files $1.5M lawsuit after students put peanuts in allergic teen's locker
Sanders is scheduled to sign HB1866 into law Thursday, April 17, at 10 a.m.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Indianapolis Star
7 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
City dismantled Black community for urban renewal. Decades later, it still hasn't happened
ELKHART, Ind. — The red brick pavers covered by overgrown weeds near South 6th Street and Dr. MLK Jr. Drive are some of the last remnants of a community that once thrived in this part of Elkhart. This area, called Benham West, was the civic, cultural and commercial hub for Black residents who settled south of the train tracks, the dividing line that separated them from the rest of the city even decades after desegregation. Residents called this area the "Village" because, literally and figuratively, this was their community at a time when many of the Northern Indiana city's predominantly White residents were hostile to the color of their skin. But the tight-knit community is long gone. The city incrementally and systematically bulldozed the neighborhood over more than two decades of aggressive urban renewal. The work uprooted families. Lifelong business owners lost their livelihoods. Homeowners were forced to move to other parts of the city where they were not welcome. Older residents found themselves starting anew, burdened with heftier mortgages they had little time left to pay off, said Steve Millsaps, who grew up in the neighborhood and whose relatives owned homes and businesses there. Officials spent millions of dollars in city and federal funds to buy and raze properties. When residents lost their homes and businesses, they also lost a level of self-sufficiency and assets they could've passed on to their descendants, said Nekeisha Alayna, an Elkhart resident who helped create a documentary about the neighborhood's history. After people dispersed, the neighborhood's community leaders also left, creating a "big vacuum," she said. After all of that, the promised urban revitalization never happened. Politics, the economy and, some argued, bigotry got in the way. "They just screwed us out of our land," Millsaps said. The historical dismantling of neighborhoods is not exclusive to Elkhart or any one city. Urban renewal projects cleared low and middle-income housing in cities nationwide, including Indianapolis, beginning in the 1950s, often targeting neighborhoods where Black residents built their own communities because discriminatory practices of the era kept them from buying or building homes elsewhere. In Elkhart, a manufacturing hub 160 miles north, Benham West became one of the city's most underdeveloped and impoverished neighborhoods after years of disinvestment. Some see the dismantling of Benham West as part of the city's ugly history with racism. The neighborhood and its surrounding areas were also plagued with troubling policing practices by a group of rogue officers known as the Wolverines, who systematically targeted Black citizens for harassment and false arrests. "Benham West and what occurred in Benham West was a failure on multiple levels," said Rod Roberson, who grew up near the neighborhood and was elected the city's first Black mayor in 2019. "But it also failed an entire city and community as well." Roberson said the city now has a long-term plan to revitalize Benham West and surrounding areas, launched a few years ago with the opening of a large community center just outside the neighborhood. But the 55-acre swatch of Benham West still remains a patchwork of empty and overgrown lots, dotted with vacant buildings, a smattering of businesses, a thrift store that also provides beds for the unhoused, a church and some housing. On 6th Street and Dr. MLK Jr. Drive — the old neighborhood's main thoroughfare where homes and businesses once stood — is an auto body shop. Across the street is a big empty lot that was recently remediated to get rid of contaminants. In its heyday, Benham West was a community of single-family homes with well-maintained yards on walkable streets where children played. Businesses, including restaurants, bars, barbershops and barbecue joints, were beloved because they were owned by families and friends. A neighborhood church and a community center — originally called the Colored Community Center and later renamed after Booker T. Washington — helped families raise children. On holidays, residents traded cakes and pies. That's how Jackie Small, who grew up in Benham West, remembers the neighborhood. "I tell my grandchildren," she said, "'I wish you could've lived in the era that I lived in.'" But the community also seemed excluded from the rest of the city. Roberson, whose family was among those that migrated from the South in the 1950s, recalled riding his bicycle out of Benham West and to a sporting goods store downtown when he was 10 years old. Once he passed the underpass beneath the train tracks, he knew he was not welcome. "There were a couple of teenagers who were a little bit older than I was and let me know that I wasn't in the right place," Roberson said. "And so you realize that you're outside of your community." By the 1960s, Benham West had become a priority for urban renewal. City officials sought federal financing and allotted local dollars to buy and demolish properties they believed were substandard. Residents initially resisted because they did not want to lose the bonds of their community and their only church. As the Black population was pushed out of Benham West, "one can easily observe 'for sale' signs on the lawns of white homeowners," according to a 1965 article that cited a report by the Elkhart Urban League. Jamie Pitts, a professor at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary who studied the neighborhood's history, said fears that the redevelopment would entail moving Black residents into White neighborhoods prompted city officials to essentially push Benham West residents into another concentrated area even further south of the train tracks. Some did move north of the tracks — and some of them were met with trepidation and threats. Plez and Brenda Lovelady left Benham West in the 1970s and moved to a house a few miles north, where residents were predominantly White. One day, they found a cross burning in their yard. Many of the houses in Benham West had been razed by then. In their place was a public housing complex the city built a few years earlier for low-income residents. Crime, a problem that older residents said was not a huge problem before all the houses were torn down, plagued the "virtually deserted" area, according to a 1974 newspaper article. By the 1980s, the Washington Gardens public housing complex was one of the most heavily policed parts of the city. The Wolverines, former officers said, used it as their playground. A few businessowners stood firm against the city's urban renewal plans. They had sunk their life savings into their businesses and wanted to be paid a fair price. "You're talking about taking away a livelihood and a community," said Charles Walker, who grew up in Benham West. "And you can't repay that." One of those businessowners was Millsaps' uncle, Marion "Monk" Scott, who operated Monk's Bar on Benham West's main thoroughfare for decades. It was one of the last businesses the city bought because Scott refused to give it up. He rebuilt his business a few blocks south, Millsaps said. Another businessowner was Small's father, Henry Otterbridge, who owned Henry's Pool Hall where, as she put it, "everybody gathered, good or bad." In the late 1980s, when much of the old neighborhood had been demolished, the city sued Otterbridge to force him to sell his property. Otterbridge ultimately sold his business to the city, but he was required to split the money with the previous owner of of the property, which used to be a car service station before it became a pool hall, Small explained. Then, city officials later told her father he had to pay to remove gas tanks that had sat underground for years, she said. After everything, Otterbridge was left with only $35,000 to start anew. "That broke my dad," Small said. Otterbridge opened another business further south, Henry's Grocery Store, but business was slow and people kept owing him money, Small said. In the early 1990s, somebody ransacked the store and set it on fire. "After that," she said, "my dad just said, 'I tried to do what I could do, but I can't do it no more.'" The city did intend to redevelop Benham West. In fact, there were many proposals. A green space. A park. A playground. A mix of residential, industrial and commercial developments. Consultants were hired. Studies were conducted. Sketches were drawn. Thousands of dollars were spent. Promises were made. But Benham West residents felt left out of the decision-making process. In the 1980s, then-Elkhart Mayor Eleanor Kesim proposed a 23-acre park, citing the urgency to fulfill the decades-long promise. But some City Council members preferred selling chunks of Benham West to industrial developers and were concerned that building a park would indefinitely lock the city into paying for maintenance costs. A years-long impasse over whether a predominantly Black neighborhood deserved a park consumed much of Kesim's time as mayor. "My belief in our responsibility to develop Benham West after the drastic urban renewal of the 1970s dismantled whole neighborhoods has not diminished nor has my concern about the not so veiled bigotry of some citizens of this community," Kesim said in 1982, when she proposed a cheaper park the City Council rejected. "Such bigotry is childish, pathetic and indicative of minds crippled by hatred." That same year, the City Council approved a spending plan that did not include the park. Benham West residents showed up in protest. One was quoted in the paper saying, "You are against our black skins." More ideas, like building a mini-college campus, were thrown around. Kesim's successor, Mayor James Perron, reached out to a few schools, but no one committed. It also became apparent that few industrial or commercial developers wanted to build in the neighborhood. The lack of progress became a joke. The first sentence of a 1987 newspaper story read: "Being an Elkhart city official hoping for the redevelopment of the Benham West property is like being a Chicago Cubs fun. You're always waiting for next year." Perron did make some progress, but almost none of those redevelopments lasted. A museum that opened with much fanfare later moved to a different location. A Veterans of Foreign Wars post also opened, but it later shut down and became an Ivy Tech facility. That too later closed, and the building is now empty. Right next to it is a vacant site with a "For Sale" sign. "You get politicians paying lip-service to the idea of redevelopment every 5 to 10 years without much follow through," said Pitts, the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary professor. "Around 2000, a city redevelopment official was quoted in the paper saying, more or less, 'I guess it wasn't enough to just tear things down, there should have been a plan.'" The city's poor track record has led to deep skepticism for some that Elkhart will ever fulfill its promise of revitalizing the area. "One of the bigger problems we have in this city is we have meetings, and at the end of the meetings, you know what we have?" asked former Benham West resident Plez Lovelady. "Nothing but a bunch of dirty coffee cups." When he was elected mayor six years ago, Roberson found there were comprehensive development plans for several areas of Elkhart. But there still was none for Benham West. "The lack of being able to provide a comprehensive plan in order to grow that area and to do the right things in that area is political failure," he said. "It's also the failure of a community to be engaged in the process as well. It's important that I'm held accountable to do what I should be doing in those areas. But it's also important for us to be able to give the community something that it can rally around." The city now has a long-term redevelopment plan in which stakeholders have a say in what they want their neighborhood to become, Roberson said. It involves creating community assets, both in Benham West and in the surrounding neighborhood south of the tracks, that would help raise property values and draw developers to the area. One of those assets is a new 30,000-square-foot center named after two Black community leaders. The Tolson Center for Community Excellence is equipped with two gyms, a dance and exercise room, a computer and arcade room, an art center, a cafeteria with an industrial kitchen and other venues that host various programs for children. There's ongoing construction outside for a soccer field, playground, and basketball and pickleball courts. About a mile south is another recently opened center that helps adults earn a high school diploma and provides job training. Next door is the neighborhood's new and only health center. The two facilities are located in a large shopping mall the city hopes to turn into a commercial and residential area. Rebuilding the area will be a long, "tedious process," Roberson said. "But it's one with a plan," he said. "And it's one that we're going to continue to stay with as long as I'm here."
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump officials are vowing to end school desegregation orders. Some parents say they're still needed
FERRIDAY, La. — Even at a glance, the differences are obvious. The walls of Ferriday High School are old and worn, surrounded by barbed wire. Just a few miles away, Vidalia High School is clean and bright, with a new library and a crisp blue 'V' painted on orange brick. Ferriday High is 90% Black. Vidalia High is 62% white. For Black families, the contrast between the schools suggests 'we're not supposed to have the finer things,' said Brian Davis, a father in Ferriday. 'It's almost like our kids don't deserve it,' he said. The schools are part of Concordia Parish, which was ordered to desegregate 60 years ago and remains under a court-ordered plan to this day. Yet there's growing momentum to release the district — and dozens of others — from decades-old orders that some call obsolete. In a remarkable reversal, the Justice Department said it plans to start unwinding court-ordered desegregation plans dating to the Civil Rights Movement. Officials started in April, when they lifted a 1960s order in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish. Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the department's civil rights division, has said others will 'bite the dust.' It comes amid pressure from Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and his attorney general, who have called for all the state's remaining orders to be lifted. They describe the orders as burdens on districts and relics of a time when Black students were still forbidden from some schools. The orders were always meant to be temporary — school systems can be released if they demonstrate they fully eradicated segregation. Decades later, that goal remains elusive, with stark racial imbalances persisting in many districts. Civil rights groups say the orders are important to keep as tools to address the legacy of forced segregation — including disparities in student discipline, academic programs and teacher hiring. They point to cases like Concordia, where the decades-old order was used to stop a charter school from favoring white students in admissions. 'Concordia is one where it's old, but a lot is happening there,' said Deuel Ross, deputy director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. 'That's true for a lot of these cases. They're not just sitting silently.' Last year, before President Trump took office, Concordia Parish rejected a Justice Department plan that would have ended its case if the district combined several majority white and majority Black elementary and middle schools. At a town hall meeting, Vidalia residents vigorously opposed the plan, saying it would disrupt students' lives and expose their children to drugs and violence. An official from the Louisiana attorney general's office spoke against the proposal and said the Trump administration likely would change course on older orders. Accepting the plan would have been a 'death sentence' for the district, said Paul Nelson, a former Concordia superintendent. White families would have fled to private schools or other districts, said Nelson, who wants the court order removed. 'It's time to move on,' said Nelson, who left the district in 2016. 'Let's start looking to build for the future, not looking back to what our grandparents may have gone through.' At Ferriday High, athletic coach Derrick Davis supported combining schools in Ferriday and Vidalia. He said the district's disparities come into focus whenever his teams visit schools with newer sports facilities. 'It seems to me, if we'd all combine, we can all get what we need,' he said. Others oppose merging schools if it's done solely for the sake of achieving racial balance. 'Redistricting and going to different places they're not used to ... it would be a culture shock to some people,' said Ferriday's school resource officer, Marcus Martin, who, like Derrick Davis, is Black. The district's current superintendent and school board did not respond to requests for comment. Concordia is among more than 120 districts across the South that remain under desegregation orders from the 1960s and '70s, including about a dozen in Louisiana. Calling the orders historical relics is 'unequivocally false,' said Shaheena Simons, who until April led the Justice Department section that oversees school desegregation cases. 'Segregation and inequality persist in our schools, and they persist in districts that are still under desegregation orders,' she said. With court orders in place, families facing discrimination can reach out directly to the Justice Department or seek relief from the court. Otherwise, the only recourse is a lawsuit, which many families can't afford, Simons said. In Concordia, the order played into a battle over a charter school that opened in 2013 on the former campus of an all-white private school. To protect the area's progress on racial integration, a judge ordered Delta Charter School to build a student body that reflected the district's racial demographics. But in its first year, the school was just 15% Black. After a court challenge, Delta was ordered to give priority to Black students. Today, about 40% of its students are Black. Desegregation orders have been invoked recently in other cases around the state. One led to an order to address disproportionately high rates of discipline for Black students, and in another a predominantly Black elementary school was relocated from a site close to a chemical plant. The Trump administration was able to close the Plaquemines case with little resistance because the original plaintiffs were no longer involved — the Justice Department was litigating the case alone. Concordia and an unknown number of other districts are in the same situation, making them vulnerable to quick dismissals. Concordia's case dates to 1965, when the area was strictly segregated and home to a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. When Black families in Ferriday sued for access to all-white schools, the federal government intervened. As the district integrated its schools, white families fled Ferriday. The district's schools came to reflect the demographics of their surrounding areas. Ferriday is mostly Black and low-income, while Vidalia is mostly white and takes in tax revenue from a hydroelectric plant. A third town in the district, Monterey, has a high school that's 95% white. At the December town hall, Vidalia resident Ronnie Blackwell said the area 'feels like a Mayberry, which is great,' referring to the fictional Southern town from 'The Andy Griffith Show.' The federal government, he said, has 'probably destroyed more communities and school systems than it ever helped.' Under its court order, Concordia must allow students in majority Black schools to transfer to majority white schools. It also files reports on teacher demographics and student discipline. After failing to negotiate a resolution with the Justice Department, Concordia is scheduled to make its case that the judge should dismiss the order, according to court documents. Meanwhile, amid a wave of resignations in the federal government, all but two of the Justice Department lawyers assigned to the case have left. Without court supervision, Brian Davis sees little hope for improvement. 'A lot of parents over here in Ferriday, they're stuck here because here they don't have the resources to move their kids from A to B,' he said. 'You'll find schools like Ferriday — the term is, to me, slipping into darkness.' Binkley and Lurye write for the Associated Press. T
a day ago
Trump officials are vowing to end school desegregation orders. Some parents say they're still needed
FERRIDAY, La. -- Even at a glance, the differences are obvious. The walls of Ferriday High School are old and worn, surrounded by barbed wire. Just a few miles away, Vidalia High School is clean and bright, with a new library and a crisp blue 'V' painted on orange brick. Ferriday High is 90% Black. Vidalia High is 62% white. For Black families, the contrast between the schools suggests 'we're not supposed to have the finer things,' said Brian Davis, a father in Ferriday. 'It's almost like our kids don't deserve it,' he said. The schools are part of Concordia Parish, which was ordered to desegregate 60 years ago and remains under a court-ordered plan to this day. Yet there's growing momentum to release the district — and dozens of others — from decades-old orders that some call obsolete. In a remarkable reversal, the Justice Department said it plans to start unwinding court-ordered desegregation plans dating to the Civil Rights Movement. Officials started in April, when they lifted a 1960s order in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish. Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the department's civil rights division, has said others will 'bite the dust.' It comes amid pressure from Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and his attorney general, who have called for all the state's remaining orders to be lifted. They describe the orders as burdens on districts and relics of a time when Black students were still forbidden from some schools. The orders were always meant to be temporary — school systems can be released if they demonstrate they fully eradicated segregation. Decades later, that goal remains elusive, with stark racial imbalances persisting in many districts. Civil rights groups say the orders are important to keep as tools to address the legacy of forced segregation — including disparities in student discipline, academic programs and teacher hiring. They point to cases like Concordia, where the decades-old order was used to stop a charter school from favoring white students in admissions. 'Concordia is one where it's old, but a lot is happening there,' said Deuel Ross, deputy director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. 'That's true for a lot of these cases. They're not just sitting silently.' Last year, before President Donald Trump took office, Concordia Parish rejected a Justice Department plan that would have ended its case if the district combined several majority white and majority Blac k elementary and middle schools. At a town hall meeting, Vidalia residents vigorously opposed the plan, saying it would disrupt students' lives and expose their children to drugs and violence. An official from the Louisiana attorney general's office spoke against the proposal and said the Trump administration likely would change course on older orders. Accepting the plan would have been a 'death sentence' for the district, said Paul Nelson, a former Concordia superintendent. White families would have fled to private schools or other districts, said Nelson, who wants the court order removed. 'It's time to move on,' said Nelson, who left the district in 2016. 'Let's start looking to build for the future, not looking back to what our grandparents may have gone through.' At Ferriday High, athletic coach Derrick Davis supported combining schools in Ferriday and Vidalia. He said the district's disparities come into focus whenever his teams visit schools with newer sports facilities. 'It seems to me, if we'd all combine, we can all get what we need,' he said. Others oppose merging schools if it's done solely for the sake of achieving racial balance. 'Redistricting and going to different places they're not used to ... it would be a culture shock to some people," said Ferriday's school resource officer, Marcus Martin, who, like Derrick Davis, is Black. The district's current superintendent and school board did not respond to requests for comment. Concordia is among more than 120 districts across the South that remain under desegregation orders from the 1960s and '70s, including about a dozen in Louisiana. Calling the orders historical relics is 'unequivocally false,' said Shaheena Simons, who until April led the Justice Department section that oversees school desegregation cases. 'Segregation and inequality persist in our schools, and they persist in districts that are still under desegregation orders,' she said. With court orders in place, families facing discrimination can reach out directly to the Justice Department or seek relief from the court. Otherwise, the only recourse is a lawsuit, which many families can't afford, Simons said. In Concordia, the order played into a battle over a charter school that opened in 2013 on the former campus of an all-white private school. To protect the area's progress on racial integration, a judge ordered Delta Charter School to build a student body that reflected the district's racial demographics. But in its first year, the school was just 15% Black. After a court challenge, Delta was ordered to give priority to Black students. Today, about 40% of its students are Black. Desegregation orders have been invoked recently in other cases around the state. One led to an order to address disproportionately high rates of discipline for Black students, and in another a predominantly Black elementary school was relocated from a site close to a chemical plant. The Trump administration was able to close the Plaquemines case with little resistance because the original plaintiffs were no longer involved — the Justice Department was litigating the case alone. Concordia and an unknown number of other districts are in the same situation, making them vulnerable to quick dismissals. Concordia's case dates to 1965, when the area was strictly segregated and home to a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. When Black families in Ferriday sued for access to all-white schools, the federal government intervened. As the district integrated its schools, white families fled Ferriday. The district's schools came to reflect the demographics of their surrounding areas. Ferriday is mostly Black and low-income, while Vidalia is mostly white and takes in tax revenue from a hydroelectric plant. A third town in the district, Monterey, has a high school that's 95% white. At the December town hall, Vidalia resident Ronnie Blackwell said the area 'feels like a Mayberry, which is great,' referring to the fictional Southern town from 'The Andy Griffith Show.' The federal government, he said, has 'probably destroyed more communities and school systems than it ever helped.' Under its court order, Concordia must allow students in majority Black schools to transfer to majority white schools. It also files reports on teacher demographics and student discipline. After failing to negotiate a resolution with the Justice Department, Concordia is scheduled to make its case that the judge should dismiss the order, according to court documents. Meanwhile, amid a wave of resignations in the federal government, all but two of the Justice Department lawyers assigned to the case have left. Without court supervision, Brian Davis sees little hope for improvement. 'A lot of parents over here in Ferriday, they're stuck here because here they don't have the resources to move their kids from A to B," he said. 'You'll find schools like Ferriday — the term is, to me, slipping into darkness."
