Education- House and Senate

Good morning. I call the uh Senate House Education Committee to order. Glad to have you all here. It's been an interesting summer. But we have a lot of work to do today, so we will be doing this uh all day, but we will break up hopefully around 11:30 and come back at one and finish up our, our business for the afternoon. So, first thing this morning, I'd like to, um, recognize Lee Posey, who's here with the Southern Regional Education Board. If you'd stand up, please. And so we are, we are very fortunate to have her with us and we work a lot with the SREB every year. Um, they provide a lot of services for us. So we, we appreciate you being here and coming to our committee meeting. Thank you. And I'd like to recognize uh Representative Brooks for uh some introductions. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, uh, I want to recognize a group that we have with us today here at colleagues Team Breakaway, which is a competitive robotics team from Cersei. Uh, they represent Arkansas regional and international competitions for world robotics. They're here today along with the director of First Robotics, uh, to talk with members of the community about competitive robotics in schools, uh, and, and I will say that if, if none of you have seen a robotics competition at any of our high schools. It's really. Going in popularity here in the state of Arkansas and all over the world, if you haven't had a chance to do that, I had the opportunity to go see a competitive robotics meet, uh, at, uh, Cersei's new arena back last spring, and it will amaze you in every way at the talent of these young men and women. It will also make you feel very inadequate in your in terms of your own intelligence. Uh, so I would encourage you to, to get to know them. They're here seated in the the red shirts and behind them recognize them and want to thank them for being here today. Thank you very much. And then, um, Representative Brian Evans. You're gonna talk to us a little bit about our new, um, system here. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, members, so just, uh, kind of a couple of reminders, uh, and you probably received all the, uh, new notes on the new AV system. We're very proud of that and the work that BLR has done on this, um, you come into a meeting, uh, if you are a member of that committee, your seat should already be lit up with your name on the plate. Uh, if you are not on the committee, then you are welcome to sit in any seat that says Bureau of Legislative Research, um, Your code for House members, uh, these are four-digit pins that you will key in, uh, for House members, your pins, uh, to key into the system is 10 and then your district number. So if your district is 43, then you would key in 1043, and then that will light, light up, uh, uh, for your nameplate and put you into the system so that when you queue up we know who you are for Senate members, uh, European members are 01 and then your district number. Uh, so we started working with the system yesterday. It seems to be working very well. We have a couple of representatives, uh, here from IT. These gentlemen are here in the back. Uh, they are very quick and responsive. If you need some help, just wave at them or wave at us and we'll get someone over there to help you. Uh, to indicate that you'd like to be recognized to speak, just press the button in front of you, uh, the base of your mic stand, uh, on the base of the mic stand, there's a light on the sign in front of you and then a light on your mic that will light up red that puts you into the queue. Uh, and then once the chairs recognize you, you will light up green, so you don't have to, you don't have to touch anything else. Uh, we'll light it up green for you. Um, going in, looking into the future, they're still working on some of this, but, uh, there's a tab there that shows documents, uh, that will be loaded onto your screen also. So instead of everything being in front of you in paper form, you'll also be able to view all of that on, uh, on your screen. So, uh, Mac Ay is, is almost complete. Mac B still working on that, but we should have those projects completed very soon. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. OK, without objection we are going to um move the, um. Prison. Oh, we do, first we have to do. Consider, uh, we have to, um, uh, make motion to upset, accept last. Beatings minutes. Do I hear a motion? Second, That all in favor. All opposed. Thank you very much. So without objection, we will move the, um, presentation of the health insurance funding, um, for the next school year, um, up to this, uh, be heard first on the list. So, Mr. um, Patrick, are you here? Oh, good. Thank you. If you would identify yourself, please, and then you may make a presentation. Yes, I'm Patrick Klein with the Segal Group. Good morning, everyone. All right, before I get into the numbers, uh, have a few comments. So I'm here to talk about the public school funding and make a recommendation. Uh, first off, the, the funding for the plan is really 3 levers. You've got the employee contributions. You've got the district contribution. And you've got the Department of Ed amount, which has been a flat dollar amount. So historically, The minimum contribution has changed a little bit. Most recently, it decreased from $300 to $234 and, uh, July of 2023. The state of the plan, currently you have $250 million in assets. So you're in a, a very strong place financially, but. The reason why this conversation is important is that the trajectory of the fund in 2025 and beyond is in a negative position. So your expenses are projected to be larger than your revenue, and that's gonna compound year over year. From an assumption standpoint, we're using Milman's cost projections. Uh, they're the actuary for, for the plan and we're really focused on how the funding changes. And the one deviation from that is that Milman, uh, is the PBM and I reached out to them for the latest pharmacy rebates. And the number they provided was quite a bit higher than what uh what was in Milman's projection. So we're using that higher amount, um, And then we're assuming the district contribution when it changes, it will change at the beginning of the year, the beginning of the calendar year January 1st. And any changes to the Department of Ed funding would be on a fiscal year basis, therefore July 1st. And we're talking a lot about medical CPI, so the goal is for the, the expenses and the revenue to be aligned and then the funding to increase at a medical CPI. So long term that CPI number is 4%. That's our calculation. If you look at Millman's cost trends, the cost trend is, is around 6%, so it's a little bit higher, but the goal is for the plan to to manage those costs down to the 4%, you know, through RFPs, through programs, um, so, you know, long term, the, the 4% should be doable. All right, so I'm gonna get into some numbers now. So first off, we've got our baseline and this slide shows the projection if there's no changes to funding whatsoever. So you lock in it to 23,450. You can see in that top row that that number stays constant throughout the lifetime of the projection to 2029. The other lever that we have that could increase is the Department of Ed funding. And that's, that's the 4th row there. You can see $142 million. We're assuming that stays constant. Employee funding, so that's the employee contributions, those rates have been approved. There's a long term schedule, um, so you can see they change a little bit, um, but those, those have been preset, so we're not altering those throughout our scenarios. And if you look at, at 2024 down at the bottom, you can see that we're projecting the year to end with a $10,000. Net income or a gain on the assets and the assets to end at $250 million versus a target reserve of 65 million. So there's a, a sizable surplus, around $185 million. As we go out to future years, if you don't address the funding, you can see that that loss in the, you know, the yellow or orange row, it continues to grow. And when we get out to 2028, there's actually a projected negative $17 million in plant assets. So The point here is that while things look really strong financially in 2024, as we get out to 2027, 2028, it quickly becomes a problem. So this next scenario is if we increase the funding that we can control, which is the Department of Ed funding and the district contribution. If we increase those at CPI starting in 2025. So this is going to give us a little more funding than we saw in the last scenario. Yet when we look at the net income across the various years, There's still a loss, and it's a sizable loss. So, uh, in the last scenario, the fund went negative in 2028. He, it gives us one extra year and the fund goes negative in 2029 at a negative $12 million. So There needs to be an adjustment done outside of just the the CPI, the 4% increase on the funding. So the last side is the recommendation. And this is that we increase the 234 to 300 plus medical CPI, so 300 + x 4% that gets you to the 312. So it's like we reestablish that base at 3:12 and then that funding amount grows at the 4% in future years. We also increased the Department of Ed funding at the 4% CPI. And as you can see, this makes the plan, the assets are still well above the target reserve even out to 2029, and this will stabilize. The fund So I think those are my prepared remarks uh open for questions or discussion? That's it, we have some questions from the committee. Everybody's comfortable. Representative Long. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I was wondering, uh, what percentage, I guess, of the, um, the employees are using the high deductible type programs, uh, or, or plans. Yeah, I, I believe last time I checked it was around. 20%. That's that's like the medical savings account type plan, um, if Did y'all look at, you know, what the, the change would be in the long run if we could increase the number of people in that plan, or, you know, has that plan. It went up, um, I guess correspondingly with the others as far as the, the lower deductible plan. So, so one of the things I'm the, the actuary for the BLR, um, so Milman is the actuary for the plan, so they're in the weeds with all the. You know, the claims forecast day to day. And so I relied on their presentation from June on the cost piece. Um, so no, I didn't factor in, you know, migration of More people to the high deductible plan. I'm, I'm going off of what Milman had projected. I looked at their presentation and their numbers seem reasonable, but yeah, there was no scenarios where I was modeling, you know, different, uh, plan changes or migration or anything like that so the projected premium increases were basically the same for, you know, a $500 deductible type plan as it would be for, you know, the, uh, the medical savings accounts, maybe with a $7000 deduction. The contributions. That employees pay or the cost? No, the, the actual cost so the cost I think they blend it all together and they're using a 6% medical trend for for the overall population. OK, thank you. Representative. Thank you, Madam Chair. You mentioned that you used a different pharmaceutical uh number, could you elaborate? Yeah, so Navius is a new PBM that was put in and it's been pretty, it's it's early, uh. And there hasn't been a whole lot of rebate activity thus far. So, um, that was one of our recognition early on that we knew that, that a new PBM would get an increase in rebates. So I looked at Millman's projections. I saw the rebate level was held fairly constant. Um, so I was curious and I asked Navidis, the PBM to provide data on the most recent rebate payments and it was a higher run rate than what was projected, so, uh, Asavvidis and their actuarial team to project out future rebates for the plan, and those are the numbers that I'm using that are about $1000 higher than what Milman had in their projections. field Madam Chair, have you seen A trend one way or the other or more or less people using. The health insurance then used it in the past, or did you say that that's not a part of the, of what you're doing? It's not a part of what I'm doing. I could speak to it on a national level just there's, there's definitely more utilization and that's, that's a function of the trends, just the market trends in general, why we're projecting a 6% growth. Some of that's cost, the cost when you go to the doctor or you go to the hospital, uh, but we also see usually 1 to 2% projected utilization increase. As well. Well, the reason I ask is because This is a predominantly female occupation. And in the past, more people took advantage of their spouse's health insurance. Than the state's health insurance, and I'm wondering, has that trend continued or are we seeing more women avail themselves, and I know it's not a completely female, um, profession, but it is predominantly so, or more females taking advantage of their ability to get their own health insurance. than in the past. Or have you even looked at it? Yeah, I have to follow up on that. It looked, it looked like when, when I looked at the contracts by tier so employee, employee plus spouse, family. It was pretty consistent year after year. So I haven't seen a lot of change, um, as far as, you know, spouses using the state insurance versus their own. It was pretty consistent, so I haven't seen a dramatic shift. All right, thank you. Thank you, Madam. Representative Brooks, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for putting this together and I may have missed this as you were initially presenting the projections, the sources of funding, the other category. What was the, that's largely rebates, the pharmacy rebates make up the bulk of that. There's some other ancillary amounts that are relatively small, um. But the bulk of that other is, is rebates and we have an expectation that in 25 we will have a decrease in rebates. Yes. And, and so that that was came from Navidas. It's pretty close. Um, and typically your rebates would grow year after year with, with your pharmacy projected cost. Humira is a. Big time drug where there was a lot of rebates and they've moved how they're going to rebate that drug, so instead of charging a large amount and then giving you a high rebate, they're moving to a lower net cost philosophy and so that's what I asked that same question. I said, why are the rebates not growing in 2025. So Humira is a huge piece of that. So you should have lower topline cost, uh, but that has a major impact on the rebates themselves. So theoretically, it, it ends up being cost neutral neutral. Thank you. I think what it looks like that's it. Thank you very much. Well, thanks for your time. OK, moving right along. We will go to, um, are the uh. Merit teacher incentive program update, so I believe that Secretary Aliva and and um. Carly Cerini. If you would identify yourselves, please, you'll be recognized. Good morning, Jacob Oliva, Secretary of Education, great state of Arkansas. Carly Saracini, Assistant Commissioner of Educator Effectiveness in Leener. Go ahead. OK. So I believe we do have a little bit of a PowerPoint that we're gonna put on display. Oh, thank you, and, uh, share some data, but I think it's important for the legislative delegation to know that I think as of today, if my numbers are correct, we have all of our schools open and so far doing very well and welcoming back our young scholars and want to thank all of our administrators, our school officials, and our teachers for working tirelessly to make sure that when our students came back. They had a high quality learning environment to learn, so we're really excited about all the wonderful work that's happening throughout the state. But today, um, to provide an update on the actual payment distributions of the teacher incentive program, the merit pay that we have put out if you recall, uh, we were here in June. Neither. Yeah that's there. So we were here in June and we had uh worked on developing the rules that were going to help define the different categories to determine eligibility for the teachers to qualify. And if I just want to remind everybody that when we established those work groups, we were really diligent on making sure that those work groups were reflected of educators all across the state because we wanted to make sure that every teacher, regardless of subject, regardless of level, regardless of, uh, their teaching assignment that they would be able to be eligible and qualify and be recognized for their outstanding work. So, uh, when we did the rules, we wanted to make sure that those teachers' voices were reflected in those work groups and committees, and then, um, as we go through payments, we want to provide a distribution that's not. So let me uh find the PowerPoint. OK. there. All right, so I think we got it up and running. So when we first presented the rules. Um, to the legislative delegation we had kind of some estimates of where we thought it would qualify, but then we go through all the data and now everything's finalized, so we're really excited about being able to provide an update that shows a pretty wide distribution, uh, all across the state recognizing teachers across several different levels we had about a $100 million allocation that was set by the legislature and we wanted to make sure that we're able to recognize every teacher that is deserving of this merit. So there's a couple of rules that we had established in place that a teacher had to be licensed, um, and then we wanted to follow their qualifications and then have different categories for what determine eligibility and we're going to go into a little bit of detail. But at the end of the day, we recognize about the top 10% of our teachers across the state. So that is something I think, uh, collectively we want to celebrate, uh, if we know in education, uh, the literature and research is very clear. The number one impact on improving. Student learning is the talented teacher standing in front of the students each and every single day. So these teachers, um, consistently go above and beyond, and we're really, uh, proud to be able to recognize them and then you can see that the average teacher bonus there was a, a pretty good range, but the average teacher bonus across the board was around $3300. And, uh, over 40 teachers qualify for that top $10,000 merit pay in, in this PowerPoint, I believe that that map is also interactive. and you can hover over the district and see the number of teachers that qualified, um, within each part of the region of the state. So some of the qualifications, um, that we just want to remind everybody is that they had to have an annual rating of effective or highly effective, and then there was some teachers that qualified because they demonstrated outstanding growth, then there are some teachers that qualified because they were teaching in a critical shortage area or a hard to staff geographical location. And then there's a bunch of teachers that qualified as well for being mentors or they had master teacher. Resignations or they have demonstrated that they go above and beyond in some sort of capacity or role within their school. So there is a lot of different ways and in fact some of the teachers were able to qualify for multiple areas in those wards increased based on the number of different um qualifications they have as they were stackable. So the questions we get asked a lot is, is clarifying miscommunication because I get calls um from even people in this room that says, well, if somebody taught kindergarten, they don't. qualify automatically because they don't have a test of subject area. Well, that's not true because kindergarten teachers had different ways to qualify, especially if they're a master teacher, uh, maybe they taught in a geographical location and you can see even on this slide, uh, for kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade teachers, we recognized over 2001 teachers across the state for demonstrating outstanding performance. And when you look at the percentage of teachers and where they broke down to, this also included teachers. Of non-core subject areas like computer science, fine arts teachers, career in technical education teachers qualified, um, even school counselors, library media specialists, so depending on where you taught, what you taught, how well you performed, because you still had to be rated highly effective, um, also determine whether or not you would qualify to receive some sort of merit. And, um, I think what's what's kind of neat as we're going into this school year, cause it it was a new program where we had to establish the rules and there's a lot of uncertainty on what this is going to look like, but now that we've really kind of defined the things that we think are of value after year one, we're already seeing a large increase of teachers asking us how do I become a masterly teacher? How do I become a mentor? How do I qualify for one of these, um, different. Maybe non-tested tested subject areas, uh, programs because I want to be eligible. I'm highly effective. I have a high impact and I wanna make sure that um I get recognized as well, so we're seeing a lot of um good positive inquiries and we're gonna see an upward, I think, trend in teachers wanting to go back and learn more and perfect their craft even even greater. When you kind of break down who, who the teachers were, we, we got a pretty good spread, but overall, when you look at the median performance, it was about 14 years of experience of of everybody when you aggregated it altogether of the teachers that qualified to just 3000 teachers or so. So we wanted to provide an update, um, because I know the legislative delegation was, was asking those very specific questions now that we have the rules in place, how are we, are we going to get the money, um, out the door and we were able to get these roles adopted in place in all the. Disbursements uh uh before our kind of July 1 deadline and then we're able to come back and present an update on, on how this worked today. So with that chair, I'll turn it back to see if there's any questions. Good, we have some questions here. Um, Senator Chesterfield, 11 2nd. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair and good morning, Mr. Secretary. Good morning, Miss. Um, his deputy. We had about 3000 people who received Of the merit pay. How many teachers do we have currently? And teaching in the state of Arkansas. Roughly about 30,000, but when we look at merit pay, uh, again, it was a, you had to have a license, so we have quite a few out there on waivers that do not have a license, so, uh, when you, when Secretary Lea talks about that 10% we're looking at who are licensed in the state. So we're talking about 10% of the licensed individuals and there's over 20,000 of them just to be on the safe side, is that correct? That is correct. How many of them got raises otherwise. So that's That was something that each local school district would have to establish, so if you remember with Learn's implementation, we raised the starting teacher salary to ensure that everybody got at least $50,000. And if you're already at the threshold to get at least $2000. So this past school year is every district established their own salary schedule, so it would vary by district and right now I don't believe we've collected that data well, going forward, um, a number of them sent me copies of their. Salary schedules. And it seems that that 50,000 is in place for the next 5 years in the salary schedule. Which means then that we are anticipating people working for the same salary. For the next 5 years. What is our plan on retention? We know what we have now, you've established to some extent your, well, I guess you have established completely your Your determinants. Of what constitutes a meritorious person. But if we are anticipating individuals working for the next 5 years at the same rate of pay. What are we putting in place for retention because most folks are not gonna work for the same thing. For 5 years in a row with no increase in In salary and I know these are local issues, but as secretary, what is your overall plan for retention other than. This bonus, which does not impact the vast majority of individuals in the profession. So I think that's a great question and that's something that we're going to work with the legislative delegation moving into the next session as we establish budget. Um, I would say it's not a lack of desire for school districts to wanna pay teachers more I'm it's not. That's not the issue. They don't have the money. They say that's why we got to look at as we go forward and and go through this adequate see process to look at unrestricted dollars and that's something that, yeah, we can look at increasing categoricals for teacher salaries, but as I work with superintendents and school districts, they're also looking at increases in unrestricted dollars cause they also want to do something for bus drivers for food service workers and and establish um. Salary schedules that increase for everybody across the educational family. So that's why as we go moving forward we've established that baseline. We've set that minimum, and in fact. You're hearing from a handful of districts that have only maintained the 50,000 for 5 years cause there are, I can show you just as many districts that well exceed that, um, each and every single year, so I, as we go forward, I think the conversation is, let's get some more accurate real-time information and data and if we are finding this risk or stagnant, we can follow up with those districts and help look at some innovative strategies so that they can develop a solid schedule that works best for them. That would be helpful. Me as one who is exiting states left, um, it would be helpful to me because the majority of those persons are the majority of those districts who have shared with whom or from whom I've gotten this information of poor districts. Uh, we know that we have several districts that exceed the 50,000. And they're the ones who usually attract the individuals, um, North West Arkansas now is challenged because of housing. And the unaffordability of housing, which is, I think, something that they're going to have to deal with. But when we're dealing with smaller districts that don't have a huge tax base that they're 42 meals don't generate the same as the 42 meals somewhere else. The challenge is there and I think you know the challenge is there. And the challenge also is how do we maintain. The level of camaraderie within districts when I got 10,000 and you didn't get a dime. That is also going to be an issue, right? Well, this is also based on merit, right? So we, we, we're looking for evidence of impact and, and a lot of times in, in one of the challenges with salary schedules is based on thats schedule, you could have unsatisfactory teachers that are hurting students get an automatic raise, and we don't want that either, so it, it camaraderie is about the culture that the leaders help establish in the district and when I think of communities that you're discussing, there, there's Some bright spots and maybe we can do an update on some of the work that's happening in Earl where the the city, um, mayor and the superintendent are meeting collaborative address the exact same issues we want to get families to move here. So we're going to make sure our educational system is working with the local business community and get affordable housing. In fact, I'm going to Lee, uh, County Schools later this week because they're working on a teacher housing project as well and get an update. So there's some sparks of innovation that will help with that. It's not gonna solve all of it, but, but there are some best practices already happening in this state that if we can learn more about it and share those best practices, and I think it helps become contagious. Let us hope so and uh. Congratulations on establishing your Your benchmarks for what constitutes this, the only other question I have is. Is an individual who is in special in a special needs class, is that where the Um, merit would come from teaching in that because it's a hard to feel area? Is that how we do that it could be. Designated as a, a hard to staff area, they could also be in a geographic location, but they also can demonstrate outstanding performance, student performance as well, so there's multiple different measures and that teacher could also be a mentor to new teachers I guess I'm wondering because having worked in a CBI school. How does one measure that? That's, that's my concern, how to make sure that I know how they work automatically. Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chair. Madam Chair. Um Representative Duke. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I got a couple of quick questions. Thank you all for being here today and I'm really excited about what y'all are doing here with this, uh, merit incentive. I went to a Um, welcome back day and they recognize the teachers in that district that got that pay, and it was interesting on a couple of levels because one, they were super excited and so seeing that joy, but also around to your cultural point, the staff that were proud and excited for them too. So that was really nice, but it was also nice to see it confirm what we had seen in those teachers over the years in the community, but also in their scores. It was, I wasn't surprised by the ones that had been received that award. So a couple of questions I had. Number one, when a teacher moves or maybe goes to a different grade level or goes to a different district. Do those scores still track for them? So that's my first question. Would you, and I'll just give you a couple of them and then you can go ahead. And then, um, they're nodding yes, so it looks like that's, you got that answer. And then the second question is. Do districts, have you heard of any districts that have done their own merit incentives on top of the mayor of the state has done because I think that's one of the most creative pieces they've got the, um, salary schedule that they can do themselves, but also the ability to do their own merit incentives. So has anyone taken advantage of that that you are aware of? Yeah. So the, the first question is when you look at the student gross score, the value added measure growth is considered a three-year aggregate snapshot, so if the teacher moves the school or moves to a different subject area that 3 year average would follow them whether or not the new assignment factors into that, I think depends on what grade level they're teaching, which subject area, and how that would match up. So the data would stay with the teacher as long as that 3. aggregate is able to be calculated. And then are there districts that have come up with their own teacher in Santa Fe, yeah, yes, we've heard of stories where where teachers have embraced it or school districts have embraced it or matched it or said that we're gonna expand it and open the eligibility categories, say the state recognized these folks, but we feel like there's some other categories that we want to take on our own, um, you may want to add to that. Yes, we've had several districts talk to us about the uh teachers being recognized that at our level. But want to take it to their own level. We're, they're also relooking at, especially that master and lead designation, uh, looking at that as maybe equivalent to a master's degree on their salary schedules. So they're really thinking outside the box of looking at uh what our teachers, how are teachers impacting our students and how we can celebrate that. Thank you, Representative Beatty. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, my question, um, It's no good deed, I guess, goes unpunished. Some of some of the districts could, could you discuss some of the, some of the issues where districts may be due to unintended consequences and, and what, how you've addressed the merit so that they're better performing teachers maybe for a portion of the year, they were out with health care issues or, or something that prevented some of their better educators from being able to receive the merit pay and, and what adjustments that, that, that you're looking at in the plan to cover, cover some of those areas, even maybe how they had. An educator classified when they're split between many roles at the school. And, and how, um, how this will benefit in the future. Sure. So you're, you're right, and one thing that we always remind our school districts is data governance matters and your data is only as good as what you submit, and we have definitely worked with districts where they have found coding errors that may not even be in recent cycles this past school year. It may have been 2 or 3 years ago where a teacher may have been miscoded in the wrong subject. Um, we, we've also found, um, opportunities to help verify. Uh, those teaching roles with school districts because. If, if they're not certain that the coding was correctly attributed to the right students, it was an issue, so in fact this past. School year this past spring for the first time in this state, we actually did teacher roster verification because the state did not do that, and that was one of the things, um, when we started looking at teacher data being attributed to students that we recognize like some of this data isn't as clear as it should be, so the data is gonna get a lot clearer moving forward cause we get a more accurate snapshot in time. And then the other part about, um. That data governance, not even just reporting rosters, right? It teacher evaluations matter too in reporting those evaluations in the Craig database accurately, um, is, is some of those unintended consequences where it may not have gotten submitted. So, uh, we're, we're gonna work with school districts because we want to get it right and if the teacher's eligible and qualifies, they deserve it, they've earned it. We need to recognize, um, the, the hard work that they've put forward to to get the dollars they deserve. So our intention moving forward. is we've got this baseline, we've established the criteria. We're still going to continue to work and train school districts on how teachers can become eligible because we want to expand that pool to as many teachers as we can. Thank you, sir. I, I just want to applaud you for the efforts that y'all have, have taken at Department of Ed and, you know, the, the impact of a five-year stagnant, uh, salary of $50,000. These educators would have never hit $50,000 on, on the baseline salary, their entire career That's a valid point too, so I, I appreciate you and I thank you for your hard work. Thank you, Madam Chair, and you just kind of hit on it, so just a brief summary so I don't, you know, get too repetitious here. When it comes to identifying the balance of the teachers that have not received any of the merit pay or any of the reward pay combination of the of the district's responsibility and the Department of Ed's responsibility or does the lion's share fall on the local district or how would that play out? I mean, if we, if we identify the barriers, what do we do to help those teachers overcome those? Barriers so they can qualify. I think it's a combination of both, and this is why we, we're getting on the phone, we're doing webinars so that we can hear from districts some of the challenges that they may be seeing in the portal, but then also they can hear the districts can hear straight from us about the data that's being submitted. So step one, teacher roster verification was a big deal. That was a lot of work. So now we have every district sign up in the teachers go through a portal, the principals go through the portal, superintendents go through a portal that says in the computer, this is what I'm uh assigned to teach these subject areas at these times, and these are the students that I'm teaching, is that right? Yes or no? We never did that before. Ever So we're gonna get more sophisticated, so it's hard to go back in those that 3 years aggregate data those past two years prior to that, because we can only go by what was submitted, but as we get more sophisticated, the data is going to be a lot cleaner. This, um, in, in the coming weeks we're rolling out our unified coordinated progress monitoring system for the first time, K through 10, everybody's gonna be enrolled in the same platform and we'll be able to give real-time accurate information to teachers. leaders, parents, and students, uh, as early as the next couple of weeks so that they can start monitoring their growth and performance as well. And refresh my memory as they come online and they qualify. The cost. Of the increase to their salary or the bonus is going to be picked up by the school district or supplemented by, uh, what we'll do as legislators, help me get my mind around where's the money coming from? because we want them to increase, but that means they're going to be increased costs. Where's that coming from? So we, we have a ceiling in, in the current. Pass the budget of $100 million which is why you can see that we allocated up to that $10,000. Now that we've set those qualifications, we want to see those numbers come up, so going through this session, we can look at increasing that categorical. I think there's some opportunity to look at other teacher type merit, um, allocations that are currently in the state budget that we're not hitting the ceiling, and maybe be blend the two like the national board. Um, teachers salary allocation categorical is what, 1518 million and we're not hitting that ceiling, so there's current dollars in the state budget that could help fund an increase or we would have to also adjust the numbers and the amount of the amount of awards, how much the award is free to the different categories. All right, and then. As far as forecasting in a, in a perfect world if all those teachers hit the marks, the total cost associated with that, are you even going down that trail or have you got that number figured out that if all the teachers hit their marks with that dollar value would be because part of the reason I'm asking that is yesterday we sat in a meeting about Department of Corrections and what it's going to cost to provide health insurance and I'm sitting here thinking as legislator, it, it's gonna be, the budget's gonna get hit pretty hard. So I'd kinda like to know if you got that number. So, and these are just projections, right, based on, on trends if if if we would see the number of teachers eligible triple, which I think is a realistic goal to say the top 30% of our teachers have demonstrated significant growth and impact on students, that categorical would range to about $25 million which is why I think there's opportunity to look at the pot of money for National board certification because that's one of the criteria that you already qualify into this program and the 10 million that's already allocated that would be able to sustain in your current budget without increasing just being able to adjust some language to blend the two revenue streams that that would cover that and um I think it would be great as a state to keep expanding to at least the top 30%. So the message is the money's there if you want to do the work to get there, the money's there. Currently. And Correct. Currently, as long as you do what you said. All right. Thank you. Representative V. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good work. I appreciate all the evidence that you brought to us today and the numbers. Um, you were when you were first talking, you were talking about you had teachers reaching out to you to see how they could qualify what they needed to do. So, it may be a two-part question, but who turns in the data for you to pick what teachers get. The, the bonus. How does that, how do you pick those teachers out? And 2, how are the teachers knowing if they're, do they have to always reach out to you to get the to get the information to. know how to be qualified or does the supers give them that? Does the principals give them that? How are we getting out to the teachers to know how to qualify. Our, our state agency takes a snapshot of data throughout the school year, and they're called different cycles and in different cycles, there's different sets of data that we're required districts to report that they know we're going to grab and then there's an opportunity to edit and update that data so the data that we get for teacher evaluation and student performance comes directly from those cycles and then we're able to aggregate those reports. Um, one of the things that we want to consistently do is provide updates to teachers throughout the year on how they can become eligible, you know, we, we do webinars as superintendents. We hope that gets shared with principles. We hope that happens to teachers, but I, but I can tell you like we, we did a, a summit, um, an agency summer we're at probably over 1000 teachers that attended it to to give them information so they can share with their peers. I think the teacher merit pay was some of the most highly attended. Sessions that we had because it's new, right? And we want to do our due diligence and share that information. But I, but I can tell you I've, I've already talked to folks that are leading some of the professional development work to say become a master lead teacher. And I, I talked to some of them a few weeks ago, uh, once this started rolling out and they're like they, they told me like Jacob, you know, last year we had about 250 teachers sign up to go to this program right now we're over 500, right? So word is getting out, maybe not as clear and as kind and as quick, but I think this is a good thing because they earn that designation. It's a, it's a commitment to year-long professional learning and you're providing evidence and you're getting feedback and you're gonna become uh a more impactful teacher, so it's, there's a lot of work to be done, uh, as far as communication, but we're, we're gonna keep. Uh, full steam ahead. I appreciate your work. Representative fight. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a happy question. When will Teacher of the Year be announced? That's a great question. So we had our 14 regional finalists and I want to say it's about a week or two ago we named the top, the top 4. So, um, if it was up to me, I'd say all 4 of them were the annual Teacher of the year. Um, there's a committee that's going through the process to make recommendations and typically, uh, we don't want to go during the 1st or 2nd week of school because they go and observe the teacher in the classroom and learning, we want to give them time to get their um procedure set. But uh I feel pretty good by the end of September, maybe beginning of October we'll be able to make that announcement. Thank you. There's a national Teacher of the year deadline, so we always try to make sure it's in September so they can, uh, apply for the national award. Sanderstone. Uh, yes, Secretary Lee, but you may have touched on it a while ago when it got by me, but just, can you elaborate a little bit more like how a librarian or school counselor school counselors will be eligible for the merit pay, so I can understand that because I've been asked that question. I'll answer this one, she gets this question a lot, so she's got this one down back on geographical shortage uh geographical shortage areas. If you were in one of those areas, library media. were eligible. Also a library media could also be eligible in that bucket for mentoring those year-long residents. And again, that bucket wasn't that large this year, but by 20627, uh, that executive order that says all year-long residents will be part of traditional and non-traditional programs, so that will open up a lot. So that library media and counselor is available for actually 2 buckets, not just um the geographical shortage areas, but also the uh being able to mentor a year-long resident. And they had to be rated highly affected. Yes, and have the highly effective rating. OK, thank you. OK, let's see, I think that is all, oh, wait a minute, we have one more. Um, Representative V. Thank you. Can I ask about a different subject just really quick that I think is important just like this, it's the maternity leave for, um, For our schools to opt in or opt out of. Um, can you explain to me, is it a 12 week or nothing program or can they opt in at different weeks. I, I just kind of want it to be talked about for just a second because I found out information yesterday that I didn't know and I'm scared a lot of schools don't know about. So can you kind of tell me, can they opt in at 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 10 weeks? Can you explain that to me? So the teacher or the maternity pay that's eligible not just for teachers but for all the employees is up to 12 weeks. So if they wanted to only cover a certain amount of time, the districts have that flexibility and they're able to do that and um, I'd be happy to do an update with the legislative delegation on the progress that we made, we had some more districts, uh, opt in this year. I think some of them are. Still trying to figure out what that looks like, but it's, it's a, it, it, it goes back into the, the package of recruiting, retaining, and identifying high quality folks, so, um. We'd be happy to do an update on that. I, I would appreciate that if you can send out maybe some information, um, because I was very interested in finding out that they could actually opt in at different weeks. And it wasn't a 12 or nothing, um, kind of program, which I'm tickled to death about, by the way, just so you know. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um. Thank you, Madam Chair, just quick question, do you have a breakdown on the teacher merit pay from different school districts like from 500 or less students, 2000 or less. And if you do, can you send that to the committee? We, we'll be happy to follow up with that. All right, thank you, Senator Hammer. Like mache on the incentive program, schools are going to year-round schools are going to 4 days a week. Is that factored into into any discussion because I know one of the ideas is by going to 4 days a week, your retention is greater. Is that anywhere in the mix of the conversation or how y'all handling that as a department or you just leave that to the local districts and not touching it. Right now that's a a local district decision, um, whether you want 4 days a week, 5 days a week, year round wouldn't impact the eligibility criteria that's established in the teacher me pay, so they would still those students still have to take their annual assessments. Teachers have to be evaluated the different conditions would be met. And then what are, what's the department doing to monitor schools that are going to, uh, I'll call it a non-traditional calendar and being creative, what's the department doing to watch that to make sure if, because some reports say it's a learning slide. Some say it improves. It's kind of all over the place. So what, what are y'all doing to monitor that and at what point would you step in and react if you saw a school, not academically doing as well because they're trying to do something outside. The normal traditional calendar. So we have standards of accreditation that we collect that data from the districts as far as calendars, how many days of school they're going here, how many instructional hours are being met so that in order for them to not get a citation, they have to follow. The certain um basic parameters. I do think it's worthy having discussion about schools that are F schools going 4 days a week. That's not good for students. And there are some parts of this state that are high performing their schools, their students are doing really well, having that flexibility and local decision making to determine a calendar works best for them is great. But the research you're speaking to the literature and research. The research will tell us that students are learning when they go to school 4 days a week, but they're not learning as much as if they went 5. And when you have struggling learners that have been identified as having a substantial reading deficiency or there's Other barriers, maybe they're special needs students, they need access to systematic explicit instruction each and every single day and limiting that opportunity is not good for those students. The school districts that are having success doing 4 days a week, bring in their students 4 days a week and the students that need the most intervention and support come in that 5th day. So they're still going 5 days a week if you're a failing district and you are failing your community by going 4 days a week is not at the benefit of what's best for students, and that's what we should be having conversations about what's best for students, not what's best for employees. Thank you very much. I'm not seeing any further questions here. So thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate it. Good information. We'll have you back. OK, moving right along here, we will go to our um. Our adequacy study teacher and recruitment. Good morning, Adrian Beck with the Bureau of Legislative Research. So we're going to get started with our first adequacy report of the day. That's for teacher recruitment and retention. I'll start with a brief introduction and then dig into the data about Arkansas teachers, efforts the state is doing to address recruitment and retention and what the research is saying about all of that. With that, a little bit of context behind the report. This is not one that is statutorily required. Uh, for the last several adequacy studies, BLR has been asked to examine this issue. And as a reminder, we're going to reference and results from our educator surveys that we did and the full results of that is found in the back of your binder and tap 3 if you want to reference those. With that, we'll start looking at some data and we're going to start looking at with the fiscal year 23. There is more historical data in your report if you would like to see that. In 2023, there were 36,175 teachers included in this data. 49% had only a bachelor's degree, 42% had a master's. 94% of teachers were considered completely certified in the average year of years of teacher experience was almost 12 years. All of these were increases from fiscal year 21. Continuing on, 3% of teachers statewide were considered nationally board certified, 88% of teachers had no license or exceptions in the average retention rate was 74%. And I'll add that the WSI, the Workforce Stability Index. This is a measure used by Desi to measure workforce quality. It takes into account several different factors, including ones noted in this table and the previous one. all of the variables are positively related to workforce quality, meaning that as a district or school improves on one variable, one would expect to also see improvements in the WSI score. Again, all of these are increases from 21, with the exception of the retention rate in WSI as those were newer measures, so there isn't historical data to compare to yet. Um, but for reference for the retention rate, the average attrition rate in 21 was 21%. So the next several slides are going to break down some of these categories, geograph by geography and by different types of schools and districts. So this is showing us the percentage of teachers with the bachelor's degree and how that varies across the state. Ranging from 47% in schools within the central region, up to 50, almost 51% in schools in the upper Delta region. And this is the percentage how that varies across different categories of schools and districts. We'll say that percentage is higher in schools within traditional districts as compared to open enrollment public charter schools, and it also, um, generally increased with higher rates or free or reduced price lunch students, and with lower school letter grades. It was also lowest in schools and the smallest districts. And in urban schools. And as a reminder of the BLR cohort schools, these are those that BLR found statistically significant. Having, having students performing at a higher than expected achievement level using a successful school methodology frequently used across education research. Looking at the percentage of teachers with the excuse me, with a master's degree that range from almost 38% in schools in the central region, up to almost 48% in schools in the North Central region. And that is percentage again, you'll see it's higher within traditional schools and traditional school districts. It generally decreased with higher concentrations, uh, for your reduced price lunch students and lower school letter grades and was highest in schools in the largest districts in BLR cohort schools and in rural schools. Average years of teaching experience range from 10.5 years in schools in the central region. Up to 13 in schools in the north central region. Average teaching experience was twice as high in schools within traditional school districts. It was also lowest in schools with the highest rates of free or reduced price lunch students, minority students, schools in the smallest districts and in schools with the F letter grade. The percentage of nationally board certified teachers range from 1% in schools in the lower Delta region up to almost 5% in schools and the North Central region. That average percentage was more than 3 times as high in traditional district schools as compared to charters. It was also higher in urban schools, and generally increase with district size and, uh, higher school letter grades. That average retention rate ranged from 72% in schools in the central region, up to 78% in schools in the north central region. And that right was more than 20% points higher in traditional school district schools and lowest in schools with the highest rates are for reduced price lunch and minority students. It was also lowest in the smallest districts and in F schools. The percentage of teachers with emergency or provisional credentials range from 3% in the North Central schools up to 5% in schools in the lower Delta region. And that percentage was higher in charter schools and generally increased with higher concentrations of free reduced price lunch and minority students, as well as well as with lower school letter grades, and generally decreased within bigger districts. Moving on to the core academic subject area, teacher shortages for 23, with the exception of computer science and music, all of these subjects have been on the list for the last 5 years, so they have changed how they define some of these categories, like math and science and since the 22 school year. And that information can be found in your report if you want to dig a little bit more into that. This map shows teacher shortages by geography. So these are based on the amount of uncertified teachers filling vacancies. KIP Delta is the only open enrollment open enrollment public charter on the list. They are considered first priority, but they're not included on the map since the are harder and they also have multiple locations within the region. Additionally, these prior these priority levels are used for teacher financial incentives that we'll talk more about later. And then finally, this shows how teachers in the state compare to students across the state. So you'll see that black and African American as well as Hispanic and Latino teachers are underrepresented when compared to the student population. With that, we'll move on to our next section, which is looking at how Arkansas is addressing teacher recruitment and retention. There are multiple statutory requirements on this topic that does statutes created the office for the purpose of teacher recruitment. To ensure that children are taught by highly qualified professionals. Additionally, schools and education renewal zones must include strategies to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers and their strategic school level improvement plans. Additionally, all districts must prepare and post a three-year teacher and administrator recruitment and retention plan. That sets goals recruiting and retaining minority teachers and increasing the number of students pursuing careers and education, with an emphasis on students of minority races and ethnicities. Arkansas offers multiple traditional alternative routes to first-time educator licenser. Traditional programs, these require program coursework and supervised clinical experience prior to working as a teacher of record, and these are embedded within degree programs, typically a bachelor's, and there are 21 of these institutions across the state as of 2023. Alternative routes allow candidates the opportunity to teach under a provisional license while learning the pedagogical skills necessary to become an effective teacher. And these can be through or outside of institutions of higher education. Which could then sometimes lead to graduate hours or degrees, and there are 12 of these alternative pathways. Then 8 that are outside of the institutions of education. So we have some data from Desi about the usage of these pathways, which comes from the most recently available report from 2022. This is enrollment in educator preparation programs broken out by each of the pathways. There are more individuals in traditional routes, but enrollment in alternative programs has increased the most by 27% since 2017. Overall enrollment in programs has increased 10% since 2017. Looking at program completers. These are people who have met the requirements of a state-approved teacher preparation program. Since 2017, the number of completers has decreased 1% without loss primarily happening in traditional programs, uh, traditional programs are also responsible for producing the largest percentage of diverse enrollees and completers. And we'll talk more about our our BLR's adequacy survey, but our survey did find that 83% of surveyed teachers completed their certification in Arkansas, with nearly 60% of those going through a traditional route. And then these are completers, uh, going within subject shortage areas. So those subject shortage areas include those that have been on the previous list. We looked at for the last, the subs previous 5 years. So candidates can complete in more than one subject area. Overall, the percentage of completers in these subject shortage areas increased by 32%. And the number of completers decreased and both the not institution alternative route in the traditional routes, but increased in the institution-based alternative routes. So does he also looked at where the 21 completers were working in the 22 school year, and this is broken up by by co op region. So we're gonna start with the traditional here, um, but these are 21 completers, um, who are working in cooper regions, not the co-ops themselves, but within schools, within the region served by. Each of these co-ops. So, uh, the lightest shades show the lowest percentage of traditional completers with the darkest shade showing the highest. So this map is showing that which public schools in 21, um, for the 21 traditional program completers were working in the 22 school year. So while they're spread out across the state, they were concentrated in more certain areas. For example, between 71 and 80% of all 21 completers were working in schools in the Archford region, um, conversely, about 25% of the 21 completers working in the Southeast region came from traditional programs. And then conversely, this is showing completers from one of the alternative routes in 21, you'll see here that between 56 and 75% of completers. Working in the Southeast region in 21 came from um alternative preparation routes. Another program, Arkansas now has is the Grow Your Own program model. This is a partnership between ADE and Arkansas institutions of higher education that launched in fall of 2022. In short, it provides options for individuals to complete their certified teaching assistant credential with 9 hours of college coursework, allowing them to work in a school, while also working on their degree to feed that feeds into an approved preparation program. Student facing job responsibilities, show stronger alignment with the grade level or content of the licensure being sought, then the individual could enter a year-long residency while serving as a teacher of record, provided that there are different requirements and supports, um, have been met or are in place. In addition to the pathway options, the state also provides salary or financial incentives based on a variety of factors. These are programs available in the 22 and 23 school years in 23, annual bonus amounts were provided to new teachers working in high priority districts and to teachers who are nationally board certified between $2500 and $5000. State loan forgiveness programs include Step and Top. This is the state teacher education program. And the teacher opportunity program. They paid $4000 and $3000 per per teacher annually, respectively. Now we have some applicable survey results from BOR's principal survey as a reminder, 77% of all principals or 807 principals responded, and they were asked to write teacher recruitment and retainment programs on their effectiveness. The highest rated program in terms of being very helpful or essential for recruiting teachers was the Arkansas Professional pathway to Educator licensure known as Apple, with 35%, 53%. And there were also many principals who responded. They were not familiar with select programs, and the Arkansas Geographical Critical Needs minority teacher scholarship had the largest percentage of principals, not familiar with that program. In terms of retaining teachers, the top 3 rated programs and being very helpful or essential were the same, and that included Apple and the same three programs rated by principals as not being familiar here we're noted here as well. And that takes us into our final section which looks at national survey results, more adequacy survey results and national best practices research. So these are factors that come up in research on teacher recruitment and retention. A 2018 report from the Learning Learning Policy Institute suggests the type of pedagogical preparation can impact the likelihood of teachers staying in the profession. Specifically a comprehensive teacher preparation program includes student teaching, formal feedback on the teaching and multiple courses on student learning. Also noted that some attrition of underprepared teachers could be due to teachers often being hired in schools with the most difficult to fill vacancies and most challenging teaching conditions. And I also found that there are some state-specific barriers that like licensing requirements that can discourage teachers from staying and teaching when moving across states. And the cost of teacher preparation and teacher salaries is another factor that can be a significant obstacle to entering the profession, and you already heard Jasmine talk about that a couple of months ago with her teacher salaries report. Another report from 2023 looking at data for 21, found that 60% of full-time public school teachers in the United States had reported taking out student loans to pay for their education in nearly a third still owed their entire balance. And then the final thing here was stronger training and mentoring for new teachers has also been found to support teacher retention. To address these factors and issues, these are best practices that have come out, teacher residencies, grow your own programs, other options include addressing license reciprocity issues like duplicative testing, fees, slow administrative processes, and unclear licensure standards, competitive teacher salaries and service scholarships, as well as loan forgiveness programs and personalized professional development. Strong mentoring and training for new teachers that include having a mentor from the same field. And having common planning time and collaboration with other teachers. Finally, positive working conditions, a principal's ability to create positive working conditions and collaborative learning environments plays a critical role in attracting and retaining qualified teachers, principal support is often cited as one of the most important factors in teachers' decisions to stay in a school or a profession. NCES, the National Center for Education Statistics conducted a survey of teachers amongst others in 2021. In the next few maps are going to compare some of those results that they collected. This is showing the percentage of teachers whose highest degree is a bachelor's degree. This ranged from 4% in the lightest shades of green up to 69% in the darkest screen, the national average was 38% with Arkansas at 43. Alternatively, these are the percentages of teachers by state whose highest degree is a master's, that ranged from 28% up to 84. The national average was 51% with Arkansas at 48. than the average years of teaching experience range from 11 years up to 17. The national average in Arkansas's average was both at 14.5 years. NCES also asked teachers multiple questions about their teaching experience and changes from the previous school year. As you can see here, 16% of teachers in 21 either moved schools or left teaching. Of the former teachers who are no longer teaching in 22, more than 60% noted that personal life and work-life balance was better in their new position as well as their autonomy and control of their own work. 58% also noted that the manageability of their workload and professional prestige was better outside of teaching, and some of this is also reflected in BLR's educator surveys that we'll discuss shortly. Other statistics from that survey reviewed teachers required contract hours and how those varied for delivering instruction and all other teaching and school-related activities. On average, teachers in the US had 38 hours in their teacher contracts when it came to actual time spent. Teachers then spend an average of 25 hours delivering instruction to students in 52 on all other teaching and school-related activities. BLR also conducted its biennial adequacy survey in 23, so we asked many questions about teacher recruitment and retention as we've Not some of those earlier in the principal survey, principals asked, were asked about how much impact specific factors had on their teacher recruitment and retention for recruitment, school or district level leadership, excuse me had the most positive impact with 82% rating that as having a positive or somewhat positive impact on recruitment. Conversely, the scarcity of appropriately licensed teachers had the biggest negative impact with 64% of principals. In terms of teacher retainment, school or district level leadership had the most positive impact as well with 81% of principals in the top negative impact from principles was stress or workload was 68%. On the teacher survey, which has 16% response rate or 5000 teachers responding. Teachers were asked about their level of satisfaction with various components of teacher preparation and in their current position. The highest rated components included teamwork amongst teachers and undergraduate courses in major content areas. Teachers were also asked how well prepared they were to do the following items in their first year of teaching, and then in their current year. So in their first year of teaching, teachers responded that they were most prepared to teach their subject matter with 76% responding well or very well prepared. And that increased to 95% in the current year across the other components, the percentage of teachers responding well or very well prepared increase anywhere from 32. to 54% points between their across different factors there between their first and current year. Teachers were also asked about their planning time, 51% of teachers responded that they receive at least 200 minutes every week to schedule conferences and plan instruction. 75% responded that every week they received that planning time in increments of 40 minutes. During the instructional day, and then 51% responded that their planning time during the instructional day was sufficient. In the survey, teachers were asked to agree or disagree with an array of statements related to teaching for the sake of time, I'll just go over the responses with the highest percentages agreeing and disagreeing, but the full table of results again is available in your binder and tap 3. 86% of teachers, somewhat or strongly agreed with the statement that they make a conscious effort to coordinate the content of their courses with their teachers, with other teachers. 50% responded that they somewhat or strongly disagree with the statements that they worry about the security of their job because of their students' performance or their school's performance. 56% of teachers responded that they disagreed with the statement that they received a great deal of support from parents for the work that they do. Teachers were also asked about the factors impacting their decision to teach at their current school. Proximity to family and community quality of life, had the largest positive impacts with 77. And 76% of teachers respectively responding positively or slightly positive. And workload had the highest negative impact for 35% of teachers. Teachers were also asked whether they were considering moving schools or districts of the approximately 1500 teachers who were the most common reasons included student accountability, followed by student discipline issues, leadership issues in the district and stress and workload. Teachers were asked if they were considering leaving the profession of the almost 1700 teachers who responded that they were the most common reasons for considering leaving were stress and workload and lack of respect for the profession, similar to the reasons cited in the National survey that we discussed earlier. For the same teachers, the most common reasons they were considering staying where health insurance benefits and retirement. Teachers were also asked about income and student loans of the responding teachers, 55% reported not having a second job, additionally 71% of teachers responded that they took out student loans and of those teachers, 64% still owed. Of those teachers still owing on the loans 26% indicated a very low level of stress, while another 25% indicated a very high level. Finally, teachers were asked how long they planned to remain in teaching, the top responses include 28%, saying as long as they're able, and another 24% saying they until they were eligible for retirement benefits or 24 another, or they were undecided. And then when they were asked how close to retirement they were, the top responses were 28% saying within 21 or more years, followed by 20% saying between 15 and 20 years. And with that I'll be happy to take any questions you may have. We've got a couple. Senator Hammer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just trying to get my mind around something like you said a minute ago on that previous slide, 28%. There's, I think from the previous testimony we have what, 33,000 teachers. Does that, does that sound right? I think so. I looked at I pull data from 23 and I pulled approximately 36,000 from that, but that I'm not quite sure who all that includes as compared to, to that one of those slides showed that you had like 1700 respondents. So 1700 out of 33,000 responded. No, we had a of the survey results, we got 5000 teachers responding to the survey. So these are of the survey respondents. Of which you surveyed 5,000s, but only 5000 teachers responded. So it just helped me understand because I'm trying to process when we see these numbers and we hear like 28%. In the data that's being presented, if I don't know the total number that were surveyed, um, am I getting a, I may be getting or would I be getting a skewed view because of the percentage that respond. And, and should that be included on these slides so that when I sit here and look at something, I hear 28%, but if I don't know 28% of what number it doesn't really give me a full view. Or snapshot of the toll because if there's 33,000 teachers, 50,000 surveyed, 1700 responded, and these numbers. These numbers may not. Totally reflect, but you're, you're working with what you got. Am I looking at it wrong or help me understand. I noted it earlier, but you're right, I could have put that on a slide and to reference that so I can understand the confusion on that, but, um, a lot of these results, I mean, for some of these patterns reflected national survey results as well and similar patterns in terms of why teachers were leaving the profession. So some of it does carry with some national trends. OK. But you're right about the number of teachers who were surveyed as compared to the total population. So is it all these slides. are all these slides survey the results of certain surveying 5000 teachers or are the slides different, like maybe one reflects 10,000 once 5000. All BLR surveys for teachers had the same number of teachers responding. If it's an instint the national survey, that's the only other survey referenced, then that's a very different population of students and I can't really teachers that they surveyed and I really can't speak to their methodology, but all the BLR survey results of teachers had the exact same number of teachers responding. Some questions they may have been filtered out. For example, we had a question about whether you were a guidance counselor, she asked a very specific question about guidance counselors, so that might have a different rate or for these, if they responded that they were leaving the profession. We were only asked those specific 1700 teachers that reason why they were considering leaving. But otherwise, if not otherwise noted, it's, it's the 5000 prize. OK, so would there be any value if you were to go back and for each one of these slides, and I, I, I'm a little bit of talking out loud to work with me, but if, would there be any value if you went back in on each one of these slides, you identified the number of teachers surveyed and the actual respondents to help me understand the percentage was arrived at by 10 number of teachers responding. Of X number surveyed. Make sure I'm trying to follow what you're just make sure I'm understanding correctly. So, I'm gonna go back Um, to the beginning of the teacher. Survey results. So. Starting here. You're, you're saying that it would be helpful to have a number of teachers who responded to each question, because that's still this, which is 5000 across the board, but would it be helpful to have that across your slide 46 there, how many, how many teachers were surveyed to come up with the percentages that are reflected on that slide. We had the same survey population across the board for all teacher survey questions, which is 5000. And all they responded to all the I think there might be a variation of one or two, but my experience with those results was that all survey teachers responded to all the questions as applicable. OK, let me just hush for a second and mull that over. I may come back, OK. Thank you, ma'am. Representative Duke. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, um, two questions. One is. When you're looking at retention and you talked about, you had lots of different questions and lots of different things, um, that you indicated incentives to try to keep teachers that they're staying in or get them in there. Do we, do you all focus at all or do the department focus at all on trying to get teachers who have left the profession back or maybe who've retired and to come back or any of those incentive programs directed in that way. I'm not aware of any, but the department may want to clarify if there's any other ones that I'm not aware of. OK, and then I'm gonna see if I can. Remember my second question. Uh I'll come back to it. Thank you. Members uh Senator Stone. Uh, yes, I'd like to ask a question just for clarification. All 33,000 teachers had the opportunity to fill the survey out, correct? to go and get the exact number of what our survey pulled but approximately around that we're just talking numbers and then 5000 filled it out. That's that's 15%. Why such a just a low response by the teachers? Do they not recognize the importance of the survey or sure, sorry to cut you off there, um, this was our first year at surveying surveying the entire. Teacher population. So this was our first attempt at doing that. Normally, we sampled, uh, we started by a sample of teachers, um, usually a kind of a randomly generated sample of schools to use to do search site visits and those would be the schools we would survey. So that's kind of varied throughout the year. This has been our first attempt to try to survey all teachers at once. Um, so I think it was just a matter of our first attempt in learning how to Do that in the best efficient way to get the best results from teachers and contact them. OK, thank you. Senator Hammer. I mean, got a little tutoring lesson there. I appreciate it. Uh, so the, so here's the take that I'm getting out of this is we got 33,000 teachers, 5000 of which a very small percentage actually responded to the survey and we're sitting here as legislators sometimes receiving criticism because we don't listen to educators and what they have to say, but yet the response rate to the survey that we're going to sit here and make decisions off of. Is going to be based on the information that we get back from, from them. So we need to see an increase in the response in order to get a true read on, on, on what's actually going on as contained in these surveys. Now, that's probably something you don't need to answer, but that's, that's my takeaway. So the bottom line is we're getting a very small response to the survey that was sent out the first time. Is that, is that accurate? Can I take a stab at that Julie Holt with the bureau, um, as Adrian said, we've sent this to a small sample of schools to every teacher in the schools in the past and we've gotten about a 50% response rate, which was about anywhere between 1,000 1200 teachers. This year, we discovered last year when we were working on this, we discovered there's a field of nap scan with the teacher's email addresses. So we did want to give every teacher a chance to answer just like. We do every principal, every superintendent. We, uh, we're hoping for a larger response, right? We, um, did send emails out repetitively. We got questions back, you know, people get surveys all the time, not necessarily trusting of us. So we're hoping we'll build on that trust. We got some good ideas, um, I think from Representative Duke about ways we can increase response rate next time, so we'll certainly work at doing that. But I will say, This time we have heard, we heard from a teacher from every district and every charter system in the state, which we've never done before. So, again, while the response rate is low, um, we think we're giving more teachers the opportunity and hopefully as they we build a relationship of trust with them more of them will respond, um, and then the other, um, thing I would say to that, and I've kind of forgotten what it was, um. Is that I'm sorry, I've lost it, but, but we, we are working on the response, right? We do think we've made a little bit of an improvement. Oh, I know. The reason we did think it was important to show that national data, um, compared to ours is that it does help validate our responses because in a lot of cases they were very similar. So that was why Adrian really took you through a lot of the NCES responses as well. And I understand and then because I've heard it before, I mean, and, and I know. In working with you, all of us were, they, they get surveyed to death sometimes and it's just one more survey, it's one more thing they've got to do that when, when was this sent out? Help me remember the dates. During the summer was the end of it now I'm sorry, there's, we sent the teachers out first. It was toward the end of the year, we tried to hit them right after the testing period, although we know at the end of the year is still a busy time. Um, it's, we hear different responses on when it's good to send out, but that, that's something we can also we've talked about is maybe playing with that time period where we send it out. Before testing period, we know teachers don't like to do it in the fall It's a little bit early for us to know the issues that we need to ask about. So, you know, but there's, there's some wiggle in there we can work with. OK, and I, I'm not intending to be critical. It's just trying to get the best accurate information so that we can make decisions, you know, and based. Based on what we're given. All right, thank you. Representative Beck. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, so did I. Did I understand you right that when you were doing a smaller sample, you still were getting about 15%. Is that correct? Now, we got, um, close, we got about 50%, a little over 50% usually. Thank you. Representative Carr. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, any forethought on to uh contacting uh. Higher ed on some of the findings there, for example, uh, quite a bit of a range on there, on that, uh, bottom one with, uh, ELL students and reaching out to them and asking them to kind of put a little bit more emphasis. During the, the undergraduate work. That would probably be more of a department thing in terms of how the the preparation programs are structured and, and how those work, I wouldn't be the person I think to best speak to that, that might be a department question. OK, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. OK. Seeing no further questions. We will recess until one o'clock. Hope we'll all be back. Thank you. Good afternoon folks. We will start our meeting up again and we will begin with, um, folks from legislative audit. Uh, who will be talking to us about the education grants. So here we are right at the table. If you'd introduce yourselves, you'll be recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Michelle Herzog. I'm an auditor with Arkansas Legislative Audit. Each year, Arkansas legislative audit prepares a summary of all the grants distributed by the Arkansas Department of Education, division of elementary and secondary education. This report is issued under the authority of Arkansas Code Section 10-3-2102, the fiscal year 23 report summarizes the 4.3 billion that was provided as grants to school districts, charter schools, education cooperatives, and other entities. The report is available on our website. Grants are funded from state and federal sources during fiscal year 23 $3 billion was provided from the public school fund, 1.2 billion was provided from from federal funds and 87 million was provided from other state and miscellaneous sources. Overall, the department distributed 9 million less in fiscal year 23 then was distributed in fiscal year 22. The total amount distributed to each recipient, school districts, charter schools, and other recipients can be found on attachment one, on pages 3 through 8, along with a comparison to the total distributed in the prior year. The remaining attachments display the amounts distributed to each recipient from particular grants in the current year. There are 54 programs distributed from the public school fund, 15 from other state funds and 23 from federal funds. Program amounts distributed to each recipient from the public school fund are included on attachments 2 through 4. Program amounts distributed to each recipient from other state funds. are included on attachment 5 program amounts distributed to each recipient from federal funds are included on attachment 6. Finally, in the back of the report, attachments 78, and 9 contain narrative descriptions of each of the grant programs. No audit procedures were performed at the recipient level regarding how the monies were ultimately used. This report is designed only to disclose how much was distributed to the recipients by the the Arkansas Department of Education, division of elementary and secondary education. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Madam Chair, I'm sorry. OK. So do we have any questions? Saying no appreciate your your. Report, thank you very much. Thank you. OK, we're moving right along here to the um. Doctor Carlos Silva. It's going to give us the uh consumer. Price estimates. Thank you, Chairman. Carlo Silva, Bureau of Legislative Research, and today I'm here to present the estimates for the CPI. For Comparisons of fiscal year 25 to all the way to 29. What we're doing here is following the Stan that has been going on previously as comparing quota 3 to 3, as you look into. 2025 is a comparison of quarter 3 of 24 to 3 of 2025. What we have over here is two measures of the consumer price index. What the first one is the consumer price index for all urban households. They're all items and afterwards you have the CPI core which is less food and and energy prices, uh, you, you have two. Breakdowns there for Moody's Analytics and S&P Global, that's the two data providers that we have. The difference between them is based on the Predict the stabilization of Unemployment and as well as energy prices and when that's gonna happen and they also have some differences within when uh we're gonna see some rate changes on for the Federal Reserve and without taking any further questions, thank you. Are there any questions? You did a great job. Thank you. Oh, thank you. OK, moving right along here, let's see. Um, Elizabeth Bynum. And Adrian Beck are going to come and present the uh adequacy Full identify yourselves, you'll be recognized. You and Adrianne Beck also with the bureau. Um, and we're here today to discuss federal and state accountability. Um, all of the topics that we're discussing today are required topics and there are and we've got several topics to talk about today. We'll start with academic accountability, the Student Succeeds Act in the Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability Act, academic accountability is the biggest section of this report, um, after academic accountability, Adrian is gettingation requirements, then we'll talk about physical distress. Facilities distress. We'll talk briefly about districts that were under state authority during the 23 school year. And then we'll touch briefly on provisions in the Learns Act that affect accountability going forward. As a reminder, in this report, we're looking at 2023 data because that's the most recent data available to us. So we're not going to see the impact of learns in that data because learns but we will talk briefly at the end about some provisions, accountability provision. We'll start with academic accountability and that every student succeeds Act, uh, for ease and efficiency, I am going to refer to this by its acronym ESSA. Um, this is replacing the 20 or 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, it was designed to give states more flexibility in their accountability systems. And so all states are required to submit plans to the US Department of Education for that department's approval. And size version of an ESSA plan is codified at Act 9:30 of 2017 and we'll talk more about that, um. There are 5 big parts to SF. We'll go through each of those except school funding. School funding in ESA is Title One funding that's set at the federal level. That's not something. The first essay section is standards and assessments. So states are required to have academic content standards and academic achievement standards that apply to all public schools and students. You can see that their states are required to have standards for math, reading, and language arts and science, and states may set alternate achievement standards for students with the most cognitive severe cognitive. Looking at assessments, states are required to have assessments, annual assessments. They're required to test in certain grades to test math, reading and science. They may test other subjects, uh, and states, schools are required to test at least 95% of all of their students. The next essay section is accountability. States are required to have an accountability system that establishes long-term goals in the three areas that you see on your screen, and they're required to have a system for meaningfully different. So looking at meaningfully differentiating public schools, you can see that there's 4 required indicators when we talk, uh, specifically, um, we'll talk a little bit more specifically when we get to the Arkansas section about each of those required. And here you see, Arkansas's goals under our state as a plan. Uh, I want to note here, these are goals set over a 12 year period and the plan notes that they are intended to be aspirational. Um, the adjusted cohort graduation rate refers to the number of 9th graders who graduate either in that 4 year or 5 year time frame, but that's adjusted for verifiable transfers in and out. Schools in need of support, as it requires that state accountability systems have to have a system for identifying the three types of schools that you see on your screen. And Essa also has requirements for the types of support that state education agencies are required to provide to each category. Arkansas actually uses 5 categories, and you can see those on your screen. And the next few slides are going to go through each of those a little more specifically. The first is targeted support and improvements, and here, most of the schools are identified for one subgroup. There are a few schools that were identified for multiple subgroups, um, most of the schools are identified, um, they can consistently underperforming. Um, additional, additional targeted support and improvements. This is related to Title One. Comprehensive support and improvement, additional targeted support and improvement. Um, this is related to schools that were previously identified for support and did not comprehensive support and improvement schools. This is again related to Title and finally, comprehensive support and improvement schools against schools that were previously identified and did not. Our next as a. Category is public reporting, states do you have to subscribe their accountability system and identify schools listed for various categories. The final as a category that we'll talk about today is teachers. This relates back to some of the information that Adrian talked about this morning as the plans have to describe, uh, how states ensure that low income and minority students are not taught at a disproportionate rate by ineffective out of field or inexperienced teachers. Now we'll move into Arkansas, uh, accountability, the Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability Act. Um, this repeal the state's previous accountability system and created the new system. It does have multiple components and we'll go through each of those briefly, um, and then talk about the state's letter grade rating system and reward schools and schools on the move, which are two other Dey programs for recognizing schools. Uh, the first component is academic standards, duly covered academic standards in the June learning expectations report. And so that's in your minder if you'd like to refer to that, um, but we won't go into student assessment, the state is required to have a student assessment system and you can see the requirements of that system on your screen. A couple of other notes on student assessment. Um, in 2023, the state used the ACT aspire as the assessment system going forward. Arkansas uses the Atlas assessment. Um, I want to note to you, Arkansas did receive a waiver from the US Department of Education from conducting assessments in 2020 due to COVID-19 and so there are no were no assessments conducted in 2020. Um, and if you see in some of our reports data showing back to that time, you'll notice the gaps there reflecting that there were no assessments done. And then finally related to the requirement that schools test at least 95% of their students, 7 schools were placed on accredited cited status, uh, for failing to do that. And it is um part of the standards for accreditation that states test at least or schools test, excuse me, 95%. Levels of support, the levels of support are assigned, um, by Desi to specific districts. Each district receives a level of support, so this is assigned to districts and not to schools. Um, the lowest level of support is level one, and it moves up to level 5. So level 1 is basically the, the district has access to contacts at Desi into information that Desi publishes, um, but Desi is not taking an active role in assisting that school district. Uh, level 5 is the is the highest level of support. It does require the state board approval and he creates a district improvement plan and an exit plan in collaboration with that district. And this is where the state board can choose to uh remove the superintendent and remove the district's board of directors is responsible for placing each district in a particular level of support. Districts are allowed to request a specific level of support. There are 2 instances based on Reading scores where districts are required to be placed in a certain level of support. That's not the only way that districts can be placed in level 3 or level 4, but those are the, the only places that the statute requires. Here you can see, um, the number of districts and the percentage of districts in each level. So you can see 49% of Here we're gonna look at some of our um survey results, um, I'll note here on our, in this report, we'll go through some superintendent results and some principal results. We do get we did have a 100% response rate on our superintendent survey. So 255 superintendents and directors of charter systems responded to that survey. On our principal survey, we had a 77% response rate. So 07 principals out of 1, Adrian alluded to this this morning by our survey is done through an online system and so except for questions where uh educators are, um, allowed to give comments or where we're asking specific categories of educators. Adrian mentioned guidance counselors, um, the survey program is going to require the respondents to respond to every question. So, um. Yeah, if, if we're looking at superintendent survey results, unless noted otherwise, all 255. Um, so related to levels of support, about 25% of superintendents said that they don't know their district's level of support. Uh, we gave superintendents a list of Desi's supports and ask them to check which ones their district uses, and you can see the most frequently, um, about half of superintendents responded that Dazzy assistance and support is either very useful or essential to their district. Uh, 19% of superintendents reported that their district does not receive support from. Our next component, our school improvement plans. These are plans developed by schools and posted on their website each year. We have some principal survey questions on the school improvement plans. Uh, first related to, uh, planning strategies to improve student achievement more than about 57% of principals said that those plans are very and then 44% said that the improvement plans are very. The next component is district improvement plans. These are plans created by the district incorporating those school-level plans. All districts receiving level 2 support are higher are required to develop a support plan and to have that posted on the district's website, and you can see that there are situations based on district reading scores where those district illiteracy plan is part of that district. The next component are student success plans. This is a requirement beginning in 2019 school year that every By the end of 8th grade have a student success plan. These are developed by the school in collaboration with the parents and students. They are required to be reviewed and updated annually. And if a student has an individualized education plan or an IEP that can meet the requirements if it meets those last two bullet points on the screen, so addressing academic deficits. A couple of principal and principal survey responses related to students' success plans. Here we asked principals to respond only if they are a principal at a school that has 9th through 12th grade students. So 244 principals are responding to these questions and you can see the three most common elements in those plans. Um, the three most common parties involved in creating those plans, um, about half of principals, 51% in indicated that all of their students had a student success plan and a third indicated that between 5 and 99% of their students had a student success plan. I want to know their school's responding to this question that have students who are not in the 8th grade yet. So schools that are comprehensive schools or that run from 7th to 12th grade, and so that may account for some of Educator excellence, again, this relates back to some of what Adrian talked about this morning. Uh, the state's accountability system allows the Board of Education to promulgate rules that relate qualified and effective educators. And districts that have um data reflecting disproportionality, so indicating that a high number of their students are taught, um, by Um, Inexperienced educators have to address that in their district. And the final component is the data reporting that we look at the state's letter grade writing system. Letter guides are awarded to individual schools. They're not awarded to districts. Um, this is part of the public reporting piece. This is meaningfully differentiating, um, public schools as required by ESSA in a way that is. So the previous screen showed um some of the indicators required. The rating system in Arkansas, our letter grades are based on the SS School index, which consists of the following indicators. So weighted achievement, student assessment scores, um, mean growth plus English learner growth. So this is each student's English language arts and math growth scores scores. You just take for graduation rates for, um, obviously only for high schools. And then the school quality in students and these are the factors included in the school quality and students' success indicator. If you'd like to see how each of these are scored, there's a chart on page 11 of your report, but these all have a point value assigned to them. So for example, looking at GPA scale, a school receives 1 point for each student that has that GPA of 2.8 or better and no points if the student has Here you can see how each of these indicators is weighted. It is different for high schools than for elementary and middle schools in elementary and middle schools that weighted achievement is gonna account for 35% of the school score. The growth indicator is gonna count for 50% and then the total school quality and success indicator is going to be for high schools, it's a little different. 70% total the weighted achievement will be 35% of that and the growth score is 35%. The graduate. Once the SS school index scores are calculated, does he uses the cut scores, you can see on your screen to assign each. Our next few slides are going to go through some characteristics of schools by letter grade. And so this slide is showing you uh the number of schools in each letter grade, so you have some idea, um, how many schools. First, we have the percentage of non-white students. So what you're looking at an A for all the A schools in the state, if you look at the total population, 26% of those students. Next we have the percentage of free and reduced lunch she. The percentage of English learners by letter. And finally, the percentage of, uh, a couple of characteristics of schools by letter grade. This slide is showing you the average per people expenditures by letter grade. I do want to know we saw a couple of slides ago that F schools have a very high percentage in Ray Jace Lynch, which means that they are funding and so that may help account for why there's schools. And then the average a little bit about correlations. I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty, um, of The statistical analysis but a correlation looks at how closely two indicators are related. So we're not looking at causation, just the relationship between, um, the two variables. What you're looking for in a correlation is for the correlation to be statistically significant, which means that it's a large enough relationship that it's not occurring by chance. And the correlation strength of that correlation. Uh, so here you can see the concentration of white students in a school has a statistically significant positive correlation to the SS school index, which means that the concentration of white of white students in a school goes up. The SS schools that correlation coefficient is closer that number gets to one, the stronger. You can see also the con the concentration of students. There is a very small statistically significant relation school index. Um, and there's no statistically significant Latino students or English learners. Educator feedback on the letter grades. This is from the principal survey. Um, we asked principals to how strongly they agreed that letter grades are helpful and improve, almost half of them somewhat or strongly agreed 85% somewhat or strongly, and 71% responded that. Reward schools is a program that provides financial incentives to schools for schools in the top 5 per student. School is in the top 6 to 10% can receive the full list of those schools and their amounts of their rewards. And then schools on the move. This is another Dey campaign recognizing schools this significant progress on screen and more information on the schools on the move can be found in a pending. So that brings us to special education. Part B of um individuals with disabilities Act, known as IDEA, relates to the provisions of services and federal funding for states to provide a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment for children with disabilities ages 3 to 21. The US Department of Education annually assesses whether each state meets the requirements of Part B of IDEA. This is determined by looking at two primary things, um, a few primary things, um, educational results and functional outcomes of students with disabilities, the validity and reliability of data provided by the state and the percentage of compliance with federal special education requirement. So these are the Part B compliance indicators, and these rely on data from the Federal fiscal year 2021 and any findings related to federal fiscal year 20. So you'll see here several different things I'm looking at um compliance, including significant discrepancies by race and ethnicity in suspension and expulsion rates, IEPs being done by the, um, excuse me, apologize. And a timely accurate that reported data as well as any long-standing non-compliance issues. These are the determinations that the US Department of Education can make. And these are based on results and the results and compliance indicators, and then each state receives a determination. And in regards to those requirements, and we're gonna go over those here a little bit more in detail. So each indicator generates a score that is then used to form overall results and compliance scores between 1 and 100% with 100% being the highest score that can be received. So this is a breakdown of those respective scores and determinations that Arkansas has received for the past 5 years. So you'll see in 23. Our consority of the determination of meeting requirements. This map shows 2023 part B determinations for each state across the country. So the lightest shades show states considered to be meeting requirements, and which includes Arkansas, as noted earlier in the darkest shades showing those needing assistance for 2 or more years. And with that, I'll pass it back to Elizabeth. Our next program is fiscal assessment and this is a state program used to identify and assist districts that are struggling to maintain fiscal stability. Uh, this program has existed in the state since 1995, but it's been modified multiple times, um, since it. There are 4 parts to the process and physical distress does apply to districts and not to individual schools. The first is early morning or early intervention. Dey is required to report to superintendents and superintendents are required to report to Desi if a district is experiencing two or more non-material indicators of physical distress that could lead to fiscal distress. Does he does provide an early intervention checklist to districts. Districts are not required to fill that out. And districts may move into or out of early intervention. At 4 districts were in early intervention during the 2223 school year. Uh, once the district is placed in an early intervention, it does have some responsibilities they're required to, uh, comply with requirements of the state board, and they have to receive written approval from Dessie and Desy at that point may request that like audit conduct the annual audit of that district. Identification and classification, and the screen is showing indicators of physical distress. A district can be identified if they're experiencing any of those indicators. And you can see the second is an act or violation determined to jeopardize the fiscal integrity of the district, and these are some of those acts violations or. So a little about the process, he identifies districts as being in distress. They are required to notify the districts. A district can choose to appeal to the state board if the district's appeals, the state board hears that appeal. If the district does not appeal, the state board still has to vote to make, um, the Pine Bluff School District in the Lee County School District where the teachers functions in corrective actions. On the district is in fiscal distress, the district has certain responsibilities and then Desie and the state board can take it. actions in the district, and those include removing and replacing the superintendent, removing Removal from physical distress, uh, the district has to demonstrate that all the causes of physical stress distress have been removed and they've not experienced any additional indicators. The state board does have to vote to remove a district from distress. A district can be in distress for 5 consecutive school years after the date of classification, unless the state board chooses to create more time, otherwise the school district must be annexed, consolidated. On the district is, uh, removed from distress, they are still uh required to comply with. Next academic facilities distress program, this is the mechanism to intervene when districts are not providing adequate academic facilities. This program is run by the division of Public school academic facilities and transportation. Um, a district or an individual school can be classified in facilities just again this has several parts to the process and we'll go through each of them. Early indicators of physical distress, similar to facilities to stress similar to physical distress, the division of public academic facilities and districts and schools are required to report if they have 2 or more non-material. Identification and classification, any of the actions or inactions you see are identified as being in the division of public school academic facilities, identifies the districts in distress, the commission for Arkansas Public school outs to actually classify that district. Requirements and removal once a district is in facilities distress, it does have certain requirements. And the division may impose sanctions on that district or school. Including suspending a district or school is in facilities distress any student in that school or district may transfer to another school or district. And to be removed at a district or school must certify that they have removed at this point, no individual schools have been placed in facilities to stress the Hermitage School District is the only district that has been in facilities distress. It was placed in facilities distress in 9. Uh, the division of public school academic facilities does have a physical facilities such as tracker in the 23 school year 11 districts had issues placed on the tracker. Only one district had multiple indicators and 11 of those 13. I'm gonna go briefly through the districts under state authority, there were 5 that were in state authority during the 3 days in alphabetical order. Um, first, the Earl School District, you can see that they were first classified in physical distress, placed in state takeover, later classified as being in need of level 5 intensive support. They were removed from physical distress and the state board voted at that time, um, to appoint members of their board of directors to eliminate. Helen West Helena was classified as being in need of Level 5U. And at that point, the state board voted to require the commissioner of Education to provide support to the district and also remove the authority. Lee County was originally placed under state authority for violations and subsequently classified as being in physical distress and also in need of level 5 intensive. And finally, Pine Bluff. Pine Bluff was originally classified in fiscal distress subsequently classified as being in need of Level 5, intensive support. It has been removed from level 5. And finally, um, a few provisions of the Learns Act that relate, um, learns requires that they are written performance targets for each superintendent's contract of employment. So these include targets both for student achievement and graduation rates for the entire district and for any individual school that has a letter. Student success plans must include a sequence of courses required to graduate with enough flexibility to allow places and those are reviewed and revised annually until all. Um, learns created the Arkansas Children's Education Freedom Account program under which eligible students can receive up to 90% of the prior year's foundation funding to be applied to private school tuition or home school expenses. And finally, transformation contracts. This is open to districts who are in need of Level 5 support or schools receiving a D or F letter grade and those entities are allowed to contract with a charter school or for. That other entity to and currently Marvel Elaine is the OB happy to take questions. Thank you do we have some questions here? What looks like you all did a very good job. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see. Representative Duke. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, I just have, uh, and you may have addressed this earlier and I missed it. Who writes the questions that you guys use for the surveys? We write the question, so some of the questions are, we've conducted each of these surveys for a number of years and so some of them are repeated every year to year. Um, we have used some because they, we have used some that are also included and these are driven by the committee, so if there's something we're happy to see that. OK, thank you. Follow up, please. Let's go ahead. Um, so, On the school quality and student success indicators. So, when do those, are, are those set in stone, what they, um, what are those indicators are, are those fluid from year to year and who makes those decisions on what and so that's, um, my understanding is that those, those are part of that process, but no, they're not set in stone. OK, thank you. Thank you. Representative Brooks. Thank you, Madam Chair. Real quick, back on slide 24, talking about. The student assessments and requirement to test at least 95% of students, you mentioned 7 schools didn't, do we know what percentage they tested and why they didn't hit that 95% marker. I don't know that off the top of my head, but I can look into that. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Presentative hope. Did you have somebody? When crunch your button. Did you have some folks who I think we're finished. Thank you very much. OK. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I do have some folks that I would like to introduce today if you don't mind. So with us today is one of our girls from Girls State, and I think most of you familiar that Girl State got, um, Got canceled partway through. And so she is um in my district and her mother, Erin, is the mother and Sanji, and I'm gonna try really hard to say their name correctly, Seal, y'all mind mind standing up so that we can welcome you guys. If you don't mind giving them a greeting. They came down today. To kind of make up for what they, what, what, um, Sanji Sanji, I'm so sorry, I'm butchering the name, I'm so sorry. Um, I missed whenever uh Girls skate was canceled and then also so kindly whenever I drop them off the lieutenant governor's office, um, for a little tour there, um, and they brought them on over here, Grace Maddox is also over there from Mael. She is an intern and so she came on over along with Loreen Miller, um, both Lieutenant, um, she's Grace's interning at the lieutenant governor's office in Lorene is and staff there and wanted to watch us at work too, so we're just like recruiting them over here. So thank you guys for coming. You almost doubled our crowd out there, so we really appreciate it. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. OK, so next we're going to move on to our adequacy, um. The final report and all that and Miss Julie and I'm gonna turn Representative Evans. Thank you, Madam Chair. So as, uh, hope she's already here. That's gonna say is Julie comes to the table. Remember, so, uh, you have exhibit I, uh, that was in your packet this morning and then what has just been handed out to you in the small binder, uh, is the preliminary, uh, final adequacy report, uh, which Julie is about to present to us. Now I'd like to walk you kind of through a timeline of what you'll be looking at over, uh, the next several weeks in regards to adequacy. So she will this report today, then you will also receive a digital copy of a worksheet. Uh, I believe there is a hard copy in the binder, uh, in the very back cover. Uh, what we're gonna ask you to do as part of this process is between now and close of business on September 6th is for you to review the final recommendations that have come through all of the months of reports from BLR. And we're calling this do your homework by taking that, you'll have a comparison to the current matrix, where our schools are operating under. And then based upon all the reports that's in the final report that you have seen over the last few months, you will give a written recommendation, uh, of what your recommendation is of what adjustments we will need to make to adequacy. We will need that submitted electronically to staff, to Ms. Emily, by close of business on Friday, September. Uh, there will not be a joint meeting of the House and Senate Education Committees in the month of September. This is what we do in September is provide your written recommendations, uh, for adequacy. Our next meeting will be Monday, October 7th at 1:30 here in Big Mac A. Uh, we will meet together to review the collaborative data that has been submitted by all 28 members of the House and Senate committee combined on their recommendations for for the next adequacy matrix. Uh, our goal, uh, is to come out of that meeting on Monday afternoon with a joint recommendation that will be submitted, uh, to the governor. To the speaker and to the Senate pro tem. That report has to be completed by October 16th. So our goal is to meet on Monday, October 7th. Hopefully by taking all the joint recommendations we will be able to plug that into a report. There will be a vote, a split vote of the House and the Senate to agree to that if we haven't agreed joint recommendation, then we will be able to send that on. If we do not have, uh, an agreed upon, then we have from October 7th until October 16th, where we will meet again to come up with, uh, our final recommendation that will be submitted. So walking back through that, she's going to give us the preliminary final report in adequacy recommendations based upon all the months of, of meetings that we've had. We will need you to do your homework and submit your individual recommendations. Uh, by the close of business on Friday, September 6th. Those will go to staff. Emily will take all of that. She'll put all that together in a spreadsheet and she'll send that back out to the committee. So you'll have time to review that prior to our meeting on Monday, October 7th. At that meeting, we'll take all of that information, your notes, um. We will review those and be able to hopefully come out that day of a goal of having a joint recommendation from the House to the governor, to the Speaker of the house. If we do not have a joint agreement at that time, and, and either chamber wants to changes to that, then that will have to be completed and back in and voted on no later than October 16th. And at that time, those separate recommendations. You got some homework to do over the next 3 weeks and, uh, Julie. Proceed. Thank you. Thank you, Julie Holt with the bureau, and thank you, Representative committee members. We are, um, pleased that today is our day that we present this final report and it has been our attempt over refer to as the story of adequacy in reality, it's the evidence-based study that we are statutorily required to present, um, and work with these committees on each by NM. And, um, the goal, of course, is for us to put in these reports, the evidence that helps you make the recommendations we obviously being a bureau staff don't make for you, but we do try to put in the 4 pieces of evidence whenever we can and as we mentioned this throughout, um, we look at the Arkansas data, we try to compare that with what's going on with other states. We look at, um, the survey results and then we also look at secondary research. And we try to give you all of that to provide you the context so you can make decisions on it or not. So what you've just been passed out is what we call our volume one of the report, and that's really a condensed compilation of everything that's in this huge binder, which we did this year managed to keep to just one huge binder, um. This is volume 2, and it will be online. Um, volume one is we're calling it preliminary now because of course it's lacking the results and there's some information from the two, presentations from Carlos and from Siegel that we also need to include for you, so we will email out, um, Emily tomorrow we'll email out the full preliminary final, uh, report to you as well as an electronic version of the worksheet, so you'll have that. Just to kind of briefly remind you of what we've done because it's been 8 months since we began this process, but in January, we introduced the concept, um, Elizabeth walked you through a nice history of adequacy both before that all important Lakeview Supreme Court case in 2002, all the way up to today with some of the important policy and funding changes that have been made since then, and then Taylor Lloyd from our, uh, legal. Uh, department gave you really the legal context for that both what those court decisions said and then what resulting legislation, um, also required of these committees during the adequacy studies. We then jumped into achievement measures. I gave you what we call our lake view measures. Those are the indicators that Judge Kilgore back in the original like pointed to as proof that Arkansas did not have an education system that was Adequately resourced or that was, uh, provided. Um, so I caught you up, we looked at a long 20 years' worth of those indicators to see where then, um, Adrian really took us on a deep dive into all of those, um, indicators for the 2023 and what that achievement looked at and walked through a lot of the subgroups that, um, Elizabeth referred to today and what their test scores and, um, graduation rates and all that was. In February, um, Laurie came and talked to you about facilities and specifically the partnership program, which is the way we fund school facilities in the state and it's that, um, joint partnership between the state and the local district to either build new educational buildings or to upgrade existing ones. Then I provided you with an overview of the funding system that we currently work under, which is, you know, revolves around the matrix to set that foundation funding. We have categorical streams to address the equity issues for subpopulations. There are other supplemental streams that have been added over the years all the way from isolated and small school funding to, um, I think the most recent we had was the, um, salary equalization fund. And then how that works also with other funds. There are other state and local funds that schools have access to as well as federal funds. Then in March and June, we really dug down deep in defending and compare that to spending on, um, each item that's listed in the Matrix. And then we gave the same kind of treatment to categorical funds. What are schools doing with those monies as well as the supplemental streams. And then we looked at some items that are not in the matrix that either districts are using those foundation funds to make, um, purchases for or that. Superintendents on our surveys, um, indicated might be important to consider as part of adequacy resources. Um, so we've covered all of that. Also in June, we looked at equity that was kind of our last big financial report and that was using again, indicators that the court had used back during Lakeview specifically to, um, judge equity and their statistical measures that are often used in education. We replicated those, so you have those you can look at. And then we went away from all the dollars and looked at what was going on in the school, so we had two reports that really dealt with curriculum. One looked at what our accreditations standards require schools to teach at each grade level, and then, um, also graduation requirements, and then Leah Hedley, um, talked about our career in technical education program. We started looking at teachers back in June and Jasmine gave her report with teacher salaries and you got the comparison of Arkansas's average salary compared with the SREB states, the southern regions, and also how do those salaries compare among districts within the state. And then, of course, today, Adrian finished up our teachers look with the retention, recruitment and retention report and, um, then you've just heard, um, Elizabeth go through all the Satan. accountability systems that are in place to make sure that schools are doing what they should be doing with the money and producing results. Um, we also had two economic indicator reports, and these were important, um, considerations. The one you heard this morning, Segal was the first and they talked about the medical CPI and how much health insurance was cost will cost. And this is important because this is a relatively new requirement for this committee at last go round was the first time you really had to wrestle with this, but the, these committees are charged with coming up with a recommendation for, um, you heard Patrick talk about it this morning. How much school districts are going to pay EBD for each of their participant. employees. There's a rate that used to be in law and it kind of went up as the foundation or as the salary amount went up, that's been changed and now that's a recommendation that comes from here. Um, then there's also a big lump sum of money that goes from Desi to EBD and that's to cover a lot of the employees who aren't. This gets confusing, but health insurance in the when we put it in the matrix, it covers those positions that we talk about in the Matrix. Schools obviously have a lot more, so Desy, that lump sum helps cover some of those employees as well as co op employees. So anyway, that's a big decision that is up to this committee as well. Um, I did want to take you through just a few of the data highlights. Um, if you'll remember, we showed you this chart for fiscal year 23, and there was $6.9 billion of funding that schools had to work with. You can see that just over half of that came from foundation funding. So that's what, that's that pursuit amount out of the matrix. Um, but it also, um, it's important to remember with that about 60% of that is supplied by a state that. Foundation funding aid, so that's right out of the adequacy or public school funds and the other part um comes through that uniform rate of tax that flows from the school districts to us and then back to the school, so it's a mix of those dollars. Um, the next biggest source of funds schools had to work with were those other state and local, um, that is other local money that sometimes raised if schools are, you know, have more than 25 meals. I collect. There's some extra pence there. There's some funds that flow from the state that are outside of adequacy. You heard some of those talked about this morning and like the national board served by teachers, um, gifted and talented is actually funded in a separate funding stream. So that's what goes together to make up those dollars. Federal funding in 23 was night goals. That's a little higher than it has been traditionally, um, it was close to that in 21, but before that, when we were looking at, um, these data, it would be closer to 10 or 11%. And a lot of that, of course, is, are those ARPA and ER funds that are distributed, um, or were distributed in response to COVID. We're going to see those work their way through the cycle over the next couple of years. So probably in future reports that Percentage is gonna fall back closer to that 10 or 11%. Um, after that, you can see that um categorical funding makes up about 4% to play with and those other streams, the supplemental streams are 2%. This is a nice chart that Jasmine June and it compares funding and spending both so you can see that, um, there was that 3.5 billion um that school district's got and foundation funding that year and they spent almost all of that money and you can see there was about 5% that was spent on items that were not in the matrix. So most of their foundation money was actually going toward things in the Matrix. Um, when you look at offenses put together so that whole high char worth of money. You can see they actually spent a little bit over that and that probably indicates that they had some fund balances either from their own local monies, um, probably some of that was that federal money because under ARPAN as this chart, um, Jasmine also put together. I'm getting to steal everybody's cool work. Um, Jasmine put this together and it shows you those large bones broken down into what was Spent on items that are in the Matrix, and then versus all non-matrix items. So you can see, um, that breakdown, the middle column shows you the expenditures out of foundation dollars and the, um, the column on the right are off. The next some of our, um, achievement. Um, information that we showed you back in January or that this was from Adrian's report. Um, first I'll go through some um what we call the nation's report card scores. This is the National Assessment for Educational Progress. This is the only test that is given across the board so that you can make these state comparisons, um, the US Department of Education gives this test to a sample of students in all states. Um, it's a representative sample so it allows. For these comparisons. So you can see, um, 2022 was the most recent administration of this, it's usually administered every 2 to 3 years. Um, and in that year, 28% of our students scored at or above proficient, um, those scores, I think, are broken into 3 categories of basic, proficient, and above proficient. So we were about, had about 7%, um, per percentage points below the national average. On that placing us in the, um, lowest quintile or the, if you look at our 4th grade math, we um did better. We were only 2% points away from the national average scoring at or above pericent and, um, we were in the 2nd quintile, the scores nationally. 8th grade reading looks a lot like 4th grade, I mean, 8th grade math was a lot like 4th grade maths, where we were 7 points, um, below what they were doing nationally as far as scoring at or above proficient, and again, in that, uh, first quintile. And then reading again, we were much closer and we were in the. So next I'll show you some overall scores for the ACT aspire in 2023, this was, as Elizabeth just told you, our statewide standardized test. It was the last year, um, before we switched to the Atlas, um. And that year you can see we had 39.2% of our students overall. So these are all grades that were tested, scoring, um, ready or exceeding. So those are the top 2 score categories, both in ELA and math. So in ELA that represented just a little bit of a decline in math. It was um a little bit of an increase. The, um, on the right, we're showing you the expected growth scores, 80 It means a school district or school is hitting expected growth. So you can see in 21 and 22, they were just below, below that. I mean, it's very close, and uh just picked up over that 80% mark in 23 for both subject areas. Here is a map looking at those, uh, ELA scores, and you can see the ranges of scores were pretty large, both for districts which are on the map because they have a geographical area that they're associated with. And then for charters. So for districts, um, the scores ranged from about 6% of students scoring ready or seeing, and that was Marvel Elainene to 65%. And that was in Valley View, um, For charters, it was 3% was the lowest of the range scoring in the red ear and that's a responsive ed Solutions in North LitRock, and the high was 87%, which was Has Hall, and here we go with the math, um, the ranges again were about 5%. Again, that was Marvel Elaine and the high was 68% and that was Jenna was meant to look up exactly where that is, but I bet one of you know. Um, and then for charters, again, Lo was 0 responsive ed solutions in Northwood Rock, up to 80%, 82% in Hasha. This slide, um, is uh is pulling data from all of our reports, but just putting it together in a different way. If you'll remember every time we talked about achievement or salaries or anything, we'd show you different categories of schools and how they compared on that single indicator. This just pulls some of Data points and shows you all in one grouping of schools. So I've got our other groupings of schools at the end of the of this PowerPoint. I won't go through them, but, um, sometimes it, I thought it might be helpful just to look at the data a little bit differently. Again, it's not new data that you're looking at, but just grouped a little bit differently. And then these next two slides are simply to say if you have some other questions about the data that we didn't answer, we may be able to do some slicing and dicing for you, so during these next few weeks while you're looking at um how you want to do your recommendations if you have questions for us, we'll be more than happy to provide whatever support we can and, uh, there is a lot of data and as y'all are probably sick of data at this point, but there's a lot. And a lot more that can be done with it to answer questions and we'll be glad to do that for you. Um, So with that, we are, um, except for providing additional support, finished with our formal role in this study, um, as, um, Representative Evans said there are a couple of important deadlines coming up, um, that October 16th, and this is by statute that both committees have to vote on a set of recommendations, um, and then those go into the final November 1st report. And um, as you deliberate, there are a couple of directions that, um, you can go in, um, the important thing to remember is whatever you do, it has to be based on the research and on, uh, evidence, um, statute does require that what we do is evidence-based. Um, so you could keep the same model and the same funding levels and say everything is good. You could keep the same model and, but add a few, um, lines to the Matrix that happened last year with some of that classified employee. Um, salary and health insurance that we hadn't had before. You can add a new funding streams like you did when you added enhanced, um, salary. Or you could even look toward a new model, um, there's the Matrix and there's nothing that ties you to one thing except that the fact that it does need to be research-based. So to that end, as um, Representative Evans says we do prepare, we've prepared this last few. Um, studies, a worksheet that will help you take, go through all of the decision points. Although I did realize, and we'll add this to the one that we add out. Um, I want to point out lines 6 and 7 are those health insurance lines and those are, those are somewhat new to think about. And then on the teacher salary equalization. There's actually a requirement that this committee recommends what the average salary is, and right now that average salary is $51,20088. And that's based on, um, it was originally based on what the average NEA salary was and so that was our target. But with the salary equalization, Desy distributes that money, um, to schools whose average fall below the average that's set here. So I will get from Jasmine the latest, um, NEA average plus what the recommendation is now so you'll have those to compare. Um, and we'll, we'll fill that box out a little bit. The last, OK, that's that and then. I was just gonna leave. This was, um, I stole this slide from Taylor Lloyd's presentation back in January. And this is again, it's just the court saying that the work that this committee, um, is very important and that the General Assembly without your recommendations would be, um, in their words, though your work, um, will help keep them keep from doing that. So with that, I will turn that back to the chairs and I did want to safeguard these committees, Um, and we appreciate your tentativeness. We know it's a lot of data and a lot of, um, Manisha, but, um, we've and do whatever we can. Julie, thank you so much. You and, and your team just continue to do is, is I've gone through this process now several times, your team always does a tremendous job. We thank you for your work, your efforts. You put a whole lot of time and, and, and what was that word, minutia? Minutiae into this, uh, it's a lot of data and, and that takes time, but you. do a great job putting it together. Members I failed also say the small binder that you receive, this is for you to take home with you. Uh, the sample worksheet is in the back, but also when Emily emails you the working sheet, uh, that, that, um, the spreadsheet that you can use electronically, she will also send you the current matrix that we are funding so that way you have a starting point of knowing what we're doing now as you work towards your recommendations, uh, on the new work. Do you have any questions? We got lots of work to do in a short time to do it. But it's really important. It's the culmination of what we've all been here doing for all these, all these weeks and months. Good afternoon. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just like to get a, may I have a copy of what's been shared with the committee with respect to the possible recommendations that will be made in the previous study. I think it'll be fine, uh, to email out the previous Matrix, um, once we get, which that'll be in September, uh, once we get that, um. Populated back, I think we can probably. Representative back. Thank you, Madam Chair. So you were saying that changes and things like that need to be evidence or we need to work on. So if we wanted to shift some funds around in the matrix. That would be perfectly good. We just give our reasons for running that ship, correct? All right, thank you. Representative Carr, thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, Genoa Central near Turan. All right, on slide 10. Where it talks about, uh, non-matrix items, the very last row on that, is that where Superintendents salaries would be included or are they not on there in any form or fashion? things like at the largest one that I know that foundation dollars are used for our instructional aides that are the non-classified in the classroom. Um, there's a listing and we, we could email that um that. Jasmine presented. Back when we did this report, but there's a list of highs to to lots of things that and, and most of that's spent with not with foundation dollars but with others, but out of foundation instructional aids would be the biggest. Uh, follow up, uh, any way that y'all receive information or report on salary schedules of salaries for superintendents. Laurie, um, has all of that when we did the resource allocation for central office. She did include some charts on Superintendent intended salaries and that should be on the website, but again, we can wait we'll be well, thank, thank you for this information. It helps make decisions, a lot. More efficient. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, so just to remind everybody that. If you were on the committee. You are part of this process if you are not on the committee, you are not part of this process. That, that's uh. That's just the way the rules are. So everybody who was in here today and hopefully those who aren't here today, we'll be able to pick up one of these binders and figure out what what everybody needs to be doing, but if you're not on the committee, you will not get any of this information and you will not be part of the process. One of the nice things about being on the education committee a Representative Painter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well then I'll echo Representative Carr, if we can get that list of the non-matrix items that for at least committee members, that would be great, uh, because I'm, I'm, I'm curious about that as well. That'd be fine. OK. Anybody else have some questions? I think we're done for the day. I think we have done a good job. I appreciate everybody being here as long as you have been and for this process and we had a lot of work to do, but we have. We've, we've done a lot of good work and, and I really appreciate the staff for all the effort that they put into this. This is not an easy task, but we appreciate it. Thank you very much. And the meeting is adjourned. It's