Education Senate and House
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Unknown speaker
0:00
Thank you.
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Thank you.
I'd like to call this meeting
together please good morning everyone thank you for coming out today on kind of a short notice after
last Friday's activities here I thought we need to come together and have some discussion about the things we've been working on and how that process has happened
and what are we going to do to do that. I'm going to let Madam Chair have some remarks. We're going
Senator Jane English
Unverified
7:43
to turn that to her. Thank you very much. If you will note at your place the new economic security report is out it's too much to go online and look at but if you take a look in here all of your schools that are the two-year colleges and four-year colleges in the state are listed in here and it basically goes through with their
major programs how many graduates they have from each of those programs what the salaries are how many of them are employed things like that so I think this is some very valuable information as we look at how do we make sure we have an educated and skilled workforce here in the state of Arkansas and what are the results from some of the programs that
we've got going on right now. So if you take this and take a look at it. all right
what we brought you here for today is for discussion what we would like to hear from you is a solution to the problem that we have about consultants are no consultants we've uh we had for you that were here last week know kind of what happened if you don't know what happened our request for apa to do a consultant contract with
us went to policy and policy changed up the request and added shuls to that request to go before the big alc committee and it was a request that we hire both consultants or no consultant and that went to alc we had a lot of discussion we had two different motions both motions failed
and we are bringing it back not to make a motion today this is not about a motion on anything today this is about discussion of what your feelings are i don't want this to get personal some of you have personal feelings about it i understand let's try to keep it down to a minimum roar today but let's let's try to figure out a solution what are we going to do how are we going to fix what we've done are we going to continue in the pathway that we have went for the last
13 years on the original study are we going to decide to hire a consultant to do a study are we going to do our own study and i'll stop right there i have already mentioned to you at times that is going to be very in depth of your time if we do our own study we will break this into committees and you will do a lot of work and i know some of you have campaigns that you are working on and it's hard on you so
but we want everyone to be involved if we do this so we want to hear from you today i would i would request that you you as you want to speak we're going to try to let everybody speak and i will go completely through the list before i come back to you if you have something you want to add after everybody else has spoke and like i said i don't want to throw rocks or mud today i don't want anybody to do that i just want to hear your discussion and what you think and how we can try to move on
to do something for the kids of arkansas so at any point i think we're already getting request to talk so we will we will uh that's you okay let me get the
Speaker 11
11:45
let me get the right calendar up here i think we got the wrong one
okay all right we're ready to go senator
I'll put your button again I pushed push your button again I pushed you off there you
Speaker 18
12:26
go go mr. chairman I you know I kind of figured I'd be about 10th 11th on
Speaker 19
12:32
the list uh senator elliott must be sick
Speaker 20
12:35
today i don't know but you know
we're just gonna talk i'm ready to make
Speaker 21
12:43
a motion no you know uh mr chairman appreciate your hard work and senator english's hard work on this i know where your hearts are as you know I voted against the motions in policy and in ALC I think we need a study I don't think there's some very intelligent
people in this room but I don't think that we have the time and and maybe the everything we need to pull a study together ourselves the other day I did not see a need in two studies but as I thought about it and looked at it I would rather have two studies than none I think I can't Senator Johnson or someone the
other day mentioned the fact that and I didn't agree with him that day he's not here you can tell him you want to but it's better sometime to have more than one eye on the subject and with two studies it would give us an opportunity to compare I know there's concerns about where these groups came from and and I have a little concern about that but at the same time I'm assuming and Marty's sitting back there but I'm assuming that when these studies are done by outside
groups the Bureau still does a lot of work they request stuff from you so I'm assuming the stuff they're requesting is gonna be what they get is gonna be the same so reports I think will be similar there may be some differences but I just feel like we we we rode this dog long enough and I think it's time to move forward and I would entertain a motion today but if we're not gonna do that today not uh but that my thoughts are that um and i may not like the process what's going on
but at this at this point in in my life i think we need to take a step and uh proceed with uh two studies and that's just my personal opinion okay till we
motion on anything so i'm going to make a a little bit of a statement i see we have uh senator hammer has popped up senator hammer i'm going to make you wait till everybody on the the committee has passed top, so if you'll cancel, I'm going to
cancel you out for right now, and you can come back in. Senator Elliott.
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
15:22
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I didn't wait long enough, I guess. I am
willing to be persuaded, and this would be my request, not necessarily persuaded, But be presented with, and this is just my characterization, a rationale other than what any of us could say at any time, that more information is better than some information.
I mean, that's just such a given maybe, but even that is inexacting, because it isn't necessarily the case that more information is always better. because, for example, if I get information that's not useful, I've got a lot more information, but that isn't necessarily better. I'm reminded that, you know, in just a few days from now, December the 3rd, the new PISA scores will be released, and that's the assessment
that sort of ranks, it's not perfect like as any is not, but ranks how 15-year-olds perform around the world and puts the United States in that category so that we can see how we measure up against the perennial top tenors like Finland and Japan and Taiwan and Shanghai and Guangdong, Canada, and even Estonia, who maybe 30 years ago was just kind of a backwater
that just had been departed from the old USSR. And in the last PISA rankings, even Vietnam was in the top ten. Vietnam. So how did they get there? In 2012, the NCSL, to which all of us belong, we are a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans. 2012, when it came out, after that, we were so shaken
that my Republican chair and I of the NCSL Education Committee ended up tasked, along with the committee, to study in depth. What is it these people who are the perennial top tenners are doing? What are they doing that they, how did somebody like Estonia get in the top ten? How did Poland get into the top ten? And so in 2014, I think it was, we released our report after studying with experts all over the world,
many of whom are from those countries, including Singapore. One of the things that they, that precipitated their work to stay on this track, to be the best in the world, was the United States of America. What every single one of them will tell you, they wanted to outpace the United States of America. And so they have, and so they have remained.
But the way they got there was getting legitimate, well-sourced information, most of which came from the United States of America. So in essence, they took what we had been doing and have outpaced us and remained there. If you look at the American education system, we have gone backward with all these experiments. Let's try this. Let's try that. for the
Speaker 35
19:18
most part is a lot. So I say all that, Mr.
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
19:23
Chair, to say the reason I'm so insistent
and would like or to be persuaded, I guess, that it makes sense for us to spend more money for just because we have this mantra that more information is better than some information. and i will remind us of just two quick things one is what the law says about the legislature is that the legislature shall do a review we are not tasked by the legis by legislation
with doing a study we're tasked by doing the same thing we've been doing since 2003 I don't suppose that means we can't do a study. But even we did not contemplate we could do a study. So we changed the word study in the legislation to review. And I think any pretense that we think we're going to do a study is just that. we do I will be a review because that's what the law says and that's probably the
most we can do so I'm going to be thoughtful about this I want to listen carefully out of respect but it is a this is it is it is a an interesting time to me when we have for many many many years been all about merit and when it comes down to this situation where we have one of these companies that is
obviously meritorious and one about which we have no idea about its merit. They may even be meritorious, but we have nothing to base it on. So with that, Mr. Chair, those are my thoughts. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, my
up on this side from eubanks down i think lowry uh you are next represent lowry
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
21:36
thank you mr chair i made the original motion almost a year ago in the uh our joint meeting that we that we need to do a review or we need to take a fresh look i don't remember the wording a fresh look at adequacy i did not envision in any way when i made that motion uh the concept of hiring an outside consultant and here's and here's why
uh i don't know how else to equate it except to say it this way you know there's the saying that you know the devil we know is better than the devil we don't know and i'm not saying that what we're doing now is a devil it's just it's what we know and there's great benefit in that in
Speaker 42
22:31
our review we have made changes they may not have been through study but they have been through careful review and we have made changes through the years and it could be you know some could say
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
22:45
well that's just kicking the can down the road or that's putting a finger
Speaker 42
22:50
in the dike or or just fixing the holes but actually we have been able to make some very meaningful changes we know through discussion of what we have now what some of the fixes need to be and they're substantial they are moves that we can make with information from BLR we can ask them for instance on the issue of and I and I've
asked about this on the issue of whether the matrix
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
23:24
should be based on a hypothetical student account of 350 rather than 500 because we've heard that there are a number of districts that are really hurt by that I think the number we we got from one of the presentations was that that was around 30 school districts that are affected but we can request a copy of the matrix modified to 350 and see what the bottom line on that is going to be. We can do that. We're not just in a
situation where we can just review it. We can look at it. We can make decisions of whether that is something that is
Speaker 42
24:04
doable. We have had discussions for at least the last three terms that I remember that transportation funding is problematic, that we fund it based on student enrollment, whether that student is transported or not. And so what it's created, and we've heard this analysis from Richard Wilson when he was with BLR,
that one-third of the districts are winners on that funding and two-thirds are losers. So what have we done? Well, we have patched that by saying, well, we'll make extra money, a high cost, or I can't remember what the phrase was, but separate categorical funds so that the districts, the rural districts, can apply for that. But we haven't really fixed it the way we should because in the meantime, the one-third winners are still getting money that, by the way,
Odin and Pika said 13 years ago, transportation funding should have never been in the matrix. so we should look at that as an element of making it categorical we also have expanded to a lot of our chagrin we've expanded what in SLA money now ESA or you know whatever acronym we're using now I think it's ESA what it can be spent
on and it's expanded and expanded and expanded and we've heard a study that says we're not closing the poverty gap so we've done these reviews we've done these effective reviews and we can act on a structure that is knowable to us and there are other elements that we could ask for metrics or we could ask for what would it do if we took this particular action I'm very concerned
that if we if we approve either contract or both contracts that we're talking about something that is not going to be implemented I mean even if we accept every recommendation or part of the recommendations that come forth won't be implemented until a number of us are actually gone yes I mean if if you think that the term limits proposal that's going to be on the ballot next year is not going to pass, then you're not feeling the pulse of the people.
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
26:34
And so all the institutional knowledge that we have, some of it very, very valuable of where we've been and
Speaker 42
26:44
where we are now, that's gone. And you have new legislators, and I'm certainly not denigrating what the new crop of legislators would be, but they wouldn't have the institutional knowledge of where the problems have been with the previous matrix and foundation funding, and then they have this new element.
You know, we need to be wary of anything that potentially is going to make
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
27:16
recommendations for new, untried programs. And that's what we could end up with. And I know that there's a lot of elements of public policy
Speaker 42
27:28
and government where there's experimentation, but the experimentation we do in education harms our kids. And sometimes it takes a generation
for us to figure it out. The example I've used many times, and i know this is not direct educational but it is my mother was on the pulaski county school board many years ago and the in the fad then the big thing that consultants from other states came in and said plastic county school districts are getting ready to build six or seven new elementary schools and this open classroom concept is all the rave it is the thing to do
if you're not familiar with it open classroom is there's there are no internal walls they they spent millions of dollars building these buildings and they found out as soon as they put students in it that the kids could not pay attention to their teacher and this had nothing to do I mean even the students that didn't have ADD were having problems being able to concentrate on what was going on in their classroom because they could look over into the next classroom and so immediately the school
district has to start putting up bookshelves to give some kinds of petitions visually but it still did not partition off the sound coming now that was an investment of probably hundreds of millions of dollars that was a mistake and it was a mistake based on letting an out-of-state consultant come in and say, hey, this is what's being done over in
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
29:09
this state, and you ought to do it here. And that's just one example. I think what we have done with reading, we have constantly experimented
with our kids on reading.
Speaker 42
29:21
I'm very hopeful that what we have now of doing dyslexia training or screening and teaching the science of reading is going to be the silver bullet it is going to help us but in the meantime we can look back historically and we've seen consultants telling us many times from looking at the outside in I just came from the SREB meeting, Southern Regional
Education Board meeting and there's a discussion about workforce training and they're talking about how everything flows through education, industries making decisions of what states to go to and such. And I raise the issue that SREB gives us excellent data. I know Nell and some of the other staff, when they talk to us about specific elements of the matrix, and they talk to us about where we stand with SREB states. And I raised the point at the meeting this weekend, and no one
really, or this past weekend, no one disagreed with it. We need data, and I've mentioned this to the chairman. He said, well, we could ask for that. We need data of how we compare to SREB states. We don't need to know, and it's going to be absolutely defeating, and it's probably going to make us spin our wheels if we're getting best practices from Massachusetts or Michigan, we're not
competing with those states for industry coming in and looking at whether we have an educated and skilled workforce. And with all due respect, I think we also hinder ourselves and our students if we're looking overseas to what is being done in other nations. we have something that we have been working with for 13 years we know it's problematic that there
are issues that need to be fixed but the good news is we know what they are and that's why I firmly believe that we we should not have a new consultant we should work with the framework that we have now we have the ability senator Cheatham is exactly right we have some very smart people in this committee, but we also have some very smart and effective resources through BLR. They use the data that they receive for our 18-month study, looking at the matrix.
That's why we come up with recommendations of what to do on line items. And so I'm just trying to make the best case I can that we just need to dig in, do what the courts told us to do, which is to define adequacy, to do a review that can include changes. And we do that with the data that we have now, not with the data that will be unknown, and the problems that may rise may not happen
for three or four terms after we implement the new recommendations. and then you've got a whole new bad situation and you've got another generation that we've missed. So thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I may come back later
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
32:47
if everyone didn't just walk out when they see that I'm getting ready to talk again. Representative Hodges, I believe you are up.
Is that correct? whoever's got their light on down that away our seating deal since representative walker is gone everybody has moved forward so all of our seating is off one so janna
uh represent del rosa if you're lit up that's you i am lit up so it
Speaker 51
33:27
one of those times when you're not sure you actually want to
Speaker 53
33:33
say what you really want to say. I am very frustrated with this entire legislature, frankly, at this point
Speaker 50
33:39
in time. I think that the motion to accept both of the contracts resulted in a breakdown that basically meant all the work, and I mean all the work, that we have been coming here to do just got null and void and it wasted my time and it wasted taxpayers dollars this education committee has spent a lot of time trying to figure out between two contractors which one we wanted to pick the majority finally picked something which was
Speaker 54
34:10
kind of a compromise in the first place because
if you'll recall that first rfp that we issued we only got one response and we saw we don't want to spend a million dollars on one contract okay so we go back because it's too much money remember that conversation so we go back and we do it all over again all over again and we come back here and now what are we looking at well now we're going to spend 1.3 million on two contracts now how does that make sense i am
Speaker 50
34:41
just so frustrated um i think that you know and i had at the time that
we finally picked APA I had someone that was with me out in the audience and I followed up with them the next week and I said you will not believe what happened later they overruled us and said let's just pick both contractors this was just you know a constituent this was just you know one of your average taxpayers and they laughed they said that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard and I said I can't explain it I'm not on that committee that's a frustration I have too that ALC can override things, and there's a lot of us that aren't on that committee, which means our constituents
don't have a voice on that committee. I have a lot of respect for the majority. That's how the legislature is supposed to work, and any time I have ever been in the minority on a decision, no matter how passionately I felt about it, I have always conceded to the majority. I've never tried to usurp that. That's what happened, and I think that everybody in this body needs to always keep that in mind because if you can do it in one arena you can do it anywhere else so you should always respect the majority I think that's just something that we should always do and I also have
Speaker 54
35:52
an issue with this process and I have discussed
Speaker 50
35:56
it in private and I'm going to discuss it publicly this time because it's something I want everybody in here also to think about we have a problem when one single legislator can push a request for a contract to an individual who can then create a company to reply to that, and then when that company is not picked, that same individual or a small group of individuals
can force the majority to then hire them. I am not saying that that was done with any ill intention or anything like that, but we have a process problem if that can occur. I think that we need to change our process so that any time we are pushing contracts out, a single legislature, which I have no issue with, we were trying to get more applications, and the chairs asked for that, so I'm not saying that wasn't the case, but I think in the future we need to change our rules so that any time a single legislator wants a contract pushed to an individual,
that that should be done via motion openly so that everybody in the room knows who it was so that we can be transparent about things like that. I do not support two contractors because I cannot go back to my district and say we're going to pay $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars because we couldn't agree and we're going to duplicate the work. How do I look my constituents in the eyes and say that? I can't. So I can't go for two contractors. It just makes no logical sense in my brain. If we pick one or the other, whatever it is, even if it ends up being shuls,
I'll go with it if that's what the majority says. but I'm not going to
Speaker 54
37:34
support two and I really believe we need a study to sit there and say that we can just use the data that we have to say that we can use you know the system that we've already got set up our our matrix
Speaker 50
37:51
is messed up and we know it that's why we keep putting things below the line we we've had to put transportation down there we've had to put catastrophic special
education funding down there and we keep having you take things out of the matrix because it's not working this is not just a minor little formula change we were asking these people to do because if it was I guarantee you that bid would have been a whole lot lower than it was you know you probably get somebody for a couple grand to give you something like that that's not what we were asking and that's not what the members of this committee thought we needed we need new data we need new ideas we need a new study what we have is old it's not working and I look at all these people out here in the audience and then i i envision who all they all represent there are
school board members out there there are teachers out there there are parents out there and everybody that's involved in this education system and we are going to sit there and tell them we can't we can't figure out we can't agree on a contractor to redo a study nope nope we're all too set in our ways we've all got our political agendas we can't do that and I can't stand for that either I'd again you know nine times out of ten I say things I probably shouldn't say but I'm extraordinarily frustrated with this entire process and
Speaker 51
39:07
and whatever ends up being the majority is the majority and I'll yield to it but I really wish we could just pick
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
39:22
one contractor and move forward thank you Thank you, Mr. Chair, and ladies and gentlemen of the committee, I thank my colleague, Representative De La Rosa, for her comments, because she has indeed said a great deal of what I wish to say. I chair the policy committee, and I had no idea that policy would suddenly become a review
of an education decision other than to say we will afford you the money or we won't. Never before has policy made a motion to change a standing committee's recommendation. All we were charged with was to discuss it and decide whether we would forward that contract to the council for full study or we wouldn't. That's what we do. now we have subcommittees telling standing committees what they will or
will not do and if that doesn't trouble people you need to because if you chair a standing committee and you need some money in the interim it's going to go to policy well guess what we'll start debating it and maybe we can tell you better what you need to do even though we haven't heard a datcom thing about what you did. And so here we are again. It's unprecedented. I don't have any problem with changing the way we do things if they make sense.
But for a subcommittee to tell a standing committee that has been working on this and working on this for eons that we know better what you ought to do than you do is asinine. And let me say this about comparing our children just to Mississippi, Missouri, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, and whoever else is in this SREB group, Alabama, we do a disservice to our children.
Our children will be competing on the world market. The world market. And we must prepare them to compete on the world market. Not just running around here to Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas. That's what this committee should be about. Excellence. We keep talking about adequacy. Well, just being adequate may be okay for some, but exceptional is what I look for for our children.
That is what I look for. And there are people with agendas here. We all have one, one way or the other. some of them more hidden than others. But to suggest that a group that was put together one month before it gave its bid to us and deliberately underbid the other one, and that's their prerogative, and now we're supposed to go get them, put them on the same footing. Well, let me say this. This is a recipe for disaster, simply because if someone takes us to court over the
question of adequacy, you will probably have two opposing positions if the other group for which I did not vote gives recommendations like it did for retirement. Those recommendations troubled me. The individuals, we didn't have the cooperation with some of those individuals were in some of these studies on retirement, which gave me pause. But that means then that if we go court and one side wants more money and the other side doesn't want more money
you've got expert witnesses that we have paid for either side of that question so we don't stand for anything not anything and so whether we do this or not we know there are some fundamental things that need to be changed the matrix needs to be changed from creating funding based on 500 students it is no longer applicable now that we have decided no we won't it we won't schools with 300 kids or 200 kids you have to change the matrix to do that because you cannot fund eight-tenths
of a person if we only give eight-tenths of a person funding then the district is picking up the rest of it and we're leaving small school districts in the lurch because most of them are smaller than the 500 so they don't get the full amount of money but they expect they are expected to do the full amount of the work there are some things that are just blatantly clear that we have to do but we also have to stand for something and that is the principle that this committee
has been charged with not policy subcommittee this committee has been charged with studying the adequacy of education for the children of the state of Arkansas who will go on to a global network. That's what we've been charged to do and I hope at some point we'll get to that. If we do not, then I'm prepared to look at Nell just like y'all when she makes her report. But unless we make some substantive changes, our children will not even be competing against Louisiana
and Alabama and Mississippi. They'll be competing among themselves, which is not good for this state and its children. Thank you. Representative Eubanks, you're
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
45:08
right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe we need a study. It was just from what I've seen of the two RFPs, I was, I guess I didn't
agree with how they were structured we've I've been on this committee I guess it's my fourth term and we know we have some problems with the matrix and how our schools are funded I would like to know how other states are funding and what their formulas are and how they are trying to make it equitable to all the students in their district this is something that's been in place now for I guess what 15 years or so and we've seen that we have some problems on it we we
hear from superintendents we hear from teachers and I envision this to be a study of how we fund our schools and what we need to change in order to try to do it as equitable as possible now I don't think there's any question that the United States has fallen behind in other countries that Arkansas is not as
high as certainly it's not as high as I would want it to be but I think educators for the most part know what works in the classroom if we have the will to implement those types of policies but I just wanted to know what it is that we could do to make the funding formula the best that it could be or as equitable as possible and I think this study goes beyond that but
and I tried to bring that up a couple months ago and pretty much got shut down down in this committee but I agree that a study needs to be done we need to look at how other states fund education we need to see what it is within our system that needs to be changed so we can meet the needs of the schools thank you mr. chair representative
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
47:37
Deffenbaugh thank you mr. chair I'm since it's kind
of open mic I'm gonna get on I'm gonna get on a subject we really haven't talked about probably since I've been in here so I've been on this committee since 2013 and we have implemented programs studies you know just we've gone up and down the scale some things have probably helped some things have not you know but but speaking as a
teacher the one thing that's left out most of the time is teachers and or coaches or administrators they've got to have control if we don't give them control we don't you don't have diddly if we don't whatever we put in if we don't give if we don't give them an opportunity to discipline we're not going to have diddly these these people that joyce mentioned uh you know you can talk to
some of them read some of them yeah they they have good they do well but uh you know once they getting eighth grade they're allowed to be put somewhere else and not in school and those kind of things and so uh i just want to say that because it uh we've got to back the teachers you know and and you know what i know a lot of people think well this that's just a foregone conclusion no it ain't not if you're facing 25 or 30 of those yahoos it's not a foregone conclusion
And so I just wanted to emphasize that. And two is, my perspective is we blame the teacher a lot when the bottom line is that the person is accountable himself. It's just like Linda said, they're competing on a world market and they've got to answer for themselves. And we've got to put more emphasis on that. And I know all these things are simple, maybe foregone, like I say, foregone conclusions, but I just, I wasn't planning on saying anything, but I thought, you know what, we don't really broach that subject of control and discipline, so I just want to put my two cents worth in.
Thank you. Thank you. before i go to the next one i'm just going to remind you the ones that haven't spoke if you
want to speak go ahead and light your mics up because i'm getting ready to start after representing murdoch here we will start rolling back to the ones that have already asked questions so i want to give everybody an opportunity first
and then we'll go back and reiterate some of the others that have some things that want to go and then
I'll hit the ones and then I will go to the
ones that are not members of the committee so I'm
going to represent Murdoch at this time thank you chairman obviously trying
Speaker 76
50:43
to sit here and just because a lot have been said that's just true and don't need to be repeated and I'm going to try not to do that. Many, many good things have been said. I want to add somehow if I can say some words that will reach us personally on this
committee and in this body, the General Assembly, and how we look and are perceived from those that evaluate us, look at us, specifically our constituents that we represent. We are proving ourself, trust me, you know, I don't know how good you feel about yourself because you're here, you're in the spot, you have the authority, but we are proving ourself to be inadequate, inadequate to the people that we serve.
And that's based upon largely because if we can sit here and we decide to make decisions And we publicly say that if who we hire is going to cost more money, is going to possibly lend us to a lawsuit or something, if we predetermine, not based on the facts, not based on the needs of our children, the staff, everybody that we're supposed to be making a good decision for,
And we say it out loud that I don't even want a consultant that's going to tell me to get it right if it's going to violate some of my political positions or my budgetary concerns. So if we have the, I don't even know what the right word is, to sit here. She said hoovesa. I said, above my grade. If we have the audacity, the audacity to sit here and tell you that I don't even want to know the truth.
I don't even want anybody that's going to come in and look at us for what we have not done in how many years? You call the number, 13 years. I don't even want that. and because of my politics and because of my concerns I will go and undermine this process because I'm the majority fundamentally and some of these people aspire to be you'll hear their name again
in the political arena I say to you and I'm trying to touch somebody personally I'm trying to touch us I'm looking at you all but I'm talking to us stop doing this we are not charged to do it this way we are proving ourselves inadequate and we're charged for such a task that's been bestowed upon us by 3 million or so people
to come here and make decisions irregardless for the benefit of our state and our children. Please, I've said this since I've been here, and I'll end with this. There's a whole lot of good policy that I've seen brought to the table. But until we have the ability, the integrity, to take politics out of the game
and just think about those that we are here to serve, that we will continue to be an inadequate legislature. And term limits, please come and get us. Thank you.
Representative Sullivan, is yours lit up now?
Okay, you're in Gates' seat, so I'm just making sure.
I'm sorry. You're not up? Punch it one more time. Punch it
Speaker 84
55:19
again. Who's in Gates? Who's lit up over there? I'm up, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 87
55:24
Thank you. Yeah, use that one. That'll work. I appreciate Representative Murdoch's statement about politics, but that's just, it's just not real here.
You know, every, since I've been down here, every decision that we make, we have these committees, we have these study groups, and then we actually pick and choose what we wanted to change. And I think we could have made a list of the top five or six things before the study ever started. And then we spend millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars on studies, and we come right back to where we were based upon someone's political position, whether that
was in previous administrations or this administration, based upon the politics, sincere politics, and firmly held beliefs of the people that are in power. My problem is, I think as several people have mentioned, we understand there are several big issues out there, and we can pretty well identify what those are. I don't know that, you know, that we, and I think we have a divergence of opinions on
how to solve that problem. My problem is I don't think when we do this study, we're going to come right back to where we are now. The same people holding the same position on those critical issues that are quite frequently predetermined by the party in power, and that's just not speaking to this session or this term or the political party currently in the power position. That's just always been the case in Arkansas politics and politics nationally.
That's a good thing. That's the way it should be. It's the voice of the people. So again, I'm supportive, if we want to do a study, fine. But I don't think it needs to be so extensive, I'd rather limit it to what we know and what we've already expressed here are the four or five or six major issues. Because when we get done with a study, whether it's a multimillion dollar or several hundred thousand dollars, we're going to end up right back where we are now. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
57:41
Representative Vought, I believe. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'll start off by saying I voted for APA. I didn't have – I do think that we need a study, and I do think that the kids should be the focus of this whole ordeal, and I think the kids might have gotten a little lost in all this. But I also have a question because a procedure was brought up, and I wasn't here the day that the vote took place.
because I had a big DHS meeting in my district about some children who were needing some help and making sure that they got the help that they needed, and it was a very, very important meeting, and I felt like I needed to be at that meeting. So that day I wasn't here to vote, and I don't know. I know that there was a separation of votes. I don't really understand what all took place, but I want to make sure that the procedure that was done that day was the correct procedure.
Because I know I didn't get to vote again because I wasn't
here. You didn't vote. The House did not vote that
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
58:47
day. So did the House, did the people who were here that day that wasn't there the last time, did they get to
vote that time? No, the House did not vote on the last vote. The Senate was the only one that had turned that down. The Senate went through an expungement and
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
59:04
then a new vote. Okay. So if we would have expunged the House's vote that day, would it have passed? That's my question.
we didn't but we did there was nobody here yeah okay all right there was not enough to explain and
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
59:17
it was because it wasn't was it because did we not have enough people here because it wasn't on the calendar to be voted on that day i
Speaker 100
59:25
mean i don't know because i literally was in
ashdown you know truthfully i'll tell you i had no intention of taking a vote that day but that was not the house's decision that was a senate's decision that day okay and it was not on the agenda but there is always a place on the agenda that anything can be brought up and it was brought up and so it was passed so I some people say we did it dirty you know dirty it
was sneaky it was whatever it was no more sneaky than what happened last
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
59:55
Wednesday so well I'm so I'm gonna go back to you know inadequate we're being inadequate as legislators so my wonder is because I was not here on
that day did wednesday happen due to what happened on monday was that i can't i can't answer that
Speaker 104
1:00:12
because i wasn't here wednesday so so does i
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:00:15
get yeah you know you see what i'm saying don't you
Speaker 106
1:00:19
being childish it was a revengeful probably
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:00:22
okay so with that said mr chair and you don't have to answer madam chair you don't have to answer um because i was just wondering about that because i was not here i do think that we've got to remember the kids in all of this though i mean the
whole time so thank you mr. chair main focus is kids represent speaks
Representative Nelda Speaks
Unverified
1:00:43
you recognize thank you mr. chair you know I feel like I feel like a loss of words to
be honest I hate that we've come down here because my deep concern and and so much has been said and I totally agree with a lot of it but I think our our school to this to the administration's to the faculty and most of all to our children were failing I feel like a complete failure that we're down here today to just discuss something that we've been working on for so long and I
I think we look weak. I personally do not have the time to devote all of the time that's going to be needed for us to do it in-house, and I feel very inadequate to do that because I'm so concerned. My big concern was when I came on education. I wanted to see our schools excel, our children. They are the school, but I wanted to see them excel, and I wanted them to be able to meet any challenge that came out of when they graduate, that they can achieve, that they can do.
And I feel like today that we're just here just muddling through this thing. Rather than getting down to what we need to do, I think we need a study. I don't think that, and I'm not taken away from anybody's intelligence, but I don't think we're capable of going into the schools, visiting with these people, and finding out what needs to be done.
what we need to do i for one do not believe that just pouring money into a school is going to change anything i think it's that it's going to where they need help we need to be able to help them i agree that discipline is a huge problem in our schools and i think bullying is a huge problem in our schools and we need to to be able to hear from the people that's having to deal with
it to where we can know what to do and so i for one i wish we could just get someone i voted that day for the the one i wanted but when it didn't go through i voted for the second one because I want someone that can come in here and help us find out what we need to do to get our schools raised up to where we can meet the challenges. Thank you.
Okay I'm going back to the second time around anyone in the front row there
that's a member. If you want to speak let's speak I mean that's what we're for today that's what i called you down here you made that trip to speak your mind go you're wrong quit playing with
Speaker 98
1:04:12
those buttons if you punch it again it'll come off mute
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
1:04:20
all right i haven't figured out if open mic means posture statement here but that's what it seems like and it's like i'm not sure if we're talking to the audience or to a reporter or if we're talking
to each other we we are talking to each
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
1:04:35
other it's just you're facing the wrong way i'm i'm appreciate that opinion but i'm not sure i'm not sure who we're speaking with because this body mad and we spent a lot of time and i spent a lot of time reading the the studies and listening and getting to ask questions about the people and then we we made a vote and that vote didn't pass and
And then I found out that vote, we're all saying, whether we were here or not, I was in Texas on the Commission for Children. We were all doing things that we are tasked to do. We're doing what we're passionate about. And we wouldn't be here on this education committee, which is highly competitive to get on, if we weren't absolutely certain that we wanted to do something to better our schools and to better our state. So for us to have spent so much time And then to have been absolutely dissed by a subcommittee and all that posturing that went on was a slap in the face.
It just was, and you can look at who voted and who brought it around, and we can talk. Thank you, Jenna De La Rosa, because you put it more succinctly than I ever could with the situation all the way around with how we are here today. southeast arkansas south arkansas those of us who represent really rural areas have very little opportunity to have the competition of vouchers and private schools and charter schools and all that we're relying on the public schools to be our economic center of our communities and the
basis for which we are going to be competitive in our rural areas of bringing our kids back the jobs that they get depend on what we do with our public schools and that hasn't changed and how we fund the transportation how we've done the matrix and all the things that we've been doing for the last 13 or plus years because we know how to do it best it's not working it's just not working and if you're representing a teacher or a school board member or tracy streeter god bless her the superintendent of hamburg school who tells me every day all the challenges that we have
others do too but because we are in tune with those people in the public schools where there's nothing else i think we're especially able to understand the need for change and we i i got really smart when i left arkansas because i realized that there are a lot of really smart people out there not just here in arkansas who have other experiences that can contribute to how we look at the world our world needs to be something that we're looking at the competition
Speaker 118
1:07:11
for the world that's what we're doing we're putting our kids in competition for the world And they're going out in
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
1:07:17
the world, and they're not equipped if we don't look at different ways to change. So some of the things we're talking about working, some of the things that we've looked at recently, those are all great. We came in here, we made a quote, we know that we need somebody else to come in and tell us. I don't have the time to drive back and forth. I love the drive, and I get to read lots of books on tape, quote, read, on my trip back and forth. But we don't have the time to come in here and give it the dedicated effort that other people who are smarter than we are can look at a lot of other things and not just Southern Regional Education Board, which I go to and I love their stats.
But we need to be looking at the world's stats and we need to be looking at things that work outside of our area and we need a study to do that. I thought we were there. I was excited about how we were there. I am embarrassed about how the process ended up that we are here even having, again, open mic posturing today in this committee. But I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to say it. And
Speaker 83
1:08:13
thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing me to.
Any other members that have not spoke? Representative Garner, punch your butt. You're
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:08:30
recognized. Thank you. and I agree with most of the things that have been talked about but I just want to say one thing and that is so many things have changed since the last study. It's not just the matrix it's technology, it's mental health, it's so many things that other states have been dealing with just like we do and I just
feel like we need to have that outside eye looking at everything not just the funding because otherwise we're going to stay at 45th and U.S. is going to stay at 27th. We're not doing anything to help our kids get to that world stage. But I just think that we've got too many things that have changed in the last number of years that most folks don't even think about. And, you know, I can say that mental health is a struggle for even the experts to deal with. So I don't think this committee
has the expertise to deal with some of those kinds of things. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Evans, do you have anything to say? I'm just asking,
Speaker 98
1:09:36
you don't have to. Okay. Senator Sturge, do you have anything to
say? Senator Eads. Has everyone had a chance to have Representative Allen anything to say?
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
1:09:58
you recognize okay I always have a lot to say but I don't think you all want to hear
what I have to say yes yes we do I think you run me out of here yeah it appears that a study was done 16 years ago but right now it looks like we're stuck in time and it's hard for me to
sit here and understand like understanding why we can't move forward and why we can't take the politics out of it and the people that we're punishing it's our kids and our kids is a voice into the future that many of us will never see but what we do for our kids today will basically determine what kind of leadership we'll have tomorrow so I think it's very important that we will
we will we think it's important that we don't hold our kids hostage and that's what we're doing right now if we don't move forward we are punishing our kids we're punishing the future and Arkansas will be left out Representative Meeks I
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:11:36
won't be long colleagues I think most everyone said
everything that needs to be said the only thing I'm gonna say is this we first started this at the end of last sessions most of us I think all of us agree that we're tired of Arkansas being 45th 46 47th and all of us talked about and we're excited about the possibility that we need a paradigm shift in education we're not going to be the top 10 unless we have a paradigm shift and what we're doing in the state and in order for us to accomplish that we can't do put the finger in the dike we can't piecemeal we can't continue doing
business the way that we've done it we need to change and in order to decide the best way to change we need outside eyes looking at giving us ideas giving us advice and so with that obviously I do support the study I think this study is something we need to get done otherwise we'll continue tweaking around the edges we'll continue being 45th and we'll have to go back to our constituents and continue to make excuses
why we're one of the lowest states in the country instead of putting forth the effort and doing what's required to become one of the best states in the country and with that i'll yield back question i have two that have asked
me to speak again would you like to speak now would you would like to hear some of the non-members you want to hear them okay okay these are going to be the last two i'm going here and then we're going to go to so i have some non-members that
Speaker 132
1:13:18
want to speak senator elliott go ahead
Speaker 134
1:13:23
oh i thought you're going to go to the non-members
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
1:13:27
no here y'all all right uh well i'll i'll go through these these thoughts pretty fast here i think and what i'm trying to get to and what and what i ask initially um just kind of stay on the subject of why do we need in my case i feel like i need to um whether i can persuade you or not but I think the task is to help everybody understand why I feel so
strongly about one of these groups and not the other because I think that's the problem we are trying to solve and the reason I brought up what I did about the study that we did in NCSL with 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans the reason we were so deliberate about the politics because we knew we were all going in with our politics to open our minds to something else and by the time we and every every one of us did and every one of us got dispelled of these notions and
these myths that we have about what other countries are doing who are outpacing us like we think these things like when they get to a certain grade they just put them off somewhere no they do not they do not put anybody off somewhere just to go to work in some kind of gulag that is not what they do and this notion that they are not like us they don't have diversity like we do yes they do and and still they manage to do what they need to do for their kids because they listen to experts who came in and did their
studies and what's so bothersome to me they got their experts from the united states of america The experts who did the studies in the United States of America are the folks that people in other countries are listening to. And we sit here and talk about listening to ourselves. And if they were hung up in regionalism, they would never have thought about crossing the oceans and outpacing us. Suppose in 1991, Estonia just said, well, we just need to know what's happening in Lithuania and everybody close to us.
They would still be the Estonia of 1991, but that is not what they did. They looked at the North Star. They got people who were experts right out of the United States of America, and we are deciding whether or not we want to even have a study to move our kids to even remotely close to that. And the reason I want so much to have somebody with expertise, because I never, ever, ever thought I'd hear in this committee that our kids don't need to be prepared to compete on the world stage.
And when I look at the two entities that we are considering, one of them, in my estimation, is obviously more prepared to put us on a trajectory to that. But I want to be clear, this study, no matter who does it, is not remotely putting us on a path where we're going to be there in five or ten years because we're still reaching for adequacy. I just don't, I don't understand why it is if we really want to do that. And now I'm disabused of that notion because some of us really don't.
So I'm a member of SREB. I go and participate. SREB is wonderful. But I want to remind us why SREB was started in the first place. SREB was started in the first place in 1948 because it was the southern region of the country that was holding the rest of the country back. That's why it was created. And we seem to be saying we want to continue with the posture of not being the best,
of not being exceptional. So if we are going to even get there to start up that road in five or ten years, we can't be tinkering around with people who we don't have confidence that they know what they're doing. And so that's my problem. And after we did this study, these 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans, we figured out after the second or third meeting or so, we needed to just stop, be quiet, and learn what other people are doing, and that's what we did. We did not continue down the road.
We stopped and learned. And at this point, when any one of us talks about that study, if you were to put us behind a blinder, you would not know who's Democratic. You would not know who's Republican. Because getting real information took the politics out of it. That's what information does. And you can ask if you think I'm making it up just because I'm some kind of Democrat. I can give you the name of the 11 Republicans or the other Democrats on there. Talk to them.
They can come and sit right in front of you right there, and I guarantee you they will say the same thing I'm saying right now. It was information that took the politics out of it. And the only two states that have moved ahead, because a lot of states had this same kind of thinking, Maryland has taken what we've done, and Maryland is one of the top-performing states in the country already. but Maryland doesn't think that it is good enough at this point and they have taken this study and they're not talking about adequacy they have taken a study
to get them to Massachusetts and so forth if Massachusetts were a country they would be the only one and though they'd be ranked number three in the world if they were a country and you can say oh Massachusetts did this this and this Massachusetts didn't do anything they did I don't care how many Harvard's they have there without doing the study of what they need to do first with experts they didn't just up and go oh we are all really really smart no they knew what they had to do and they got on the road and they stayed there new mexico new mexico has now started down this road
while we're still deciding if we want to have a study i want you to be sure that we're going to say that Arkansas educators know what's needed then we ought to listen to what Arkansas educators are telling us and then have somebody who knows how to help us get to where we need to be and lastly I guess I just want to say when we think about our representative de la rosa talked about the things we put below the the line of the matrix why is that happening what does it have to
do with my desire to have APA do this study because the point of a study and what we don't have is to create policies that are aligned create policies that are aligned with where we want to go if you don't have aligned coherent policies we just have a bunch of stuff and here's what that looks like. If we had aligned coherent policies about what we want Arkansas to be, do we want
Arkansas to just be adequate? Then that's what our policies are going to reflect. Do we want Arkansas to be world class? Then that's what our policies will reflect. And once you've got the policies, if it's going to be coherent, that's when we figure out how do we put it all together and and make it make sense. And that every time Joyce Elliott comes in here with a bright, brilliant idea, I wanna upset that cart and just go, woo, I found something new I just wanna do.
Don't let that happen, because that's where you destroy coherency unless you have a really good reason for it. A really good reason. So I am asking you to please think about if we want to go beyond just being adequate or even if we just wanna reach adequacy. let's do what other people have done get experts and not act as if we all are because that's what they do that's how other folks got there they didn't go around looking for something less than
to tell them how to be great it is heartbreaking to me that we would even consider the notion that we are not going to prepare our kids for the world stage. I just
Speaker 138
1:21:53
can't get over that. How is that even possible? And at the same
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
1:22:02
time, we try to tell them, you've got to put your nose to the grindstone and work at it, and we won't.
Speaker 138
1:22:09
How do we even think that way? and we
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
1:22:16
tell them you better get prepared to work on the global stage if we're not going to prepare them stop telling them this crap we keep telling them it's a small world you got to be ready for the whole world and we want to prepare them something roughly on an idea based in 1948 Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
1:22:41
Representative Lowry. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have always been a firm believer, and I think it's a Chinese proverb that says that if you aim at the moon, you'll hit an eagle. If you aim at the eagle, you'll hit a rock. So I understand the necessity of aiming high, but we have, and let me preface this by saying
that whatever position any of us are taking, whether it's no contract, one contract, two contracts, we are all operating out of the same heart of wanting the best thing for our kids. Okay, so that statement has sometimes been used as an indictment of other opinions, and I think that that is beneath us. So at this point, I'm not posturing. I'm talking to each of us, and I apologize if I'm pointing a finger
and not recognizing that three are pointing back. I mentioned I referenced the SREB states only because there are some exceptional states that are within that 16-state consortium. Senator Elliott mentioned one
Speaker 42
1:24:01
of them. Maryland is in that consortium. North Carolina is in that consortium, and they are talking about, and I know Representative Birch and I attended a meeting in North Carolina a couple years back, the Hunt Institute's looking at not just pre-K, but looking at zero to grade three.
Those are the kinds of states we need to be talking to, that we need to be collaborating with, And we are, we're already doing that. I can tell you, I've
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
1:24:40
been on the SRAB Legislative Council for three years, and I can't give you a count
Speaker 42
1:24:47
of how many Republicans and how many Democrats, because SRAB specifically urges us
to not get into political discussions. and we talk about policy we talk about what is working let me let me just give you an example of what the experts the only example I had a while ago was about the school building but here's one that is more recent and it is also more disturbing outside educational consultants I refer to the many times is at the educational intelligentsia convinced Arkansas to be part of the
park consortium remember the park test there were 24 states in 2010 there were 24 states signed up to be in the consortium Arkansas being one and I came to the legislature with a bill that would that said let's get out of park because by that time that 24 states had dropped to 11 and my admonition was listen let's take let's take advantage of the fact that we are in the middle of
the country that we're able to see the advances and I do that in quotation marks that start on the East Coast or the West Coast and by the time it gets to us the states on the East Coast and West Coast have realized it was an abject failure. Guess how many states are now in the park consortium? This wonderful test, this wonderful test that our educational intelligentsia told us we needed to be part of and the outside consultants told us only three states
are in that consortium. And we almost subjected our kids to that. We tried to, I heard story after story from parents who said their 4.0 students were coming home in tears because of what an absolute botched testing assessment tool the park test was. Those kids were crying. Those parents were crying.
I understand that teachers were crying. and we pushed against that tide that we want to be part of what the experts are telling us and we pushed against it and we moved to an assessment test that I think is going to better prepare our students for post-secondary education because it's going to be but you know that was a state decision. That was something we made internally. We didn't have to bring outside
consultants in to tell us that we were on the right track. All we had to do was look at the historical data that Park was a failure. I remember having a conversation with Representative Walker, one of many, I know a lot of times y'all just saw us kind of butting heads, but we had a lot of great conversations and he wanted to know why should we get out of the park test what what is it that you're seeing and I said representative one example of
the failure of the park test is Connecticut they discovered that the test was not just measuring educational attainment but it also was finding because it was exclusively an online test, and it was students who did not have keyboarding skills, i.e., they did not have a computer at home. They didn't have an iPad at home. They were failing, and the poverty gap was widening,
not because of their knowledge base, but because of how bad the test was. And at that point, he said, okay, I'm with you. Now, I don't know if the same criticism can be directed towards ACT. I don't believe so because it's been in play much longer. But we made a correct decision. Now, it certainly did upset our ability to look at data points over time. We did have three tests in three years, and that's not a good thing.
But we are now getting to that point where we have three data points where we can actually see progress. One thing I'm going to say about process, I didn't talk about process earlier. This has been a tainted process from day one. I thought it was wrong for members to impugn the integrity of one of the consultants by raising the specter
that they had supposedly been lobbying members those are words that you can't take back if you've impugned someone's character whether it's a firm or a person people hear that and it's a seed that's planted i think the people that did it knew what they were doing and so we never had a really fair comparison we talk about well shul was only has was a newly formed entity dr shul has been involved in adequate adequacy
studies all over the country. As a matter of fact, they were involved as one of several contractors in the state of Maryland. APA was the other, and Maryland accepted the recommendations in many cases of Shul over what APA was recommending. So it's not that they don't have experience, but it's supposedly an indictment that you know that would be like saying that anyone who's a first
termer on the Education Committee really doesn't have a right to be heard and that's wrong because we all come here with various backgrounds whether it is as a legislator or not that's that that's the great thing of a citizen legislature we were able to gain from even non electoral insights and I think the same thing can be true about a consultant who has their they were
contracting with OEP which operates out of the University of Arkansas we accept recommendations and studies from them all the time and so it's not like they didn't have experience. The last thing I would say is we know we've known for some time what the problems are, the various problems with the current matrix and it's not been an inability to actually make those changes. It's been a
lack of political resolve. We've identified them. We've identified them with data that was produced internally I've referenced that we've been talking for at least three terms about the transportation issue and the first time we started talking about it and started making some progress we were told by a speaker you know let's put that on another speaker's plate I just really
don't think we should take it up now the next time we made some progress we were told well the executive branch really doesn't want us to take this on this term so it's a lack of political resolve on something that again I think we're all going to do this a lot and and I know it's surprising that that I would do it and I'm going to be constantly driven and governed
by a lot of the conversations that I had with Representative Walker. And he would always talk about it, and I've heard Senator Elliott and Senator Chesterfield also reference it, that we need to be acting on empirical proofs and evidence. We have the evidence. We've had the evidence in a number of areas. The 350 student allowing that doesn't fit with the 500 student matrix.
Transportation is funded improperly. The evaluations that we have on declining enrollment and increase, you know, all those things. We've got the data. We just don't have the political resolve. And I don't think that we're going to have any more political resolve just because a consultant came in and told us you ought to be doing this or doing this or stop doing this.
Because the empirical proof is, the historical proof is, we've listened to the experts as in the park test, as in the failed building construction model, and we have failed our kids. Sometimes we don't find out for a generation or half a generation, and by that time, they're lost, especially if it comes to things like reading at grade level. We know now.
The research is clear. If we don't have them reading at grade level by third grade, it's next to impossible for them to catch up. We know that. But what have we really done? We don't have to have a consultant tell us that. We know. So what have we done? We can do it with the current matrix by saying, let's shift more dollars towards K-3, either additional teachers or a teacher's assistant, so that that student-to-teacher or teacher-assistant ratio is much lower.
Because the proof, the evidence is, specifically with minority students, that the lower the class size is, the better their ability to be reading at grade level. We've had that data, and we've not acted upon it. So we don't need more recommendations when we're not even acting on the recommendations that we have
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
1:35:24
before us now. So that's, thank you for the second opportunity.
Speaker 20
1:35:28
I appreciate it. Senator Cheatham, you're up. I guess, and I knew I shouldn't have because Senator Elliott always comes by and makes me look like... Well, you're the last
Speaker 21
1:35:46
member that's going to talk, then we're going to the other. And I'll try to be brief. I try to say what I think and not embellish it too much, but there are some very smart people in this room.
I just think, first, go back to Senator Chesterfield. She's completely right. What happened the other day was out of the norm. It never happened before. in a way just disrespectful after the meeting some couch counter and I was mad and somebody said something to me and I got kind of smart to him yeah I usually don't do that but we got to talking about then we got talking serious and this person said and I said it's politics and
they said wait a minute when you were in the house and you were in the majority did you ever see this happen? I said, not this, not what happened today, but yes, as I think back, there were times probably when we overruled as a majority things that might not should have overruled, but anyway, that's not what I want to say. I would like to have one study, But if I can't have one study, my superintendents, Representative Birch mentioned one while ago, they want to study.
They don't care if we've got two or three. They want it looked at. Most of the schools in my Senate district are anywhere from 300. I think the biggest is about 1,800. But I've got seven different schools and two that are on the verge of one another one on the verge of 350 But they have serious problems. I May not like the study that comes back from one of these But someone will have a chance to look at it. I might not be here
lot some of us may not be here Have a chance to look at it and make decisions then I would rather have have two studies and none you know and yeah and i know when even when they come back there's gonna be this center disbang said the other day he said no matter what you get there's gonna be people upset uh they're not gonna like it before it gets here but i hope when it gets here if we do it that they won't be that far apart it's it's a little unusual i know but i know today in the
paper the return the public retirement system uh had something similar to this they were trying to to pick security firms to look at their stuff and they couldn't agree so they just said we'll use them all all 18 of them and so that's
Speaker 20
1:38:37
what they did so you know maybe two is not as bad but I think that you
Speaker 21
1:38:47
know what if we don't want to
study I just say we don't want to study but if we want to study even even though I'm in a minority I know I just rather have
to the none and I saw all slave mr. chairman thank you senator okay that was the last of our members questions we're going to now go to senator hammer he was in the mix at the start so we'll go to you
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:39:15
thank you mr. chair and I appreciate your indulgence is a person that's a member that is not a member of the committee,
but I am a member of ALC, and we're going to have some weigh-in on this when it's all said and done. So it's been educational to sit here and listen to the various opinions. So I've got a couple questions, maybe directed at the chair. With regards to a review, personally I think that a review would be good. It's a question of who's going to do it. It's either going to be one consultant, two consultants. It's going to be the staff and the members, or it's going to be the court because we don't do anything, and probably it may end up in court.
So to me, those are the four options. As far as the policies and the processes, the question was asked the other day in ALC, was there anything that was, for lack of a better term, not allowed through the process or the policies that were in place? And the answer was no. So we may not like the way we got here, but the fact of the matter is I don't think anybody did anything wrong. it's just a matter of politics and positioning and we are where we are so we got to figure out how to move forward so my question uh to the chair is this uh there's the two contracts they each
killed the equal amount of trees respectfully when you look at it so my question is this uh when it came to the references when somebody applies for a job they don't ever put down the ones that they didn't do good with they only put down the ones they did good with uh one of them stated that they had done work in over 20 states but i didn't see where the references represented those number of 20 states did staff check the states that are not referred to in the references to determine if their results of work in those states were satisfactory if they'd been fired
if the contracts had been terminated early no they did not and and for the reason they probably were not asked to check that okay well as an individual member not of this committee but as a legislator i'm going to ask for the staff to do that because it's as much as what's not shared as it is what is shared that i think gives equal light and perspective when you weigh the two against each other and one may be more referenced maybe longer in existence i think it's about what they didn't do or what they got fired from that's more important than what they give us in these
packets then the second question is this the meeting on november 4th cost 6275 dollars the meeting on November 5th cost sixty six hundred and sixty five dollars in per diem instead you know paid out to staff members we're going to if you go with the if you go with the committee and if you go with the resources of the staff has there been an estimate of what that cost will be because I think when we
talk about the amount of the contract the dollars are important but when you pay it to a consultant out of this pot or you pay it to members and the increased responsibility on the staff who just came out of a very hard legislative session with the transformation bill and the experiences we got through there about the delay in staff members getting I mean other members getting their work done because that took priority has the chair have the chairs and the committee looked at what the cost is going to be to tie up the resources and pay the members for
per diem senator hammer that was something i worked on before the
last vote was taken was for an option if we were going to do this as a committee and our staff would be i can't figure theirs i would have to do that sometime different but per diem wise for us to travel the state look at the things we need to do come together as committee and have meetings it would take um basically this committee meeting almost once every week for the next nine months possibly
maybe 10 to come up with the solutions that we would need my initial thought on that was and it's just this is just unofficial guess from my part from between 300 and 500 000 dollars okay so then the question is you want to spend it with
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:43:33
for lack of better term experts the process of picking which one or how you move forward to the four options i mentioned a while ago is one thing but when we go throwing around numbers about the amount of money that we're going
to spend whether we spend it with a consultant or whether we spend it it's all going to be taxpayer dollars that are spent so i think that that needs to be included in the discussion i didn't hear that in in alc the other day but i think that's an important consideration for the committee concern consider you know the other thing is adequacy is always going to be an outgoing process i don't particularly feel that today is an admission of our inadequacy as step you know as as uh elected officials i'd hate to have an opponent and just realize that i acknowledged
on live stream before the paper that i'm down here being inadequate but i think that the fact that the chairs have called for an open meeting i think the fact that the chairs have called for an open meeting and you're not doing this behind closed doors i think you'll be commended for that even if it is a open air process so thanks for answering my questions thanks senator hammer i i believe johnny is that you
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
1:44:46
that are lit up over there now yes sir thank you mr chairman i appreciate
you very much letting me speak just a little bit uh i've tried to follow uh follow this last five months watching as close as i could and see what would be the best solution for the entire state and you know one thing we got to think about we can speak about this all day long in here in this room but we have got kids kids kids the triple thing is children and you know there are
a lot of poor children in our state they don't have a chance i know that and i think a lot of us know that and we need to spend time with these children we need expertise to go to these kids and catch these children up to where they can at least function and do the things that they need to do in this world and do in our state to be able to get a job and do the things they need to do and I mean I think we're we're
letting folks down if we don't do what's right and I think that there's at least one squad and I've talked to all these folks out here and there's some smart folks out there in that crowd and there's some smart folks up here in this one right here but either one of those squads would probably be okay i think i know the one that i would i would choose but i'm not on the committee but you guys have voted on that already one time in here before but we need to do something and we don't need to talk about all this we need to do
something about this we need to get it on the road and we need to help these kids because you know now maybe I'm wrong maybe I heard some wrong figures here the other day but I heard 41 percent of our children could actually read proper when they finished high school and y'all that's pretty bad that's pretty bad for a state like Arkansas and I think we need to do what's right we need to do what's right that's all i have to say right there thank you appreciate it all right ladies and gentlemen
that's all the testimony for today we do have something else coming up afterwards i have been kind of sitting here taking notes of what people are saying i'm not accurate on what I've got I I would like to ask you what you would like to do I would like to know from everyone on the committee where they stand on no study one study or two studies would you would you rather us do that by email so you can respond back
with that since we do not have some of the membership here today that would give everybody that that possibility and once we have that result we can come back we may have to have a meeting in December which we do not have one scheduled it would be and I'll try to work that out where we don't miss everybody with other meetings I'm not I don't think there's a lot of things
out of state in December can't do that by email never mind just found out do a
conference call that's a lot of conference call I doubt if we can do it okay then I'm here's what I'm gonna do today I will can't do
Speaker 63
1:48:49
it by email can't can't she said that's not legal no it's not a meeting kind of thing not voting on anything just asking their opinion
but i mean if it's if it's i could do this today here's what i'm going to do today let's just
do it this way if you don't want to vote today i'm
not voting we're not voting all i'm going to ask today is a consensus which way would you if no no no i'm not trying for consensus today i just want to know each one of y'all if you want zero you can raise your hand if you want one you can raise your hand if you want two you can raise your hand i can mark those down we'll come back in another meeting and we'll get the opinion of the other ones that are not here and then we can figure out are we going to go for this next step do you
can just talk that's to be cited later yes just that's just yes that's that's
your choice that's your choice but this will
just get us to a next stage is what i'm saying you know i'm i'm just asking you what your opinion I mean personally personally I will speak now I
do not like two contracts I think that is terrible for our state I think it's money spent that we don't need to spend I don't think it's conservative Democrats or Republicans we should do that and I know we have conservative people on both and I just don't think that's what we should do but I'm not going to say we won't do that because I can't I mean that's going to still be the opinion to this committee uh doing another personal opinion doing zero study and us doing it ourself very time consuming we're not experts we're gonna there's some things we know there's some things we
don't know we have a whole list of things that these two consultants have plotted out to do and i look at those and i'm going i don't have time to do all of that and i don't think most of you especially you that have races we have some that have senate races we have some that have house races and you've got a very very uh major part of your time that you're away from here doing things that you're going to be doing that uh so that's that's it so if you don't mind if if you guys don't want to do this all i'm asking is your opinion and i'm going to ask if you don't
want to vote at all you don't have to and we're not voting just if you don't want to raise your hands not a vote it's just a it's just me to write down what you guys think all right the ones that want zero studies raise your hands no study at all i have three and i'm
not writing your names now i'm just taking an opinion one study okay and two studies
have two the consensus is one study and that could go three ways for you i understand you've always went all different ways i've
heard so just kidding mark that's what friends are for yes sir yes sir that was the
first one first one yes sir no studies basically in this committee was three one study 13 and two studies was two so we will poll the other ones i will call them
personally and talk to the other that are not here today and i need to get their names for sure make sure i've got all of them if you would get those for me and as far as i'm concerned if nobody else has anything else today we are going to be adjourned from this meeting there is a education caucus meeting that will take place next um mark you want to talk about that i'm gonna let mark talk about that a little bit you can come on up here if you want to or you can do
it there you can talk about it
there and then you come up here
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
1:53:13
you're going to be the chairman go Go ahead. Yeah, turn me on, yeah. This was put together late, and I certainly hope that y'all will be able to stay around. Senator Clark, and I wanted to call this, there's an expert that has come here to talk about reading at grade level, dyslexia screening. I know that that's one of the major initiatives
that we've really started moving into. Thanks Senator Elliott for her leadership on that. And so I don't know the time commitment, but we're gonna hear testimony right here. You won't even have to move from your chairs. I hope that you can stay around.
Speaker 42
1:53:50
Probably will not run past the lunch hour. So thank you for your indulgence in staying. And I think it'd be some really good information giving us direction and
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
1:54:02
where we want to go with with all these initiatives we
will start that at 11 o'clock we need 10 minutes to break the room down for the for our committee staff to get this room broke down and get their stuff out because this is not part of that so 11 o'clock we will be right back here thank you and we are adjourned You
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Opening Remarks by Committee Chairs
C. Discussion of Issues Related to Adequacy Consultants
D. Other Business
E. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — EDUCATION COMMITTEE - SENATE AND HOUSE MEETING JOINTLY WITH ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION, Nov 21, 2019 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative Bruce Cozart Chair
Unverified
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Speaker 11
Speaker 16
Speaker 18
Speaker 19
Speaker 20
Speaker 21
Speaker 28
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
Speaker 35
Speaker 36
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
Speaker 42
Speaker 50
Speaker 51
Speaker 53
Speaker 54
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Representative Gary Deffenbaugh
Unverified
Speaker 76
Speaker 84
Speaker 87
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
Speaker 100
Speaker 104
Speaker 106
Representative Nelda Speaks
Unverified
Speaker 98
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
Speaker 118
Speaker 83
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 132
Speaker 134
Speaker 138
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Speaker 63