Education Committee Senate & House

Service the. We want to say stop the And okay I'm just going to try to get a thank you get everybody headed to the seat. If you're not a member of the committee please find a seat that is vacant with not a name on it please you're welcome the members of the house and Senate that are on this committee are welcome to set with us today we're going to try to make a lot more room in the area out there for or other groups to set in. All right let's get started here. Good morning afternoon sorry I'm still sleep afternoon. Hope everybody had a great fourth and we're back to work already so being productive hopefully. It's good to see everybody today Your will be struggling in a few more so All right venture waving thank you. All right we need a motion to accept the minutes of March ninth June eighth and June ninth meetings. The motion second of second all those in favor say aye. Any opposed no. Motion carries. All right. We are ready. To get started. I see a man up there just ready to go and I'm not sure if you can you all hear Samantha can you hear us. Probably not that's the way it always go Justin can you hear us. Can you hear me. Amend the. No breaking up just a little bit okay are we we were read go Justin I'm gonna turn it over to you your first on the agenda and if you're ready go. Can you hear me no he didn't hear you can you hear me. No. One more can you hear that one. No okay then these are working up there. Whoever technology person to write. Okay okay. Casey this case is the beginning. Working on it if you can hear us at all. Right. Now. No. Dear me. No I conceive. If. The. Amend the Justin neither one. Can't hear us. Can you hear me now. In the other room. The bill. Still not hearing us I take it. Picture. Well this is for direct talks to begin offering for. About their bill rate was so. I had a. At a meeting with the. Just you could by the state as long as it's not too close to anybody here governed by the sea. Willis also hear some now. We just get on the phone. We hear them. But we heard. One. Since. You. In order to. and and send amount. I thank. Test test. The other. See you guys sound on your. Okay talk just. Sounds betterment testing testing. Can you hear me. Yep sounds really good now yeah I just got much better. Okay yes. Can you hear me now just in. Sure care. Can't hear me. Yes you can hear me okay. All right I think if you can hear us that we're ready for you we hear you so you're you're ready to present we are ready to go. Okay let all right about here we go. Me assure. The screen here and then hope. All right so you all Should be seeing a Study update in front here just wanna make sure that's there. And I'm I'm gonna walk through this and then we got a couple folks here today to make presentations we want to thank you as always for for I'm dating are remote I presentation I know this is not the easiest piece we took some feedback from last presentation or hoping we get a little bit more streamlined today we are going to do a quick study update like we do each time and then we're gonna presentations on the impacts of school size and district size and we're gonna flipped over and talk about district size impacts first and school size second and after district size I'm the presentation itself is like a hundred slides representing about sixty of them we're gonna break it up in two parts and our goal on each presentation today is to do it in around twenty minutes and then leave time for questions I Bob shock who is with the education finance decisions group who's one of the subcontractors it's gonna do is going to lead that presentation and the next presentation which is school size best practices from around the country then Amanda is going to walk us through a presentation on how other states addressed mall arise and school districts as Mulder districts in their school finance formulas and then I'm going to walk through some of the data we have on the impacts were actually seeing for small and rural districts in Arkansas and some of the ways that we can help with that you know ensuring those those districts have can provide the educational opportunity they want to for their. As far as date goes We have the case studies are completed we have talked to Administrators and in in every school and teachers at almost every school I we will pick up in the fall time to finish up a couple of those teacher calls but also we're we're still trying to figure out a way we really hope to be able to get out and visit the school sites and so we'll be bringing back to you in a little while at the findings from those case studies and what we are seeing in the that across the board for those successful school sites. We were able to old work with staff BLR and get out to a couple superintendents district survey that's going to help us get the information that ET he doesn't quite the department that collects a ton of great information but we have some information we still want to get from districts we piloted that last week with a set of superintendents and we'll send it out to all districts and charters this week. And then next month we will be walking through a review about who's the study so what is happened in other states over the past fifteen or twenty years a comparison to the prior study recommendations that you received to the actual legislation that's been put in place and that will be bring it bring it back information on a college and career ready this definition for the state. So cochairs update are there any questions there. Any questions from anyone. I don't see any questions continual. At. Need to start at next presentation of. Bob I'm going to turn it over to you but to present and bubble just have me what these you just let me know when you want me to. Yes my name's five shock with education finance decisions out of Pennsylvania. So we will start with the district size up for twenty minutes interesting questions then go to the school sites expired. Research questions were looking at our how does the sizes of schools and districts and active education and extracurricular program offered. And what is the impact the school district by on the community the methodology is we. In a literature review look at national research findings I am acts is. School in size. We analyze the relevant information from the data center that the state. Our our investigation maintained or later that would for this defense will size and we work with the Arkansas activities association are data on athletic and not but it to the next slide. So an overview is will provide very briefly some background information and then we're going to follow the same format in the district size and this will size will look at national research look at how Arkansas compares now look at selected. Analysis of referencing that the findings has much more extensive analysis. I hate to interrupt but can you all turn your volume up just a little bit we can barely hear you and we're as far as we go on our end. Maybe it's call the computer a little closer to you I don't think we have the ability to turn up the microphone somebody feels make sure you understood my could get a closer or something like that we just or have a hard time hearing nobody here can hear it so thank you if you go down by the the mute button there's a little. That leads to you and just the audio settings you can turn out the input volume or the Mike usual. Thank you. Bob you're on your its appeal and you will see that's better. Okay is that better now. A little closer. You. Flowers the. The first thing to recognize is that involvement is constantly changing due to population increases and decreases this can be due to birth rates which vary from year to year that was the very dramatically in the regular session of about a decade ago. And it's important to realize that enrollment projections your is rob dated I consultant annually and used in developing the facility master plans. Our districts sizes also in considered ill when states are looking at consolidation school size depends on the grade level configuration you have many different configurations in Arkansas enrollment trends within a specific attendance area within a district and the population density of that area wait against the travel time and distance from homes to schools that has a large impact next slide. This shows the population density of all districts in Arkansas the blue is the. Most sparsely populated related the least dense he later bill is more dense and going to yellow and orange being the most dense. Expired. This shows population change by area throughout the state it uses the twenty ten data and then the US census department up they said data annually and doesn't involvement action or a population projection I should say. And in this case we've also added black dots to represent the population density and in the case of red districts they have lost in total population green and blue arguing in population the changing situation around the state Exide. We'll move on to just excise based on that background. This shows the national picture in the left column is the total number of school districts it's now thirteen thousand six oh one for the most recent information you get from the national center for education statistics if you look at the bottom of the slide that's decreased dramatically between nineteen forty nineteen seventy and health fairly constant since then SO in yellow we've highlighted how Arkansas compared to the national in terms of the percentage of districts in each of those. Of groupings the enrollment on the top of each column and also the percentage distribution of students if I let in yellow where there are significant. Next slide. So we look at the research going back about forty years they've been numerous studies that have reviewed both school and district sized on these factors curricular diversity extra curricular operational th this of fission see academic achievement that a wide range of other variables so the research conclusions a very significantly and often are subject to bias but by either at the kids opponents of. District consolidation. No consensus exists some other large districts offer a better educational program for more economic efficiency. Economic efficiency has been found to increase an optimal enrollment and then remain constant and even increases increase as size increased forming a U. shaped curve. Are often the education financial gains expected to consolidation of smaller districts don't match the actual outcomes. Student achievement of course is related to many factors particularly social economic actors of the school. Next slide. There's also been research on optimal districts size you'll see the citations listed below in the last twenty years and they talk about the optimal minimal size of the school district of. In the optimal maximum size of the school district. Next slide. So we wanted to compare Arkansas with the national research we look at all of the variables that are available of four hundred fifty on your. It is Senator system and then we correlated those variables with district first and then school size. Of we're going to present specific findings led selected very bowls and also general findings on the category next slide. This is a listing of the variables the categories in the left column he house of the number or specific variables within each category I draw your attention to thirds of the way down to high school computer science enrollment and those of the stings are the largest and have been expanded with the twenty eighteen to twenty twenty eight data so what you see here is that we can for late any of these variables with school or district size. Next slide. So you're saying you interpret the scatter gram which you'll see in a minute if the horizontal axes the vertical axis A dot represents where a school district is located on both those variables. For me there's a correlation coefficient. All violations. Perfect correlation would be either positive or negative one. Of if the value is near one it's considered very very strong I if a high degree would be over point seven either positive or negative. One five point seven to moderate correlation. And what you'll see is mostly correlations below point four. Also put a trend line on these charts as does your in center system. Steve ran would indicate of a stronger relationship than a flat track. Excellent. These are the different variables were going to look at this like the ones in the remainder. Are in the appendix so we okay operational efficiency measured by cost per pupil in various categories which on diversity. Extra curricular diversity person on workforce variables in this plan and some others slide. The first question on operational efficiency are larger districts more efficient to operate due to a county the scale. What we found is that there are we could negative relationships or many of these variables. And some. Of all the negative. Relationships on all of the. Rebels yeah we had looked at so foods let's start to look at these variables that will summarize them this is your first out of them so let's well on this for a minute no on the wars on all axis you go from. Zero enrollment to. largest districts at about twenty thousand students. On the vertical axis from bottom to top you have total per pupil expenditures. And what you see in the correlation coefficient at the top. Negative correlation of one zero seven. Very weak correlation. Now. You also see a wide range and you see that wide range on the left side in per pupil expenditures for the small districts the range of. Once you get to districts over ten thousand is of much more. Consistent you can see and we'll see that relationship on many of these lights another to understand the components of the staff or scatter gram will moved to lose these fairly quickly we use the boxes with the axe and eros to point out the significant items on a scatter gram excite please. So this is regular instruction. that's contracted with the functions of a special education facilities maintenance that service and others but this is regular instruction and what you see on the left side is the small districts very from three thousand up to six thousand primarily but the wide variation some spending twice as much as others on regular instruction once you get to the larger districts over ten thousand you're seeing that range between generally four and five thousand per pupil XII. This is general administrative expense you see a slightly stronger although still a week late. Or elation. Negative correlation means the larger of you would expect economies of scale driving these costs down. Of so once again we see the work wide variation in the small. Our districts and a much more consistency what you exceed in this case five thousand students on general administration next slide please. So this is a summary table that we've used to this the variables the rest of these variables in this category are the appendix correlation coefficient in the second column the strength of that relationship and then our comments on possible reasons and Alice's. Next slide. Thanks very we look at is curriculum diversity the larger districts offer more comprehensive and diverse curriculum for example in areas such as preschool program for education Vance Placement courses and programs International Baccalaureate specialized computer science programs. Of and what we've concluded is although there's a weak positive relationship many small districts are offering as many programs as the larger district. Let's work look at some of the data this is looking at it from a slightly different perspective we chose three twenty one are just of medium size and a small one give you a little bit different labor in understanding what we look at on the left column. We have three bars the left dark green is the largest district forty one thousand students offering up seventeen percent of its students Advanced Placement courses when you get to career and technical the second group of bars what you're finding is medium and smaller offering war grins technical courses computer science in general large district is offering more are in. As I noted with these have the list of variables there are very extensive variables here and some of them have just been updated now in terms of the International Baccalaureate the one district had that program it was one of the randomly selected that district but it's one of four in this state that offers that program. Next. So this is the percentage of career education complete there's in science technology engineering and math correlation coefficient government temple point two five. Of and this is a percentage of the total students is in that district Leding that program. So are the very bottom there are a lot of doc's lined up because of offering those programs and you see extremely wide variation of in the stem programs explain. This is in transportation distribution and logistics the lower left hand corner is the US some small districts have are I percentage of students completing these programs to the larger districts in the lower right in one case then we find district that has nearly four percent of this units completing these programs. Next slide. This is a summary of the. Career education complete heirs again a week relationships and our conclusion of the right side is that the small districts are can offer a verse curriculum this area. Next line. This is personal and work force. Larger districts attract and retain of more. And better trained staff looked at four variables and found a week house in relationships on most. Next slide please. So you're what you need to be looking at is on the. He. Axis label on the far left this is a personal category variable it's the work for stability index and it's one of four components of the index which is a percent attrition. So these are smaller districts here. On the left have higher a tradition but that's only one of the four factors of that work for stability index which is our recently been updated to change one of the factors so the point that out because. The department of education has developed a very sophisticated. It is system odds constantly updated oath as you saw in the computer science courses but also in these other measures of work for stability X. line. This looks at average teachers experience up and you see a. Week or elation there. Between the size of the district and the average teacher experience. X.. Right so in the person on workforce categories we look at others in the appendix and again found week relationships in general. Excitement. You systems can allow you to look at all sorts of variables will focus on a couple of the student discipline variables infractions and disciplinary actions so the question is does the size of the district impact the number of incidents are of these disciplinary and by angel issues look at eight variables and funded general a week relationship between the larger districts and the higher incidence next line. It's generally a week relationship at a point three two with the upper but it is positive and you see again the wide of variation the percent of the all stations in this case. Next slide. We look at the. Sampling of the disciplinary infractions bowling game staff assaults fighting and vandalism they're probably a dozen what types of infractions. And then we looked at the disciplinary actions of expulsions in and out of school suspend shins and other types of exclusionary discipline I will note also that definitions of all of these variables are in detail described it of on the website of the data center next line. Of I think it's also good from a program of the valuation point to understand that this system allows you to look at specialized. Our men's in areas such as those listed English learners any cap on this migrant if the Allen the. Thanks line. What you see here in terms of the percent of English learners is that even a small district has an extremely wide very a Gen up those two areas to the left shoulder district with forty percent English. Language learners verses many of the districts the less than of one or two percent when you get to the medium sized district in the middle of the chart you see that's very ation but again significant amount of variation are less radiation the right side with the large districts but still a significant difference in terms of the program that a modest must offer next slide please. This is percent of variation in special education. Are in you see in the left hand side from less than ten percent. Most of them below twenty percent and you'll see less radiation and the larger districts are running across the from left to right on the right side of the chart. X. light. These are the specialized program requirements again We overall general relationships but the scatter them the lights to see the amount of variation our. In terms of what districts are dealing with the educational challenges this district ages the reasons are shown in the right hand column ofschool possible reasons next slide. Districts sized inclusions in general economies of scale it results in some negative relationships larger you get the less it costs two of the operational efficiency and economies of scale but for most other very ill goals small district showed little impact on district size meeting in general consistent with the national research that all districts can offer strong programs and opportunities for students. X. light. Okay so that gets us to the questions. On the district's size then we'll move to school sites. All right you're ready. senator Chesterfield you're recognized. Thank you Mr chair on page ten. You talk about the diverse curriculum in small districts it is that diverse curriculum there because a state mandate or because the district instituted itself. We haven't gotten to that point the urge that are you can see the number very Abel's some of the programs that are changing and the types of curriculum that. And course offerings that are be analyzed with this information. now that we've done this analysis going to go back and the department of ed of Fishel's we have a better understanding of the factors you question. And we Speaker re weak correlations versus strong correlations would you be more explicitly. You repeat that question when you speak of a week versus strong correlation. Would you please be more explicit in what you're talking about. Okay. The correlation coefficient statistics are takes a look at our weather wind one very able grows the other grows or clients in equal proportion so a strong relationship a perfect relations you would be a one I do a negative one or a positive one. You need to see what. You need to see something over stop at our anything below point four is considered a we relationship and we are. There are last week for more. Wrong relationship will week relationship between a large class size and small class that in learning. We are are different west did start academic achievement and once we get that study we're going to. Of review that in a corporate it into our final report again one final question did in looking at discipline on page sixteen did you break it down by race and gender. Or is that something for the future. Could you repeat that question please. On page sixteen. When you talked about the the discipline issues are you breaking them down by race and gender or is that something also for the future. All we could do that yes I would appreciate it because it according to what I've been told and studies that a disproportionate number of black males are expelled from school from the eighties and sundry reasons I need to know if that's true and if so what we can do to help schools to better prepare themselves to deal with a diverse curriculum I mean a diverse student population. Thank you. Senator Elliott. Thank you Mr chair I'm looking at our page eighteen at conclusion number two where you talked about small districts have low impact and so forth and strong programs and opportunities for students I think that is this may be a variation on senator Chesterfield question I think that can undisputed believe be the case but we're not look at this and and reality there is a lot that we must consider regarding funding so is that going to be discussed at some at some other and some other place. Or. We are otherwise we'd have to accept. Yes small schools can have the strong curriculum and everything. And not talk about funding. So Bob let me let me take that one this Johnson's overstate. So add Senator. You might remember and there's a lot of pieces the study so you so you might not one. At really detailed statistical analysis being done by west and that is looking at more of the distinct relationships between performance and all and those variables hi I'm still we are actually hoping to move up our ability to present that I probably not the next meeting but I believe the meeting after we will dig a little deeper into some of those relationships where we look at student characteristics and district characteristics such as spending in those things and how they impact of the outcomes for kids. I just don't want to try to make you the depression to about this but because but I need to understand it right here and now in a way because if we have a much larger school that we've already discussed you know what the possibilities are there that they're it it's due to there is a negative impact the more the large of the school is or if it's a very large school so when we get to the point of discussing that we're going to be discussing that in terms of equity which is one of the big factors that we have to be concerned with. And senator I think what we're trying to point out here and and maybe we we've missed the mark bad but at is that you know the conventional wisdom is that smaller settings tend to not have the ability to provide the same educational opportunity so the bill today and I provisions at the front is really just about it's really about district size and school sites hi I'm so it's you know it's it's all that section of section B. B. R. E. which is all about buildings and schools and those sort of things and so what what is interesting in the in the Arkansas data as we look at descriptively looking at the data there isn't as large an impact on the ability to provide a pretty broad range of educational opportunity that you see from the data that we might see another state and so you know we're not and I were talking about this you get to a state that has districts of fifty or thirty cans or even a hundred and can be really really hard to to have that so seeing that kind of slight negative relationship means you have the smaller you are the last kind of overall educational right of opportunity you might have but it's not a very strong it's not a very strong relationship so it's not you know it's not as big an impact as you would expect to see in some other states. Really what will get into as we get into the deeper statistical analysis is more specific relationships between some outcomes and really specific at demographic information for every district in the state so you just at a deeper level and and okay one of things that we we we why we want to use that statistical analysis as it allows us to get away from just the coral you know the core mission. At much deeper so that we're not finding some kind of false positives and false negatives and so that's what we're waiting on that piece tenant layer in the performance. This is your from I get just one more quick clarification so this leads me to believe then when we talk about it we're gonna be talking about opportunity rather than ability is is that correct. Yeah I mean I think every thing that we're looking at is is that educational opportunity and the ability to have the same kind of real fast opportunity for for educational experience and that's really what these lights are looking at and then what we're trying to tease out is. You know using this one else is nine probably what was the wrong person to talk about this stuff but. You know the house is based on the state you know looking at white students at some level do you see differential outcomes based on some other set up impacts of school size or the amount they have to spend those sort of things so that the statistical else is trying to hold constant kind of the underlying starting point for the districts like who's in the who's in the district and look at what they're getting on it on an output side. And so that you know we work for pretty well into it and and it I think they were gonna get to what you're you're asking for we just need a little bit more time to land okay alright thank you thank you Mr chair. Sir Lowery would you hit your button again. I believe it's it's going out of there to a we are okay Sir Representative Lowery. Question I have you know it and I understand that we have to take an incremental approach here that will be seeing recommendations much later the question I have is that if funding recommendations are brought to us. Are we going to be offered to or given at the same time This information that in many of these cases of school site or district size that there were low correlations all up on most of the studies that that were just presented to us or is that just information that we're going to have to keep in the back of our mind. To present twin when funding recommendations are made. Represented that my you know my understanding in the in the process is that we are not coming back as I understand it with specific dollar recommendations for funding we are analyzing the system and and benchmarking and and taking a look at I will it's you know the relationships that exist in the system how those relationships might inform your all's work to think about changing your your system but it's not at a dollar amount. And I think your point any recommendations we make will include context for any relevant part of the study on how we got there so we're not going to say do this without tying it back to because we look at this this and this. Okay good with that answers my question thank you very much thank you Mr chair. All right no more questions all Ready to proceed. Bob let me get back to the right side there you. In the now will focus on school sign next slide please. The national research on operational efficiency. Of which is measured by cost per student. Has been found to increase to an optimal enrollment and remain constant eventually increasing is enrollment freeze as a two thousand five study now I wanted to give you an example here the second bullet point five let's say you had thirty students at a grade level in a school. And you felt that was too large for one teacher you would then have the option. The. Now is that thirty in a larger school district what school. Total thirty the sixty you could divide that by. Re teachers and have twenty. For classroom generally considered other at acceptable five when you're being you don't have to the small school you'd be at the teachers at the large school ways the student should three some of what you have to think about in many of your. Tions are on operational efficiency level late. Biggest expense is up I should be. Then the. Please transportation costs explains. Of the curricular diversity. Are you rescission shown that large schools often had more sections of the same force and not more or S. offerings I in the small. Rules can provide a broad learning experience of water then the worst offering publication of the relationship between school size and regular burst of the. Yes to decrease with enrollments. Of four thousand four hundred students. I in relatively small high schools may provide adverse required what in the general courses not through special it for. The course online offerings will. And. We're sitting order school they offer more programs for school often have higher for to state. the student achievement of course is related to many factors. short economic factors and that is just in the West Indies thank you on that but the national research found that are in some cases no relationship between school size academic you are first general but there is a significant a lake your first subgroups of earners routing. service disabilities work closely. Yeah. And so your data system has indicated. Or does allow that under. Three. Explain. Important note that the are not the logical concern one is this doesn't our reach the gold standard of random assignment. Of this type of research. Our while researchers are trained not to draw causal revisions from correlational data A decision makers are often forced to use the best data available. The advocacy research style to the advocating for and against consolidation font B. R. electrical and of course waiting of each factor with the we. She meant as a decision maker where the. You should see is how these decisions are using the. Right we. Can you make sure you're staying close to the Mike right thing from from a little trouble hearing just because. Next slide then. We looked at the Arkansas under verses that national research. An operational efficiency yeah we saw we correlation. Exist between school size and Kirsten. Our. Offenses. No clear evidence the optimal size in any grade level configuration was found. The curriculum diversity. And the small schools are offered risk wrecked one. Extracurricular I'll work as. But expect bark Lynch was more ACT both that I could not let. Explain. You're very able we look that up. In closing some generalized academic grateful. That's right. Of operational efficiency. Or what relationship between school size and. All. We look at the different grade levels fans I in found general week relationship. By the person lost and no clear evidence of an option available great. X. line. five discover gram shows elementary the. From grade level the rations of kindergarten. Six. Are some of the scale negative relationship bone in the title the correlation coefficient your was point two eight. Of thank you see wide variations ending on elementary. Next is middle school. And what we look at your was the great love configuration of five to eight. Our negative correlation of went three for use white. With the ramp dot. So I. All. Or elation of a negative point one two and again a wide variation used radiation has as both larger X. line. Terms of not bridge. By schools in a you see all the correlation this age in middle school so I'd eat birth. A different high school configuration but in general you we relationships X. line. The regular diversity by those school in fact the availability of was this and programs. The amend the percentage of students taking or completing forces are in. Analysis or the many small schools are offering a diverse curriculum. The next slide please. Look at the percentages tunes taking Advanced Placement courses. And you see in the lower left inside the US border are. The high schools in smaller yes. And a wide variation I is a five percent that question to the lower left. Are you see slight positive. Or Asian barges schools may be able to offer. More AT forces but he sees a pretty wide variation seventy five to one eleven the larger. Explain. Is the percentage of students taking technical courses. Our. And. negative correlation meaning the larger districts are are having. Or. Practicable courses although it's a very we are alleged. Very ation also includes all or. Schools ex five. Is a listing of the. Our students taking resides forces AT ACT all different types of career health sciences information technology house bill is in our hospitality red. We need some various read on the far right column but general we Blake. Ex wife. Are now working with the Arkansas of activity if you. Extracurricular programs athletic and not athletic. Let's just look at this data next slide please this is not correct. And you see the number of activities offered on the vertical axis. Of you see as you would expect that the larger schools are offering. Twenty five different. Leading activities this is a male and female. A slight. The non athletic work he under age twenty five. Up to sixteen of the maximum. But. C. one three five relations your. Like in a much higher correlation on yep letting the regulations of. I. What. The competition. I so we did find a positive a relationship in court up to that fact expired. is that point seven work what what the drug addiction when the five for non that. Slide. When we look at some general characteristics the school performance. Of. In the analysis showed the larger district show more consistency would have more graduation. Rate of wide variation from the all our districts. Are there is. Other relationship of the our. That is such is the escorts on yes for. You make a note the west it is starting school performance right you want to show you some of the capabilities of your it is just. First. It is fine these are the students is for the four or five. On the eight grade types. By. This is the our graduation rates. You what we see here is. Work insistence. Get over the. Are your schools. The other schools that have a wide variation. And so I'd. And you shows the correlation corporations under two factors. By. In general are for most of the. able three all measures our schools are. Rules. And there are often very specific and we find those variables. The research on an Arkansas versions on optimal size so that is very hard to not. Hi. In that the importance of the variables depends on we if we get to those. X. line. Question senator Chesterfield. Recognized thank. Thank you Mr chair on page twenty. You say that online offerings will continue to expand opportunities I'd appreciate if you would dig deeper into that because one of the great problems that we're having here in the middle of the pandemic is the lack of access. And eight can't provide expanded opportunities if you don't have. Well being capability to take advantage of it so I would ask that you do have a little bit deeper into that because I think it's going to have a deleterious impact on our key it's who don't have that access especially in rule areas. You know what I'm hearing is asked to to get a better sense of. The online capabilities your families within communities yes and simply because we know that we're going to have to have some virtual learning unless this pandemic let set up in one of the huge problems I have representing a part of rule Pulaski County is no access and so we're having to do unique things residence the district you seven to send buses out as hot spots by equipping them so that those kids can have access but there are a number of key it's in all areas of this state that are poor they don't have internet access and therefore going to be affected negatively of through the continuation of online offering so I would appreciate if you would look at that. Because that's going to be critical in going for. Yes I think that it center I think it's a it's a great question and and I'll say and some of the case studies that we have that with that came up in a number of occasions where they they have families who just simply by location of the lands cannot do the online learning so that that has definitely come up it'll be something we talked a little bit about in our in our case study work I think I part of what we were making here is we do think your point over time. You can you any any bandage occasional opportunity for students when we're back in schools through more robust online learning but your point specially when we're not in a school that that becomes more difficult it doesn't it also even when we're in school and you have homework that is done online. The porch out of the child in an area where there is no online capability. Is also suffering academically and I'm not sure that that shows up in any of your studies but I think it is worth looking into. I appreciate it thank you very much. Representative Springer. You know. Thank you Mr chair of choice Springer newly elected state Representative and new to this committee as you all have gone over your report to date and I guess I need to I would like to ask this question are the findings the information that you reporting to us today is it based upon all of the school districts within the state of Arkansas or did you just select certain school districts to of make these analyses from. House this is based on all schools and all that so this is I'm sorry. We use the full of. Data set that is available in the. Eighty E. R. data center and it allows you to select in various ways but whenever we presented the district information other than I believe one slide we were presenting for all district out we discover gram does give you a chance to see the very ability and one of its uses can be to identify best practice I think for example Joe to slide that bill with your education computers on transportation of distribution and logistics and that would be our opportunity to. By that district in why they have strong. Which is a patient in that program and whether or let's to employment opportunities in that region well of the day to give you the ability to. Look at thanks our live identifying best practices are for some of the I'll wire district. I in the system also if you hover over any dot in this scatter them will give you a specific information on the on that very able and the of Mr sides were school size. Mister chairman I follow up with the one more question thank you okay. I also noticed on slide forty you state route you're indicating some research with respect to extracurricular diversity and quickly diversity sliced thirty nine and forty so can you show me drop my attention to what your findings or with respect to your providing this research information that you have here I'm trying to locate for in your presentation do you address that specifically. Based upon the the data the information the research that you provided to us the national research slides thirty nine forty. Forty one four forty one forty two the. Well well well actually thirty nine and forty. Okay so thirty nine deals with with the board FOR the and that what you're showing a what you're seeing there are the research findings in the state eight. Of and some of that is of. Research done of forty years ago all. Of. Thirty nine. We get online offerings or something that you'd be looking for that and hopefully will provide expanded up. Then we go to. Forty. Our that is the extra curricular diversity. Of and we gave you the Arkansas activities association. Yeah. Our student achievement. I will largely be dealt with by the west of the A but the point being of at the bottom of the. Last fall that on item forty if you have the capabilities to look at these factors are with subgroups of learners as adjustment. So we've dealt with of the data which is a very extensive in a very system what with these are. For a topics on and. Related. Yeah I think I'm Senator apart you know what we were seeing as you look through the presentation kind of the story is that I think it lines up pretty well with what you're seeing in. You can have larger schools but that doesn't necessarily mean a higher percent kids will take a peek or a higher percent of kids will take CTP. You'll have more students doing it but it's not necessarily that as a constant at a percentage level you're getting bored. Up take by thank you and so I think that aligns pretty well here is that. In your smaller settings which do you have small districts in the state you don't have really really you don't have a lot of really really small districts so that you know you you don't gain literate you know it's not a linear relationship that if you have. Fifteen thousand kids verses five thousand kids that you're not three times more curricular opportunity and I think in part you know we can't get quite to that level of detail but we're seeing something similar is that you don't see a lot more happening or kids at fifteen thousand or five thousand versus five hundred so I think what we're seeing a lines pretty well. Thank you Mr chair. If you don't mind chairs going back a little bit I think the senator Chesterfield question on the internet access for kids we do believe and and Amanda sent me a text remind me that they're BLR actually has surveyed districts on their Kobe technology and what's going on there so I think that might be something that's already being collected I don't need to speak for the alarm but I think it's out there and and they do you know they they also to those great that great work and finding out what's happening. Okay have a couple more questions here represent Sullivan. Thank you Mr chair you know it would scene with all of the state and federal mandates that we have for education. The I'm not surprised that there is very little variance in your finding because many things for studying are already mandated is that to what extent is that statement accurate. A yes I believe that is accurate. Thank you thank you Mr. Sir really. Thank you Mr chair I'm looking at this of slide of thirty nine that's on page twenty And their relationship between school size and curriculum that diversity begins to decrease with enrollment above four hundred students that is what's happening here that's what you're reporting to us that this is is this this seems counterintuitive which does not make it wrong I'm not suggesting that but I'm wondering why do you have any sense so quiet that's the case when there are so many are needs that students might have does that just a it is that just a function of. Just adequacy as opposed to enrichment. Do we know what's driving that if you're a larger you could be you could offer more courses but what you do is offer more sections of the same courses. Correct thirty nine of is indicating. The findings of some extremely detailed research on very specific topics are. The greater diversity in doctor monk study five forty years old point. What we found is that would have to look at the or S. content. Determine whether are the same content is being offered. In a small districts or S. offering as in a larger hi. Offering up did they have the couple different forced titles but that doesn't mean that the content is any broader than offered in the hours. What I'm trying to get at is. Would it stand to reason regardless of what's happening say a farmer school of. I don't know fifteen hundred students school district fifteen hundred Is there something that would drive offering the same course over and over outside of the basics rather than offering to offering different courses. To have more diversity in the curriculum offering. Your data system has what will be required for. And of course on those courses it's almost the perfect location between the number of students are. For each of but it's these. Like did offerings in at the high school level that's AP forces. A computer curriculum for technology courses and then there is a few districts the international baccalaureate program In Jack of I think we could get at that question by showing you the data for the required courses and how much diversity there is other parts offering as a noted. Of the. It is the same as the backs planted around computer sciences ninety is seventy eight different was offering so it's difficult to determine. A what house more. They are so you may find that some district is not offering a forced entitled this course of offering something very similar this is why present dissipation I with a slightly different course title so that's going to be difficult but you do have some. It's very detailed data on specific things that the. Education built into the system. Okay. Let me just go to my question that on on slide forty Where as some studies have found no relationship between school size and academic achievement and general but significant relationship for subgroups of learners including students with disabilities and those who associate economically disadvantaged does that mean That no matter if you're in a larger school are a smaller school. The Those relationships with with the group that I just mentioned are still the ones that are. In an average wage negatively affected is that what that means like the if you're one of those subgroups it doesn't matter the size of school you're going to you generally The studies have found that those students sort of disadvantage on the and in the school no matter the size. Well what we're looking at here are largely due to the learning disabilities are and social economic ended so in a larger war. You probably have more students with any type of disability and could offer more specialization and that could also be the fees for certain social economically disadvantaged students in a larger study. So if you have more than that thank you can specialize more believe that's what that's planning was. If the study. I think overall that the general consensus state and and research is that yes there are certain state subpopulations that tend to have showed you know. More impact on performance in other subpopulations but that is something we're gonna dig very deeply very specifically into an Arkansas with and that the deeper data analysis. Does this does this information also include charter schools. That widget that I just ask a question about. Yes it does. I'm I'm not sure I understand the answer maybe something I need to check out with you In another setting because If it's it it seems as if maybe it's a case it doesn't matter the size of school you go to if you in one of those groups and one of those subgroups you probably are going to. The negative affected when it comes to student achievement is that a correct assumption the I.. I'm not getting through what that is actually saying but is that correct as I correctly stated. No matter which side school I go to if I'm in one of those subgroups. My achievement is more apt effective I'm not an advantage either way large school small school. Senator let me let me see if I can be articulate and see if that helps I think what this is saying is that the research is generally not finding a relationship between school size and achievement for students generally but when you look at specific subpopulations of students you are seeing more of an impact of the size of the schools that. It is just mentioned will be diving into that in Arkansas to see how that plays out. Students generally and enforce this makes the population to see if it's consistent with the respect we lost your voice therefore bit. I'm sorry yeah so I don't I don't know what you said specific to my question if there if you are a child in one of these subpopulations you are are you more likely to be negatively affected academically when it comes achievement which is that headline for this. That your your negative academic achievement is no better no worse depending on the size of the school is so what this is saying is that generally if there's a relationship between school size and academic achievement when you consider all students together but if you look at specifics all populations you do see an impact of size and I I can't tell you at this point I I turn to Bob if the impact was a pop back to being in a larger setting or positive impact of all or something but you see more of an impact on those tunes and based on their their size well what I'd like to know is. Somebody then should know there is an impact what is it if you're a small school there's an impact what is it if you in a large school choice if you write that down will get it for you but we're going to move on okay thanks a lot to go today okay alright thank you I'm Bob you're ready to go again. at containers are there any more questions on this presentation of not will be moving on to the next no that's it you can move on. Okay. The stub alleged to best practices of regarding school science. Thanks I believe. For the research question is what are the best practices in other states regarding when districts size and then what criteria are used to identify and determine best practices. we reviewed policies and practices are regarded both district and school size we've. It shall review the. Cation facility master planning process sees because this is largely a what is setting for the school sizes any state. Our that involves reviewing all the. eight and then after reviewing does contacting a school officials. A state department of education officials in charge of those programs as well as other your will be as says survey on on the. Well leaders on this and there are discussions with architects in terms there. Generations of house some of this. The Arkansas next. And is that Many states have some states have specific laws or regulations on school sinus are from all the components listed it. Our. Very. The lady. But there. Eight. Bob one second is there anyway cochairs to mute your side while we're speaking we're getting a lot of feedback I think coming back through your your and which I think is making it that the devils in your body even a little bit worse. I'm just trying to see the body out of Mike still own in here but my cough. Okay I think we're good at must be on your in I don't think we've got going on over here. Thank you sorry. Index live. Well the state have. Of. Very specific on this are Arizona from work done in that two thousand seven order of worked on is issues run optimal school size of. The year two thousand North Carolina A looked at all school size. Use based on. The school climate safety and security factors as well as economic of it. Agency and on the basis of economic official you can see there are. Yes the larger school sizes are in he's set minimum and maximum. Next slide. These are class size as they relate to student teacher ratios in the various states under consideration and you see by grade level of the maximum unless it's note Weiss from state to state. And if you focus on Arkansas on the second row there the bill sizes in mind if you look at the ages of the next few pages for up to eight X. line. Well almost all the states have developed some kind of class size maximum and the question is how is that affecting their school site when they're building or adding or renovating school. If you see that Arkansas is you know well within the range but there is a wide range and it varies by grade level generally getting larger as the. For. X.. billable if you want to look at work the. Next slide please. Not to give you an understanding of how this really works of the class size in school size. The facility master planning requirements generally set some guidelines for this. Old state. How many spaces of each type whether to regular classrooms special ed classroom. All group instruction area and it will assign a student asked city or that space. And when you multiply first in factors you get the ball capacity for the enrollment. So these. I size requirements and establish the physical side of a school of physical size. You have to understand that with the schools are built there also of the other limitation stages of sewer capacity water capacity in our next life as a few other. Are the best it. Master planning process. Your program around for quite a few years are required to be updated every two years a very detailed of the soul of the manual describes that. Economic projections are updated by consulted a construction can be approved to the maximum as city needs and years in the future of this state chairs in the cost of the just some calculations and restrictions and the state share is subject to a facility cost index. So the next slide please. The of components so that manual are listed here we just focus on a few. One is in chapter two that it's important that the school district Abbas did specifications where the end is the program that can be built into the school and its size and its future. Under chapter three of the second bullet shows that the eighty offering some design principles hi performance learning environments for special education career education are in in number six of the. State also provides a very specific features and urgings in Spanish is other specific spaces so they giving some design guys design guides and next. We look practices in other states as I mentioned we went to the websites we're calling them interviewing the architects in compiling this that will show up on the next slide let's look at those lists. Good three slides here and what you want to look at is the headings across the top of the cause first of all and they actually set a school size almost all my bills eight not that are then the next is they have class size regulations I'm getting very specific you're because your when the look at the impact of the school facility planning and the various components in effect on the students are in that school there can be class size regulations are class based guidelines our water should these bases B. the square foot on the students should be in the space is and what should the size of the school site the generally something like ten acres plus an additional eager for every hundred students. I see this is a work in progress as we're looking for best practices among the state of next slide. Are the enrollment projections. Yeah very of of. Even by grade level. Of. Birth rates can affect them the economy can affect them I in the planning horizon how many years into the future are you looking of you for the construction of most states have these educational facility master planning process sees and who has the approval authority and it would be bill. And other factors that authority is more powerful if there's a bong eight. Ready penalties for our complying with that I'd like. This is a work in progress fully built out here in the coming weeks X. like. The. How much design this is this is the work eaves. Architects of a specialized in a facilities are they require the district all of its educational specification for the specific program. Are you. In some cases not found in this group of state in some cases. Exactly the commission architects to order type schools line seven one eight school for three hundred elementary students your were fine option. Want a bigger one here are four five option I would not finding that is he's. Next slide. What we want to do is I give you a contrast in some detail with the city that's gone through set up. Optimal size guidelines the most talented started back in nineteen eighty seven are there very specific with the terminology in this the acting the amount of a sort of this state has over the local is making. They established minimum the Saudis is a not averages are the guidelines were meant to provide strong direction by Katie will roll. We must be designed specific to their side circumstance unity of educational guidelines specifications are the next slide please. Long range plan required funding came over many decades different sources. And in the reason we focused on North Carolina because they're asking local school boards to consider the optimal school supplies issue. The will. What happened your slide next. They established based on. Our general. The decisions that the elementary school should range from four fifty seven under. It'll school sixty eight hundred high school aged twelve hundred. Then in more recent years based on school climate safety of. And discipline and some other issues they've. S. school district in center a smaller range of sizes you see the person there amend three topping from four fifty as a small to three hundred is in the form. Maximum of seven hundred and four hundred if you're looking at the school climate issue. A similar reductions as I spoke. Next slide. Okay if you look at the. Actual. regular classroom in the. State planning the solely guidelines you'll see a North Carolina compared to. All. And then if you look at the and North Carolina is generally lower than Arkansas terms of the number of students expected the regular classroom from the size of that space of region those classrooms a fourth Caroline is generally a little larger the regular classrooms the first block of information and the other TV stations are there's a wide range of but they get very specific in terms of a large the station what the features of an instance sign. X. live. You had information from North Carolina you've taken a look at the elementary schools in this case every dot represents a. Womack at a specific school no in North Carolina is optimal size standard in dark black outline or the optimal size is based on economic issues and below that the green a rectangle a line. You'll see based on school climate fact. But the large conclusion to draw from this is first of all there are a few Arkansas elementary schools of the online a maximum but most elementary schools are falling below the low end of either one of these other sites guidelines of the broad number of dots low the green rectangle. Was there operated along. Next slide will look at the no school. Very similar solutions. The focus should be on the number of dots below the minimums in both cases. And then the next is high school. So this is the high school and in Arkansas you have a great number of I school all the size that. Or are one in a wooded this out. Either economic efficiency or climate actors but I think the important thing to note is even if you decided you wanted to. The school to an optimal size range and you have the practical considerations of first of finance and secondly Transportation trouble climbs on buses. Next slide. Now the. Request for proposals ask for best practices from other states various categories one was about and what. In one state they appoint a local planning committee independent from the school board as wide represent Asian art it. Reviews all aspects of enrollment projections and design factors of the existing buildings verses building a brand new facility are they work with the state school architects and then of the back as provided. They react to that feedback and FOR Bentley approves the size and other line art is around that project. Up in another state the. Public hearings are required with grace optics of design efficiency. And. Hearings all the report. All yes. New line efficiency actors are yes. a second public hearing must be held and there could be financial entity counties if the district wants to build something. On those missions the fact. Why. moment projections. which are pretty important because and have a great fluctuations booms and busts school district and the question is what size. bill to the center projections how much flexibility should be built into a building calling AT to add more classrooms without exceed as these of the war spaces such as our Koreans nations support or spaces but anyway these are enrollment projections again acted by the economy and some. Places and years ago the regular session will districts like thirty percent drop in birth rates and it has still not responded to the prior levels these are the kind of decisions it school boards of muskrat with the rounded moment projections you can also have variations with in the school district between the tenants areas some could be going others are declining you can have a bubble a very large eads cool work are running through the system are in need. Lance and yours. Live. Almost all of the. Eight have some kind of a model of program to bases in in the Arkansas call the roll requirements it is generally a. Thank she had helped to calculate based on the number of rooms in the ask room what is the overall capacity. War. All right and then normal. two eight visual schools capacity as well as the capacity of all schools are in the school district which has allowed some states to consider sharing agreements when one. Yes check has faced in another needs that are there are some governmental agreements and thank you for that as the. X. light. Thank deficiency ratios I mentioned before but it takes the total questions basis thank you or spaces auditoriums hall please. Gymnasiums after is a cannot exceed one point five he is a class of so it's very specific. In many states limit how much to give and to renovate and add to the. The. that the cost of building a brand new truck of X.. The board to recognize the state's different terms of how to control the municipalities have. Joining up and landed on approval of some as specific as are different sites diss of. Having community use designated school. Our. And I think I already mentioned will design being reviewed by school architects. X.. The funding of this state shares differ. The I. in some states are and is provided to consolidate all schools there's our city funding levels some of these levels are limited by travel time thank you for example that we of interest already students is forty five minutes on the bus are there for that could. Our ability to a. Size a school and there might have to be sparsity funding around that specific issue other. That is success are not districts that states have worked on our the transition facilities that is schools that have been being too expensive to renovate to meet a modern educational program so how do you limit and the ongoing maintenance expenses a while you're waiting the. Funding for a. Back at the school next. This offer questions of on overview of S. practices from other. Okay thank you let's see who's in this that choice bring or is that you eighty nine. Hello. You go. Okay thank you thank you madam chair I will try this again see if I can get some questions answered With respect to facilities of we you'll study include partnership the partnership funding process in this a three part question will include the partnership funding process the request for funds from districts the of review of the appeals process and will the study we will your report actually include inspection of facilities and recommendations for equalization of facilities across the state. On the first question will of your Arkansas's. Will funding says that in place in other states others prevention to hold aspects of that today. Of. You have a large database of. That has been provided. Regarding the amount of money. It's expected to be needed yes all schools were part of modernity standard. Also that a wide you this is to. Center in terms of the overall funding requirements. for that so you have that already and I. Will. You look at exactly how that's used by the state how that's being eighteen how on sept such as transitional schools and you don't want to spend too much money maintenance it's going to be replaced all those types of will be dealt with in the report because they are showing up in our review of practice S. practices and others. At the bottom of Bob said we we are not task doing it full. Facility study that type of study generally it is on a scale similar or more than that this study in and takes a long time but but the state RT does something ounces of that. We we of Lloyd bonds that presented that in the fall. And so we can get that forwarded to you. Okay then up it would respect to the appeals process the in that question with respect to the partnership funding I don't think that something that they're going to be taking up as part of this. I'm just reviewing the practice that's already in place so they're not going to look at that okay. Thank you. Okay let's see who's in fifty one. Yeah just a moment. Conway go away. Thank you madam chair could we go back Mister Bob could we go back three slides. Question is dealing with the The time from about two thousand and eight probably two thousand twelve as far as the recession's concerned. Okay just have a question why would some groups actually. B. growing. I don't know if this based on. The amount of money a family is making overall but why would some classes baby growing smaller in some classes be growing larger during that period of time of of of a recession could you give me an answer on that one. What we see around the country is that a number of districts saw the birth rates decline up after the highest birth rates in two thousand eight two thousand nine they declined to of by about thirty percent now that's not everywhere that's the the. Most serious the clock but we in some districts even ten years later we have not seen the file so what that means is the student's born in two thousand nine. thirty number students progressing to the system could be thirty percent more than of those born in two thousand eleven and twelve we've also seen a significant variations from year to year for of any number of factors and. Of so it's just important to understand from sizing the school that of these women bust cycles in what's to the school. And you need some flexibility US and. You can always add a classroom addition but if it exceeds the. capabilities and capacities of the. Four spaces it can create eight or an educational environment so. Is an important factor and. The H. generally used to a projected moments is called Coalport survival or grade progression and it really should be studied of specifically district by district. All right I think that's all the questions seeing no war. Okay we are going to move over to amend this presentation. May your soul of your. Allergy and would like to share now that I'm on not on you is approaches. Small or isolated schools and district. Next line. The first a little context about issues that can occur in in districts or school based upon their size their or their isolation so they can base increased cost pressures and this economies of scale or operational efficiency another way to think about it the need for they know where students and staff ratios Staffing to. Similar levels of education opportunity there Sir and fixed costs are higher cost on a per student level just to operate a building our. State. May also require certain set of minimum and industry of the school and district level Senate by distinct function I thank you so many to sprint and you're still going to need someone doing your pay all your county regardless of the size of your district I think not difficult to sharing staff position based on just or schools. Air transportation costs across the. Miller areas and again they maybe some D. sentenced to the operational efficiencies that will touch on in that the next presentation of little more fully next line. Several types of adjustments in formulas that state used to address those different costs that education and districts based upon the excise their their isolation I thank you that are kind of district will base the one being purely on that the sites of the district increased funding provided for settings is they get smaller There are also. Adjustments there based upon that the density or how removed as district is from. A metropolitan area. Different factors now also at school yes that we simply referred to as necessarily small schools the Senate response that. Is. The answer is are limited based on how big thank you often there to graphically isolated us that they're serving a small population students that cannot be well Sir in a nearby setting range of issues up to clear and transportation and how long the be on the bus or the safety of transporting them. States often have separate transportation funding approaches recognizing that costs can be increased for transportation based on the square mileage at the cover house party or treat to transport you. Next line. Reviewing all the seats nationally there twenty states that adjuster districts science at different skills and different thresholds of when those adjustments thank you again then the twelfth state that I just for district density. Usually this is based on students per square mile. Often in place of the signs adjustments were a criteria to receive size just not finding C. might have to be of a particular signs in a particular descent distance from another community or dense the year district and some states also provide additional funding if you were at the meeting folks right here yeah they might provide funding for signs for a solution and then an additional. There are twelve states that they just for having necessarily small schools again those are primarily due to geographic isolation schools. Operation what you're trying to avoid here is. By using the smaller Baxter findings you want to have a separate card bills on why this feels like this and why it should be funded at that level. Next line. in this table is just looking at those that and I'm sorry you state mass. What you can see is Arkansas Senate just. Please explain a little bit more what that looks like. The states have an adjustment or a necessarily small schools all the adjustments at the district level and then I set of state do not have any adjustments for district side support and. Next line. Also a little context about Arkansas that I think is important as you think about the approach that the state and state into addressing size nice solution at school districts in Arkansas tend to be very small Most are at an average about a thousand. The range is three hundred to twenty two hundred students whereas in many states you might see much larger variation in the district about fifty percent of districts have less than a thousand students. and then kind of on the other details twenty five percent have less than six hundred see also with their numbers schools and seventy five percent have less than two thousand so you have very few large districts and. They're much more similar sizes of distress in Arkansas which is also likely thing into the the impact that resting on. Last year please. The Arkansas does it just or. Ace lead. It is not broadly. But you. isolated and there's for a lot means that work in this area there's one that is a solution funding then there are three that are specifically related to special needs and meeting writing resources Wharton students the one FOR isolation one for being small district and one for transportation price and setting. I want to talk a bit more about the criteria for determining isolation Arkansas has a fairly robust at right to you that they use for that first category funding the isolation funding. I will go to any age. And I should add Right now about twenty nine districts receive funding through one of those allocation in models with fifteen receiving funding to that the isolation I thank just for a little context it's not a lot of you just received as additional source of revenue. The Arkansas defines an isolated school district for the isolation funding so for that first allocation of funding. As a district needs any four of the following by a teary eyed so it includes requirements round distance from between high schools in X. the density of students per square mile and the total area of the district the amount of bus routes that are on a hard surface road and then having geographic years. Again it is several different ways of thinking about what is that the have low density or to be isolated. Districts also have to have less than three hundred fifty students which very few of your district steel worker bee and consolidates and such in extinction district. and then the criteria for receiving the funding for that the allotments or on special needs A little different the very either they're allowed more students just. Ending or them to me. One or two particular criteria the most robust secretary isolation funding. Next slide. And they just need to sure example how that criteria as images revised compares to some other sorry PC though North Carolina the provide funding to districts with fewer than thirty two hundred students so and a much higher threshold criteria which which would be more than most districts and in Arkansas and then the I just funding based upon the number of students per square mile and FOR one moment. Oklahoma looks at both kind of having the by very average square mileage the whole district and the number of students per mile and they based on their judgment on whether you are a one fourth of the state average or last and you're all set up less than five hundred and twenty nine students. Axis provides funding for very small districts that are also far away so again you can see how the difference the combined. In science and remoteness to create their size age. Like this question. This one was a short one. All right any questions from anyone. I have nobody showing up on here yet so I guess there's no questions list let's move on. Thank you okay we your a. Getting to the last presentation. Right Senate take this presentation and. A lot of what we're talking about here builds on what Bob's already shown you and what manta talked about the previous presentation and so she was really looking at at the school finance formula level how do states a judge just for the small and isolated settings your reticle more Arkansas specific dye into so the impacts of the small and isolated our rural settings. And so we really want to understand even more deeply focusing on the smaller sizes the operational efficiency or inefficiencies that we're seeing we want to understand what is already happening in the state to help with those in a operational efficiency issues and are there some other things that could be done a more broadly across the state to help that out. So we're gonna look at some general at. Kind of the conventional wisdom around this area we're gonna look at some more slides and the ready to talk about some of the deep dive we've done and so that just gets into us Talking about again some slides a kind of show you where there's some issues we want a lot about what's happening in your education service cooperative that's a place where you get a lot of the ability to build efficiency by having I will number of number of districts and schools become part of a larger organization will look into what so what they are providing now versus what can happen and then just some examples of places were district could share staff for services so some examples from other states going to dig deeper and when we get out to the stake holders. And and the search. So what we want to look at and we'll show the slides here really a couple of areas where you tend to see inefficiencies in the small roles that. And we talked a little bit about this already but we're gonna dive into it so the first is in personnel date the smaller settings can really struggle to find specialized position so we hear a lot about that with special education funding audiologist or a speech pathologist in its full I'm a problem finding that person in certain communities and then also as a man to mention their ability to be I'm kind of fully utilized as you're going between. State and and have less kids and each site it's harder to utilize those. They're also want to look at the work first ability. There tends to be if you look at the you know the the general research more turnover in the smaller more remote settings and then qualifications so less about a specialized type of position and training but more just along the lines of can you find a math teacher or assigns teachers to making sure your qualified staff. A lot of that can relate to that these testers control tap competitive salaries and then how does that impact specialized course work and extra clipper offerings we talked a lot about that but we're gonna high like that here again. And so you all we actually saw the slide a little earlier but it's comes back to can. If it's act this is the attrition slide and we did see it earlier and what we're showing here again is that in your smaller districts you tend to have higher turnover as a rate as a percentage of attrition so that earlier you know kind of conventional wisdom what folks think about you what your smaller districts are having a harder time keeping staff and they're having more turnover Kenny your to you. It's not a high correlation but it does exist and you can kind of see that bubble out here on the left side. Then what we also see and we have a look at this yet is that. Our districts tend to be able to pay less at a starting salary so what this crap is looking at is what do districts pay for a brand new teacher with a bachelor's degree so no years of experience with a bachelor's degree. Yeah there's a large spread in the smaller districts but on average they're paying less salary per year for those new staff and it turns out even as you get into a more educated at four years into the career the smaller district still or have are paying less in salary and so when we think about the turnover and the ability to attract the qualified staff that is part of where they are struggling is that they are paying less than the large for districts some of that could be all set and we didn't get to look at it here but you know there would be some thought that some of that can be offset by some the cost of living differences between rural and urban setting but you can see the truck. And what we also looking at is the percentage of teachers who are what that database calls completely certified you can see a lot of districts are right out the hundred percent all their teachers are certified but you do see districts you who have more below that line it really is a highly correlated with science are you do see a pocket of districts down here at the smaller size you you have more teachers were not for. And there were switching and we've done a lot in this I'm not gonna talk a lot about it again but we're we are seeing that for some especially the C. T. U. courses and we talked about if you already your smaller districts do you have the ability to provide as a percentage of total population pretty strong course work in these areas. you know when you pull the data that rob this is what this shows you clearly have more kids in the larger districts in these programs but going back and once you convert that to a percentage wretched higher participation rates in your smaller districts for a lot of the seat course. And then we looked at athletics a little bit earlier this is bringing back non athletics again what is showing is that there are a lot of your smaller settings and music this is high school enrollment who still have very high rates of athletics sorry don't see you have a lot of clubs a lot of other programs again I thought that you might not have as many kids for each individual club but as a percentage of the overall school population it looks like you have pretty good opportunities for. And so what we wanted to take a look at is what are the what's the. Educational service cooperative. Enroll in a really helping out some of the smaller district you there capacity. So we looked at you know there's about a thousand little over a thousand schools in the state I would look at both the districts and that charters and all of those are built into these fifteen east yes is across the street. what this shows is just a different property it's across the state you can kinda layer over the top of that the fact that this is bringing back in another state earlier your state tends to be pretty low that's right the vast majority of eight isn't this lowest identity blue category you only have a handful of pockets I get into the yellow or or and so these are service centers help build capacity especially in some of these more these last dense population. This coming right off I think that department's website where you can take a look and. You'll see that that. Yes he's ranged from a low of serving about eleven thousand students a little over eleven thousand students to hide serving almost over ninety thousand students so pretty broad range and you know pretty broad range number of districts that they're serving and of Kate. I guarantee you cannot read this whole thing but it is something to take a look at what we did is we actually review the website and then made calls to all the property is in the state to try to understand the various services the providing to their districts as you can see we have some services something like americorps that's only provided by two districts you wouldn't necessarily expect ever start to cooperatives you wouldn't necessarily expect every cooperative to provide something like that then you have other services CTV's services or if an intelligent where basically every ESE or all every yes yes providing the service so you can kind of see the types of services that all districts are using and really expect from their ESC and then some of the specialty services an individual yes you might provide. This is just a continuation of that piece. And then we did take a look to see if there was any you know relationship between. The size of the the number of districts or students at the yes he is serving and how much they and how many programs that yes he provides. Very little relationship it's you know as the number of districts serve gets larger there's actually on average less services but it's pretty mixed there. What we did see is that that yes the and again this is due to we pulled so what will you know we're we're we're always checking to make sure it's right but yes see serving that most students but also stands at the largest out of just the district of the largest seems to have the lease to services. But that really wouldn't surprise us in part because as you search larger districts they can take on a lot more functions so some of the functions yes that that property often we take for a smaller district they don't need to do for a larger districts so that wasn't something that really worried us out and you just was part of the numbers sorry to dig up more and more into the services and how they're actually utilized in the role in small districts as we go forward. So the next slides at talk about some of the limitations that the small settings often. Some of the programs that are currently offered to help with that and some additional services that make you consider. Remember not everything that's. Early offered is offered by every cooperative. And some of the additional services might be offered but we just didn't see them broadly off. I'm not gonna read everything on this last summer I highlights again are. The specialized positions so the cooperatives are pretty consistently all helping districts currently positions some of the bodies could you actually increased training and trying to do some growing our own type of folks. These that might stay in the communities longer. But then again there's these programs specialized programs like americorps or microprobe ram. Those are really needs based with and and you're a cooperative and you wouldn't necessary expected to be broad or be grown anywhere else. we're talking more about you know these kind of less but one of the things I will talk more about is just any place that cooperative or some other group can help with the operational efficiency which could include is going as far as having you know shared maintenance actual service is and and yes to be on joint purchasing but really into actually having maybe a centralized group running the operations for Senate districts. So part of this really comes down to having intergovernmental agreement really allowing for that to happen across districts or multiple districts some of the examples there could be an Bob not about this if you had a very unexpected bubble class in a smaller district where it was gonna really tax just that class is going to tax The facilities in the community you can actually think about utilizing some open space in a close fight district so those types of you know that that goes local control on it just communities billing being really free being willing to really makes different decisions but having the ability in place for district to make those can really help with some of the efficiencies are that the smaller settings could have another example would be not having any kind of high cost programming in multiple buildings if you need to have a very specific type of computer science lab. Have one regionally and have that shared as best you can across the district again within a certain proximity. The types of positions that you might share and this comes down a little bit too. There are folks who are really good at something like transportation management or food service management and also in smaller district you have that people weren't political hacks and so you can actually have this type of person running that program was a transportation across multiple district you get someone with high expertise and some of the district doesn't have to work at but you can see a lot of these are around operation side of things are not school level but more operations. But you can also think about that best teachers so someone who is doing high levels of math or foreign language as you get smaller places you know who's really thinking how you share and again this is going on it's just really thinking about how do you create the systems that to make it happen is probably as possible. You can also think about services I'm not gonna what do all these but again if you at one group doing payroll for a number of districts or H. me things like that so trying to get operations pulled out and done at the most efficient scale possible. industries continues that last. And then even sharing some of the equipment can be helpful. So we don't want to give one example that how you know districts could really think about sharing your either through a cooperative or elsewhere and we happen to pick it to intelligent it doesn't mean we think this is the only place or or the best place but as an example. If you have smaller numbers of kids you could have a regional person who's handling the professional development and actually creating lessons I so let's say all the fourth graders in a region inactive until the program would have the same program or or kind of curriculum for a period of time. That would then allow you to have shared science kits or robotics labs or science labs in a person who can go round and trained on the. You can then also have yes I believe one school you bring all those kids together you have some experience and actually allow some collaboration either in person across these different schools or through online so just trying to think where the places where you can provide a better educational opportunity for the student. Operating with some you know some other. Districts in your region. And then we did find you know a couple states where we think that they have some of their Some of their cooperatives are compressed running a little bit broader range. Services absent in Texas there to research that and twelve the twenty eight regional education service centers there cooperative name at four different. Types of services and it's safe district about sixty million dollars. But out of Pennsylvania that is a state where there are a number of co ops who had become specialist in certain areas and they really sell that specialty across the state so you might be and the questions of the state but you're selling really technology management across the state and so there there is a very market based approach and and a lot of the different concepts you can specialist in certain. So again these are just some examples of what's going on and there is a lot going on in the ESCs tech to help with this the smaller settings bills are proficiency and some places that we might be able to go in the future. That is questions. All right are there any questions from anyone. We're getting tired this afternoon they get all the early questions. that he's got I see I have no questions on my own the. Computer nobody popped up so. Correct we are that is what we have for you guys today two countries with a four day any questions that you come out the sent to us or anything that comes up that you guys like you know what I think will have a few items of discussion that will be sending you deprive you get some answers on and or had a couple that's mentioned that so looking forward to hearing from you next time. Perfect thank you all all right thank you. Is there any other business to become before us today. If not tomorrow morning nine o'clock we're going to hear from the department of it. All our schools will try to start. And get started and how this going to work and I know they're excited about coming before us and and I think we got one of the thing tomorrow after that so come back tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. We are adjourned.