House Education Committee
Video
Transcript
Machine transcript
May contain errors. Verify important quotations against the official video.
About transcript accuracy
- Source
- Whisper
- Model
- ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin RTX5060
- Processing date
- October 5, 2026
Representative James McLean
Unverified
0:00
We apologize for the climate control issues that we're experiencing right now. We have contacted the Secretary of State's office and we are going to try to moderate the temperature. If the temperature is not absolutely perfect, Representative Klimer does not function well. So we will make sure that we get it cooled down a little bit. But as you know, it's not as easy in your home as just adjusting the dial, and it is
government, so we have to contact a few people to get the air taken care of. But we will try to do that for you, and we apologize if it's a little uncomfortable. I'll take exception to you calling me out now. I love you. Members, it is spring break, and as you know, everybody across the state observes spring at the same time, which is this week, and we have a young man here who is helping out Mark Hudson. He is from Batesville, Arkansas. He is eight years old, and his name is Evan
Holloway McClain. And he's hanging out with me and Mark today, and maybe something will rub off, or maybe he'll rub off on us. When we ended the meeting on Thursday, Representative Hammer was in the middle of his bill. He is dealing with a situation, a family situation, which hopefully will be okay, but he is not here right now. So with that being said, Representative Alexander, if you are prepared, sir, we're going to go ahead and hear your bill.
Speaker 8
1:55
Representative Alexander, you don't have any amendments
Speaker 13
2:11
correct? No. Okay. With that, sir, you are recognized to present House Bill 1938. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
2:25
Fundamentally, the purpose of House Bill 1938 is to call for a two-year moratorium on implementation of Act 60. Act 60 is the act that requires schools whose enrollment drops below 350 for two years in a row to be consolidated or closed. And I'm proposing that in this bill that we halt that process for two years and take time
to study what the impact of this has been and if it's achieving what we hoped it would achieve. And I want to offer a few reasons why I think that's important and necessary to do, and then I think we have some folks here to testify before I close. I just want to note of interest, prior to Act 60, we passed an omnibus act, 1467.
And it was created to establish a comprehensive system of educational accountability to enforce the Arkansas Standards of Accreditation, the Arkansas Comprehensive Testing Assessment and Accountability Program, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. And as you look through this bill, primarily they looked at a couple of things, if you boil it down. One is, is the campus or the district functioning well academically?
Are students learning, as demonstrated by test scores? Are they in academic distress? And the second thing had to do with finances. Are they in fiscal distress? They may be doing very well academically, but they're slowly going broke. those of course is a major problem so that's what the bill looked at six months later we passed Act 60 and the primary criteria in that there's a lot
of definitions of phrases and words and a lot of process of how how things happen but the trigger in the bill is this by February 1 2004 and each February 1 Thereafter, the Department of Education shall publish a consolidation list that includes all school districts with fewer than 350 students according to the district's average daily membership in each of the two school years immediately preceding the current year.
And if they fell below that number, then the rest of it kicked in, and they had to go through
an appeal process and a variety of things. Two of the things
that were called for during Lakeview and all of that years of court proceedings and legislation, they were asked to do a tracking study that showed for kids in consolidated
schools to track their progress and see how they did. The folks from, we have several folks here today from the Wiener School District who have been directly affected by this, and they and their representatives have asked for copies of that report many times unsuccessfully. When we talked with the Bureau of Legislative Research about doing this bill, they said we're not aware that it's ever been done. And then yesterday, I sent an email to the Department of Education, and that was at 6.39.
By 10.30, it was handed to me in a meeting. The legislation that guides this says that the Department of Education should develop a plan to track a scheduling educational progress of all students from the affected district in the following subgroups, students have been placed at risk of academic failure, economically disadvantaged students, students from major racial and ethnic groups, specific population groups identified by the board, and then the receiving district shall obtain and retain
all student records from the affected district for five years, and some of the things they're supposed to keep, individual student records, attendance records, and enrollment records. Now the report that I got yesterday I haven't had a chance to look at in great detail. And I would say it might meet the letter of the law, but I certainly don't think it meets the spirit of the law. It provides information. Let me just read the statement here in the report.
Limitations. In order to protect the confidentiality of individual students and due to the small size of the affected districts, this report looks at groups, looks at students in all consolidated schools as one group, and students in non-consolidated groups as one group. So you start out with a small population and lump it all together, and I'm not saying there's not evidence of tracking on an individual school basis, but it's certainly not included in the report.
So what the report provides is pages and pages of tables broken down by the various groups I read that don't tell me a lot. They were also supposed to do a transportation study to see what the impact was. By closing and consolidating districts, obviously you're going to have kids riding the bus for longer periods of time. I asked to see that study, and the act that created that, Act 1604, was in 2007.
There was an Act 1006 of 2011 that repealed it. So I asked if there were any studies from the four years when it was required, and the answer I got was, we think there was, but we'll check. And I haven't heard anything back on that. So, on at least a couple of the criteria that I think are pretty important, we don't have good information to evaluate this. The University of Arkansas did a report and included a table comparison on benchmark scores
of at-risk schools with region and state averages, 2009-2010. And this table shows the test performance of what are called at-risk districts, districts that aren't quite at the 350, but they're getting very close. There were 21 total schools on that district. Of the 21, and it looks at district enrollment, percent minority, percent free and reduced
lunch, and then scores on math, literacy, and science. In five of the 21, the schools listed outperformed the state average on all three tests, math, literacy, and science. In five more of the 21, they outperformed the state average on at least two of these. So that was interesting to me. The total that I've been given, and I haven't had a chance to independently verify this,
But in this report, you've got 10 of 21 achievement scores exceed the state average, 10 of 21 schools. I've been told of 52 high schools that have been closed or consolidated since this began, 39 of the 52 were closed solely on the basis of Act 60. They dropped below 350. They were not in academic distress. They were not in financial distress. And then finally, I want to talk a little bit about the methodology that was used, which
I think is questionable. I won't go into a lot of detail on Lightview.
We don't have time for that, but I want to read a few quotes from an article entitled The Confidence Men, Selling Adequacy, Making Millions. And this was written by Dr. Eric Hanishek at the Hoover Institute from Stanford University in, I believe, 2006, well, 2007.
And he starts out, excuse me, lawsuits aimed at compelling legislatures to increase school funding have been filed in some 42 states. Courts have found for the plaintiffs in more than half of the cases on the grounds that schools are not adequately funded. These decisions have, in effect, changed the way education appropriations are made, moving decision-making from legislatures to the courts. Instead of flowing from the political process, determinations of adequate appropriation come from the judges who are informed by paid consultants.
And then they go on with an example. In the state of Washington, they hired a consultant to do this report. This report, an evidence-based approach to school finance adequacy in Washington, claims to present scientific evidence of exactly what needs to be done to bring every child to proficiency as defined under state and federal law. The advance, if true, would go far beyond this specific court case and could revolutionize American education. For if indeed we now know how to create an effective educational system and only the
funds are lacking, then the country's educational problems can be solved. The analysts who purport to have assembled this knowledge are led by two professors, Lawrence Pickus of the University of Southern California and Alan Auden of the University of Wisconsin. The two formed a consulting group known as PICUS and Associates and have become increasingly popular among groups seeking to expand school spending, be they plaintiffs in lawsuits, teachers unions, or state departments of education.
Even if only the state of Washington were getting precise scientific answers to such critical questions, the work of this team would command the attention of national policymakers. But this consulting group has already established a national reputation for its ability to ascertain scientifically what needs to be done in education and precisely how much it costs to do it. Through prior studies along much the same lines, prepared for policymakers in Arkansas, Kentucky, Arizona, and Wyoming. These are the people we used. So similar are the studies
that at times it seems the copy function of the Microsoft word processor deserves to be listed among the authors. According to the available records, the Kentucky study conducted in 2003 was executed for $349,000. Arkansas's original study conducted the same year cost about the same initially, but rose to over twice that amount, $800,000, when the authors accepted a commission to ascertain whether districts used their money in a way consistent
with the consultants' evidence-based policies. Wyoming, a small but rich state, was asked to pay $1.26 million in 2005 for a calibration of its finance formula along evidence-based lines and a subsequent implementation study. Washington, in 2006, managed to squeeze the price back down to the total Arkansas figure, although Washington could get only the original evidence-based analysis without the follow-up.
And it goes on, but let me just read a couple of summary statements. The truth behind the numbers, and it's referring to the fact that Pikus and Auden identify strategies that claim that they can use as scientific evidence to support how you can improve certain areas by up to three to six standard deviations. This can all happen within one year of application of these policies, the consultants say.
And then the truth behind the numbers, this, of course, is the stuff of science fiction novels, not research-based school policy. How does a well-financed study conducted by scholars of national reputation reach such startling conclusions? The process is roughly as follows. Find a study, preferably one that has some surface credibility, that shows that a particular intervention had a certain effect on a particular group of students. Two, ignore all the studies of that intervention that show a smaller effect or no effect at
all. Three, interpret the study as identifying a causal relationship, not just a correlation or association. And four, finally assume that the conditions that produce the very large effect can be perfectly replicated throughout the state of Washington. And the final statement they make, what Pikes and Iden provide in their reports is essentially a selective review of the published literature on program effects. Why do different states and organizations pay ever-increasing amounts to see this research
review when Google would bring up the most recent version immediately and without expense? The answer is simple. Clients want a bottom-line statement about how much spending would provide an adequate education, and they want this estimate attached to their specific state. Few people care about the studies, quote, unquote, on which consultants base their reports or even their validity, because nobody really expects schools to implement these specific programs if given extra funding. Clients simply want a requisite amount of scientific aura around the number that will
become the rallying flag for political and legal actions. Summing the added cost of the separate programs suggested by Pica and Auden, I estimate that the overall plan, if fully applied, would increase an average spending in Washington by $1,760 to $2,760 per student, or 23 to 35 percent. This estimate of the increased spending necessary to achieve, quote, adequacy, unquote, is very similar to the percentage increases they have recommended to other states, and numbers like
these will presumably become part of the headlines surrounding the new court case. But pity the poor states that actually implement the Paikos and Aden plan. They are sure to be disappointed by the results,
and most taxpayers, those who do not work for the schools, will be noticeably poorer.
In light of this information, I think it's clear that we might ought to take a little time out here before we proceed down the road, closing more and more of our small schools who are performing well academically, many of them, and take a look at this study, see
if it's accomplished what we have hoped that it would accomplish, and if it needs any tweaking as
Speaker 29
17:54
we move forward. And I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Representative Alexander. Do we have any
Representative James McLean
Unverified
18:01
questions from the committee? Representative Alexander, you had a – you brought up a lot of points. Have you had an opportunity during the process of crafting this bill of having some in-depth conversations with the AG and the Department of Education folks?
Was that part of the equation?
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
18:20
MR. Yes. I had a meeting with – I'm sorry, I'm forgetting your name, Tony Wood. Is that correct?
MR. Yes, sir. A few weeks ago, about another bill, but we got into some of this. I met yesterday with him and Dr. Kimbrell, and also present was Mr. Richardson from the Attorney General's office.
Representative James McLean
Unverified
18:43
Okay, so you hit all the heavy hitters. In light of that, I would ask Dr. Kimbrell and Mr. Richardson to come to the table
because I want for the benefit of the committee we need to have a response from the Department of Ed and the AGs so we can get just a clearer picture of where we are with your permission, Representative Alexander. Sure. I would
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
19:11
just make one comment. In their defense, they work with the hand they're dealt by the legislature. They didn't pick the 350 number. That was something that was determined through a political process, a very long one, a very contentious one,
and that's what they've had
Representative James McLean
Unverified
19:30
to work with. Thank you very much, Representative Alexander. Dr. Kimbrell and Mr. Richardson, if you would please just go ahead and kind of rebut, for lack of
a better word, what Representative Alexander just
Speaker 41
19:46
presented. Thank you, Tom Kimbrell, Commissioner of Education.
Speaker 43
19:50
Not to rebut, but to inform, we did get an opportunity to meet with Representative Alexander.
He has several pieces of legislation that we've been working, Mr. Wood's been working with him on, as we are. And in this piece, there was, I think, some concern about whether the report had actually been done, when the report had been done. And we can assure you that the report required under the statute has been done. since 2006 has been reported and recorded to the groups required that it be reported to both the interim chair of the Senate Education Committee
and the House Education Committee, a copy to Mr. Mark Hudson. So I know Mr. Hudson has received that report each and every year that report has done. It is if you have to look at the report and study it because, you know, it does take a little bit of understanding to be able to follow each year because what we try to do in the report is follow each individual child, and we do that. And Norms has done the reporting for us.
They've run the numbers for us. We've followed each and every one of these children through these consolidations to look at the effect of consolidation on their achievement, The idea behind this piece of legislation was let's make sure that student progress doesn't decline. And so we set up a tracking system to track these students as they moved from this district that was consolidated with another district, not only through Act 60 but any consolidation, to make sure that these students were on track. The issue of the small groups is really an issue of the federal law because some of these classes were very small.
And when you look at a tested grade, maybe the third grade or the fourth grade, and you look at some of these very small schools that were consolidated, if you're not careful, if you reported on a single school and a single class, as some of you who have been in the classroom, you would know that you could actually identify kids. So you had to be very careful. And so when you get down to, and we use 10 as typically the number, if you get below 10 in any class that you report, you don't report that
because at that point you can begin to identify students, and that's under the FERPA, the Federal Educational Records Protection Act that we protect student records from. So to answer that question, we do that in a way to protect those students, but we do have the data that shows. Mr. Hudson has copies of each and every one of those. I can provide any of you who want a copy of that, go over it with you and show. And what we're finding, those students do continue to progress. We're actually seeing that students are actually, in many of our cases, even growing in their student achievement
areas. So we're not seeing that falloff that many of us, we're afraid, could occur. So we understand the process in which Representative Douglas is wanting to go in this direction. We understand his concern about what's happened just recently with the decision that the State Board had to make with upholding the local board's decision at Wiener with that decision.
Our concern here, and I'll let the AG delve into the issues of Lakeview and all of the other concerns that go there are what effect this particular legislation may have with other schools that we have that I guess you would say are on that bubble over the next two years. We have some school districts that are currently in their second year under 350. Some of them are academically in trouble. They're financially in trouble, but they're not on that to that list where they're
in distress to that point as we read this legislation right now we don't see an out if this remains in effect even if they drop below that 350 for those consecutive years even if they went into fiscal distress or academic distress the state board would not be able to step in and try to resolve those issues of failing schools whether it's financially an issue or academically an issue we don't see an out there where we talk with the
representative about that we're not sure exactly how that would be interpreted by court if a school district challenged the state's ability using this most recent if this became law this most recent piece of legislation so we do have some school districts that we know are going to we're going to be facing those tough decisions over the next two years not only with the numbers but also with physical and academic distress so that that gives us some concern for the educational component for those children as well as the continued fiscal
Representative James McLean
Unverified
24:53
concerns that we have for those districts dr. Kimbrell could you just as an example walk us through the process as it related to the Wiener school district, and just kind of point A to where a decision was made to consolidate. Can you kind of just give us just how that works and where the process began, what kind of tripped it, and then where we ended up?
Speaker 43
25:22
Yes, sir. Currently under Act 60, a school district that has two consecutive years in which their
third quarter average daily membership drops below 350 for two consecutive years. During that next school year, they either take the option or look for a partnering school district to consolidate or annex with under an agreement. Or if they can't do that, then the state board will actually place that school district and consolidate them with another school district. In the case of Wiener, they found Harrisburg became a partnering district to consolidate with them.
In that written agreement with those two districts, there was an agreement that the high school would remain open for one additional year past the consolidation, and then the resulting Harrisburg School District would then make a decision on a yearly basis based upon the financial feasibility of that campus remaining open. It remained open an additional two years, and then that board at Harrisburg, the local board, had a vote. The vote was four to one to close the Harrisburg, or excuse me, the Wiener High School campus.
Under this act, if it is not a unanimous vote, then it comes to the state board, and the state board must uphold that local board's decision or they reverse that board's decision. In this case, when the hearing was held, the state board voted to uphold the local board's decision to close the campus. And so at this month's meeting, the board voted to close the
Speaker 46
27:03
high school campus at Wiener, upholding that four-to-one vote of the local board.
Speaker 47
27:09
Thank you very much for that rundown, Dr.
Representative James McLean
Unverified
27:13
Kimbrell. We appreciate it very much. Mr. Richardson, would you mind informing the committee from the AG's
Speaker 52
27:19
perspective, please, sir? Thank you, Scott Richardson, with the Attorney General's Office. We've already spoken twice on similar issues. issues once when I first gave a have a Lakeview overview and then again another bill similar to this was run the issue is one of adequate funding you know how does the General Assembly know that an adequate level of funding is being
provided to a school district one of the components of that is the the size of the school district because we fund on a per student basis there was a determination in 2003 and 2004 that there was a certain level below which we couldn't allow school districts to go because they would become inadequately funded for the educational needs in that school district and 350 was the number a lot of people assert that it's an arbitrary number but if you add up the
maximum class sizes for a single elementary middle and high school you'll come to just about 350 students i think it's about 348 actually so the 350 funds a single elementary a single middle and a single high school the model on which the the foundation funding amount is based assumes a 500 student school district which would be two elementaries a middle and a high school so there is
There is some question about whether a school district that is below 500 is adequately funded, but the General Assembly made the determination that 350 was the minimum number. And this was a contested issue in the Lakeview case in 2004, and the Supreme Court addressed the issue of consolidation in their opinion. And it's three paragraphs, but I'm not going to read them all, but I would like to give you a little bit of a flavor just to avoid the risk of repeating myself too much on this
issue because we do end up addressing this issue each session. But what the Supreme Court said is that consolidation of school districts was not expressly referenced in their prior Lakeview III opinion. Nevertheless, an efficient education is what Article 14, Section 1 of the Arkansas Constitution requires which begs the question of whether this state can ever offer an adequate and substantially equal education to all its children without effective consolidation I'm going to skip down to their conclusion which is what is radiantly clear is that if
an adequate curriculum adequate facilities and adequate equipment cannot be afforded to the school children in the smaller school districts of this state due to a lack of sufficient economic resources more efficient measures to afford that adequacy will be inevitable so they've the supreme court viewed the consolidation number as directly tied to ensuring that adequate curriculum adequate facilities and adequate equipment was available in these small school districts so that those children have available the full curriculum the
full offering that the general assembly has determined is what's what's necessary what are the necessary components of an adequate education that's going to be put on in the school district because ultimately that's the requirement that's the purpose of the adequacy study that this committee does each biennum along with the Senate Education Committee is looking at the components of what the state has determined is required to put on an adequate education in a school district and then how much does it cost to put that education on and so you have
representative Alexander read from an article by Dr. Eric Hanushek who was also involved in our Lakeview case and there were opinions on all different sides but what the General Assembly went with was the Auden and Pica study that built the evidence-based model upon which the foundation funding system is based it's how we determined or how this body determined what an adequate level of funding would be for students and that's what's addressed each year so his point about updating that that happens each bianna
of this General Assembly and I've been around for I think three of them so far and I can testify these committees do a good job of going through a lot of data and evidence they look at all aspects and a lot of other issues come up but the 350 there's never been a recommendation to change the 350 number and I'm not aware of an adequacy study determining if school districts fall below 350 what would need to be done to ensure that they receive that adequate
curriculum adequate facilities and adequate equipment the general that the Supreme Court talks about. So our position has always been it's not that 350 is etched in stone but if you want to change the 350 number as Representative Alexander would do for two years he would essentially erase that number for two years without any kind of study of what would happen in the school districts. In that two years would the school districts that are hovering around 350 or dropping below 350 would they still be able to provide adequate
facilities adequate curriculum adequate equipment would be able to afford all the teachers for all the grade levels for all the 38 units and secondary for all the classes that need to go on will all that be sufficiently funded so without that study we can't change the 350 number with that study we could look at it but since we don't have that essentially what his bill does as I understand it is say for two years we may be willing to accept inadequate funding for school districts so that it may not
may or may not be able to put on an adequate curriculum adequate facilities and have adequate equipment for those students so we we urge a lot of caution on this there's another aspect of it that sort of occurred to me this morning which is because the date restrictions in the bill that goes back to january 1 it would it it would scoop up like the wiener high school closure that was
just ordered so that then harrisburg school district would have to continue to operate that school district when they've determined that their their resources aren't sufficient to meet continued funding of that school so we would require them to stay open without providing an additional funding to the Harrisburg school district to assist with that school so we may be approaching an unfunded mandate in this bill as well but that's something we'd have to look at a little bit more deeply the the main problem is stopping consolidations
for two years without addressing what will happen in the school district that might be affected by the bill It becomes very problematic in terms of ensuring adequacy of education in
Representative James McLean
Unverified
34:38
those school districts. Okay, Scott, let me just
kind of, just for my benefit, the two-year moratorium, specifically in regard to the schools that are hovering or maybe slightly below the 350 for two years, if they cannot prove evidence-based that they are providing a constitutional, equitable,
adequate education for their students for that two-year period, we essentially could possibly be in constitutional violation. Is that what you're essentially saying? That's certainly a potential of this bill. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate you, Dr. Kimbrell and
Representative James McLean
Unverified
35:15
to add? Not unless there are questions. Okay. I think we have some questions. Representative Linderman?
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
35:28
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With your indulgence, I have several questions. I have received, as everyone on this committee has, a lot of messages that were copied and pasted. Some of them said that we need to support our children, and I spent 30 years in education. Both my children teach in small rural schools, and I certainly support education. But it says that we are currently in violation of ACA 613-1606 of 2005 and a 2003 Supreme Court order.
We need to comply with the law. If I understood your testimony, we are in compliance with the law, and
Speaker 43
36:09
this is not truthful or correct. Is that? That is my understanding. Yes, sir. We've provided the study to track those students and their academic progress by those subgroups each year, even the conversion charter schools, everything that's in the law, we've tracked each
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
36:23
year after each consolidation. So Arkansas is in compliance with the law? Yes, sir. Okay. Scott, I think this question is for you. All right. If I understood you, if this bill passed, 1938 today,
we could very well be back into the Lakeview lawsuit, a lawsuit against our state for not providing adequate education. Is that correct? yes to that but
Speaker 52
36:47
then also you could have school districts that aren't adequately funded even without a lawsuit you know we still want to make sure that if if we want to have small school districts that they're adequately funded and we could be in a situation where that wouldn't happen they wouldn't have enough revenue from the state to provide the services we require them okay
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
37:09
Okay, Education Week magazine, if I'm not mistaken, actually gave Arkansas an A-minus rating on school funding. Is that correct? I believe that's correct, sir. I believe so. I was thinking I remembered that from some testimony in another deal. The number 350 actually goes back to the late 1940s, if memory serves me correct, that the legislature passed legislation that said all school districts that did not have 350 pupils would be consolidated,
and Arkansas went from 1,700 schools to 400-plus. Is that correct? You're reaching
Speaker 72
37:53
a bit of research on this. I actually have a
Speaker 43
37:58
document, don't have it with me, that Dr. Keller Noggle, who was the executive director of the Administrators Association, did, a history of consolidation, that he talks about that.
He did the research on that, and I've got it in another notebook. I usually carry it with me, and I don't have it with me today, but I would be glad to dig that one up for anybody that would want it. But it walks through that. I think it was even more than that, but it resulted in more than 400. It was – there were more than 400 that were left. But over the years, there – I mean, there were literally thousands of school districts in this state years
Speaker 74
38:39
ago. And, you know, even since the 60s, there have been large numbers of consolidations that have occurred in this state.
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
38:46
When the Lakeview was in progress, there was a – Governor Huckabee recommended a 1,500, and I believe the House passed the 500 number, and the Senate, I think, amended it down to 350. Is that correct? You'd probably need to get someone like Tony Wood, who was
Speaker 43
39:05
probably in the corner sitting back watching all that happen in those rooms, or Shane Broadway, if Shane's still in here because he was part of that process. Or I saw Scott Smith peeking over his shoulder over there.
Scott was probably a part of that discussion. But I think that's kind of how it went. It was kind of a negotiated number that came up, and I think some of Mr. Richardson's comments also played into that. How could you actually get to that 350 using the model that
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
39:39
had come out of the Oden and PACA study? Okay, one final question, Mr. Chair. Dr. Kimbrell, in your testimony, you indicated that there were a number of safeguards. If they fell below the number two years, the consolidation of the boards, the appeals process,
et cetera, that there are a number of safeguards that are built in that a number of people, both on the local level and on the state level, have to meet these hurdles or show this level of need that would result in before consolidation would take place. is that correct well once they
Speaker 43
40:18
drop below that in that third year if they have two consecutive years below 350 then in that third year there's that
option to find a willing partner would be probably the best way to put it if they don't then the state board would would then recommend or would place them with a school district to be annexed or consolidated with in that there's an interim board by law that is developed or put into place and it's specified by the law how that would work and then there after that interim board is put into place then at the I think the subsequent next election then there is an election held of the resulting district that becomes the new district
for a board so and then decisions that are made such as the one that Harrisburg district resulting Harrisburg district made then had that right of appeal to the state board when it was not unanimous on that and that's really the only one issue that is is available to the resulting new district and that is the closing if it's an isolated school in any many of these other situations that are their consolidations if they were not an isolated school to begin
with there is no appeal to the state board so we've had many instances where the resulting school district and their board local board made decisions to close other campuses, and it never does reach the State Board because the law doesn't require it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Representative
Speaker 47
41:50
Linderman. Representative Dale, do you have a question, sir? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Speaker 80
42:03
I'm sorry about the microphone there. Just to be clear, I understand you to say there that this law would cause some complications if we're closing districts for distress in academics and in facilities. If things happen, there's one particular school district that is coming to
Speaker 43
42:34
my mind that is this is its second year right now that's below 350 that is also on the cusp of possible fiscal distress, also on the verge of some academic problems and some standards problems.
So, you know, it would all depend upon which one happened first. If they finish this year under 350, then would this protect them from being annexed or consolidated because the next year they may be in academic distress or physical distress? So there would be some questions as to whether which one happened first with this particular district that I have, you know, that we are working with right now trying to deal with as they are in their second year,
below 350, and in that third year, if we find that they are actually going to be in physical distress, we have to place them in physical distress, would we have to allow them to remain open and continue to not be able to provide a level of adequate education, or can the state step in if they were to fall under this particular piece of legislation? Just some questions
Speaker 80
43:58
about how that might work in conjunction with this. Have you made any changes or, should I say, decisions that resulted from your study on
the transportation and how you handled some of these situations? Have those studies turned up any findings that makes you maybe think that
Speaker 43
44:25
you know, we've done numerous studies. As a matter of fact, I think you were part of one of the task force or interim studies that was done on transportation that then-Chairman Abernathy had done,
and Mr. Wilson with the Bureau of Legislative Research created the formula. to look at how to to look at linear mileage formula and we looked at this cost and how you might could determine these factors of how long students are on school buses and what we've determined is it's a function of the amount of money and opportunity that you have to purchase the number of buses that would provide the least amount of time for a child to be on a
a school bus so it's really a function of how many buses are you capable or willing to run in order to have you know that functionality of time so you know that's the one thing that I think all the studies have found is that it's really a function of how many buses can you and will you and can you afford to buy how many buses drivers can you find to drive the buses and pick up the students because that's the the true function of that whole piece is if you've
got students spread out all over you know 600 square mile school district you know and if you're willing to run enough buses then you can minimize the number of minutes that a students on a bus if you're you know limited to the number of buses that you can buy or limited by the number of bus drivers you can hire that's going to mean that you're limited to you know how many minutes minimal minutes that you can have a student on a bus. MR. Thank you very much. Thank
Speaker 78
46:13
you, Mr. Chairman. MR. Thank you, Representative Dell. Representative Lowry, you have a question, sir?
Speaker 89
46:23
Chair. The comment was made a while ago that I think Mr. Richardson said the 350 is not an arbitrary number, that it's based on some formulaic research as far as adequacy. We continue, even in this legislative session, we continue to come up with or what is brought to us are new ways to spend money to try and add financial resources or educational resources.
We just passed a bill, for instance, to extend broadband throughout the state. Distance learning is something that's been expanded, which my understanding is that is to help some of these small school districts that might not have the resources on ground. We have educational co-ops. We've got the Arkansas Public School Resource Center that is functioning with 70 percent of the school districts. At what point are we going to finally recognize that maybe the 350 number needs to be revisited in light of all these resources that we
Speaker 91
47:22
keep getting asked to spend more and more money on?
Speaker 92
47:29
That would be up to these committees. It would be up to you all to take another
Speaker 55
47:35
look at that. And that's an option to each biennum
Speaker 93
47:38
in the adequacy study. Okay. And this particular bill would allow
Speaker 89
47:42
us to do that. It would allow us to put a hold so that we can review this. Because I hear dollars, dollars, dollars, and then we hear 350 students. And there is no magic formula, really, that's showing us that that 350 fits the adequacy issue. Like we've said before, we're going to be studying adequacy and what that means.
But where are we locked in to seeing that 350 is that magic number for adequacy? Well,
Speaker 52
48:12
I think the 350 is the number of students in a single elementary, single middle school, single high school. And so, as I understand, the General Assembly determined that that was the minimum amount of funding. We wouldn't let a school district fall below the amount of money it took to operate a single elementary, middle, and high school.
The model is actually based on two elementaries, a middle, and a high school. So there is an argument that if it goes below 500, that those resources are no longer being provided by the foundation funding amount. But that's the model. how many students are in the school and how much money does that provide in the school district how much money does that provide to the school district to fund an adequate curriculum and adequate facilities and adequate equipment and other things that are required to be done in
Speaker 95
49:14
that school district follow-up please Mr. Chair but it would be true
Speaker 89
49:23
to say that the establishing the 350 number predates many of the new resources that I referenced a while ago, an advance in distance learning, an increase in our coverage throughout the state and broadband. All of these things supposedly put in place so that small schools and rural school districts
will have the same resources as other school districts.
Speaker 52
49:48
Certainly that's something that could be looked at in terms of changing the 350 number. I think Representative Dale's point is also worth mentioning here as well. This bill is not just about consolidations because of the size of the school district. It stops any and all, including ones that result from academic, fiscal, or facilities distress, where you would have a school district identified with a serious problem, but then it takes away
Speaker 55
50:14
one of the tools the department has to provide additional resources for the students in that school district that are struggling.
Representative James McLean
Unverified
50:23
Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And Representative Lowry, I think you make a good point. My concern is when Scott referenced the diminishing resources from an economic standpoint in these communities. In northwest Arkansas, where we have huge growth, the schools are doing so well there. Is it fair for those children in that part of the state to have access to these resources, to have access to fine facilities, to have access to teachers who instruct on very different degrees of curriculum?
and then we have very small schools who are struggling, and they cannot provide those resources, that's not constitutional. That's not fair to those smaller school districts. And that's what Lakeview is all about. We have to provide an equal and equitable educational opportunity for every single child in this state, regardless where they live, regardless of geography. And I think that the resources that you mentioned, I think there's a bigger core issue,
and I think that's the economic situation, the economic growth of some smaller rural areas, and are they able to, by no fault of their own, support these schools and remain in their mission to provide a constitutional educational opportunity. And with that, Representative Douglas, do you have a question? Yes, thank you.
Speaker 102
52:08
I appreciate you guys being here today.
Speaker 103
52:12
First of all, the transportation study, I'd be especially interested in seeing that, how the consolidations have affected kids' transportation hours and how you feel like that meets adequacy. Are transportation hours on a bus at any point considered
as part of the formula for a child's education being less than perfect if they're on a bus three to four hours a day. And
Speaker 43
52:51
I think that was part of the report, and the report, I think, it's with BLR as far as the study that was done under then-Chairman Abernathy's interim study. There was a lot of talk about in the report and a lot of look. It was self-reported what was the longest bus route,
what was the longest time that students rode on buses. And, you know, the issue of how long a student rides on a bus is not exclusive to small and rural schools. No. You know, when I leave my home and I live in Cabot, when I leave my home, there's a Cabot bus that leaves in front of me and stops and picks up a student right before I get to furlough and picks up that student at 6.15 in the morning. And so, you know, Cabot's not a small school.
They probably were a rural school at one time
Speaker 103
53:48
small school anymore. So is that study, was that a formal study, or did you say that was just a self-reporting?
Speaker 43
53:56
I thought we had a formal study that was required. It was a study that was done under that interim study that was done jointly by the group when then Mr. Abernathy, Representative Abernathy, was chairing that study. And how many years ago was that?
Do you know? Was it three or four years ago? I can't remember exactly. He may be here. But there was a lot of the reporting was done by the school districts as to the time that students were on the buses. Because that's the only way we had to collect the data. Okay. It was a self-report. We didn't know how else to collect
Speaker 74
54:37
a report that can be shot out to the committee? Yes, ma'am. And there's a report and recommendations that came out of that interim study of how much time and how many route miles were actually being run, which school districts were running the most route miles.
Speaker 107
54:55
And do you remember what the recommendation
Speaker 43
54:57
was? There was a recommendation to use a formula that used linear route miles, ADM, and I believe it was student number transported through a formula. We never did see the formula, but there was a formula that
Speaker 103
55:13
were going to recommend that certain kids were on the bus too long and that we needed to fix that problem? I think
Speaker 48
55:20
that was, again, that function of the funding level
Speaker 43
55:25
and how much money did the district have in order to minimize the number of minutes of time that a student was
Speaker 74
55:33
on the bus. So as a district made decisions about how many buses and how many bus drivers they had, you minimized the number of
Speaker 103
55:43
minutes that students were on buses. Another question, how many schools do we have statewide that are on some kind of a either fiscal or academic distress right now? I
Speaker 43
55:55
can answer the academic distress because we changed the rules on that,
just got those rules through not too long ago, And we have two districts that we have sent letters to. As of right now, I'm not sure if they've asked for an appeals hearing on that designation. But we have two districts that will be placed in academic distress. We have, if I'm in, just as this is from my memory, I'm looking to see if anybody remembers.
Speaker 74
56:22
I mean, physical distress. Do you remember, Mr. Lassiter?
Speaker 43
56:26
Seven or eight, I believe, that are in physical distress at this time.
Speaker 103
56:31
So around 10 that the state is worried about? Yes, ma'am,
Speaker 74
56:36
that are really on the cusp of being in one
Speaker 103
56:40
of the two districts. So are we in jeopardy constitutionally because we have those schools in distress any more than we would be over these schools that are missing, you know, two or three
Speaker 107
56:53
students under the 350? Well, I think that's why we
Speaker 43
56:59
have the laws that we have.
That's why we've stepped in. In a district that's in distress, we actually step in and we have to manage their money for them. We actually have to manage how they spend their money so
Speaker 103
57:13
that we make sure that the money is being spent on the student. So when a school drops below the 350, what are the measures that you undergo to try to
Speaker 43
57:26
get their enrollment back up? Well, we look at what are they doing, what's happened. We ask the questions, and most of them tell us that people are just moving.
You know, they're moving to where the jobs are. They can't drive. They no longer can drive the 30 minutes to work because of what the prices of gasoline when we talk
Speaker 103
57:48
to people. I mean, our state's becoming more rural. So you have options for schools that are in fiscal distress. You have options for schools that are in academic distress. but do you actually have concrete things that you offer to the schools that are dropping below the $350,000 to try to? Is there money that you offer for creative programs or things to attract people back to these schools?
Speaker 41
58:12
I think it's more than just an educational issue. I think that's why
Speaker 43
58:16
we have to take this conversation beyond what just happens at school. We have to take the conversation to what's happened for economic development in those communities, what's happening for the housing development in those communities. Because if you don't have people moving in with children who are going to school there, then that's when you don't
Speaker 87
58:34
have students there. Yeah, I see that. But I'm wondering
Speaker 108
58:38
if it's a function of just these smaller schools needing the help,
Speaker 103
58:43
the creative ideas, the management tools that you're offering to these bigger schools to get them back into compliance. I don't know how much money do you pour into one of these larger schools to get them back into compliance. Well, we don't pour money in. We just manage their money. I mean, in other words, we... So
Speaker 43
59:08
give them any extra money, no, ma'am.
But what we do is we just manage their money, and we don't let them spend money for things. They have to get our approval to go into any debt, to go into any kind of contract or anything of
Speaker 103
59:28
that nature. But it doesn't cost the state when they're in fiscal distress or anything. No, ma'am. All right. So it takes – the other day you came to us and wanted to extend the time to five years to be able to make sure we can get a school district maybe back into compliance. I don't see any difference in that five years of a school being out of compliance
and us having to work with that school for a longer period of time and us taking this moratorium on these school districts that need some help to bump up their attendance. Constitutionally, Scott, could you give me an opinion on what the difference is there?
Speaker 52
1:00:09
Yes. For a school district like Plast County Special School District that's in fiscal distress, they've got upwards of 15,000 students, so we know they're adequately funded
because they have a sufficient number of students to produce a sufficient amount of revenue through foundation funding to fund the school district. It's a question of how they manage that money. And so the fiscal distress is really more about management of resources than it is an
Speaker 115
1:00:38
adequate level of resources. But the academic distress,
Speaker 52
1:00:42
Mike? The academic distress would be similar. It's a question of how are they managing their resources, their teachers, their books, their assessments and everything to produce the academic gains that we'd like to see.
Right. The 350 number, it's a question of do they have an adequate level of resources with the number of students combined with the foundation funding
Speaker 103
1:01:07
that those students generate. But if we see that those schools are doing well fiscally and academically, might we just be off track in how we are judging them as being inadequate? And I wonder if just us taking a two-year breather, getting some great data,
and putting the time and effort into these small schools that sometimes we invest in the
Speaker 120
1:01:34
bigger schools, Maybe. I think the issue there would be
Speaker 92
1:01:39
there. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I may have interrupted
Speaker 52
1:01:43
you. I didn't mean to. No, go ahead. That might work if there are school districts that can continue to provide the adequate level of education that we've determined. But what about the school districts that aren't able to do that? and they fall below 350,
and their inability to provide an adequate level of education becomes worse during the two
Speaker 103
1:02:07
years. But it isn't unconstitutional. It's not going to be unconstitutional for us to have a two-year moratorium. You said we might have
Speaker 107
1:02:17
problems, but that's not a yes. I have to be careful how
Speaker 52
1:02:25
I offer my opinion on these because our office will find ourselves on the other end of a lawsuit.
And if the General Assembly determines to take this action, we would have to defend it. We would have to find a way to do that. Just like with the 350 number, we've defended that a number of times in court, and it's never been overturned, including once in federal court with the Wiener School District. And our advice has always been if there's going to be a change in the 350 number, then we would need an evidence-based study to ensure that those school districts below it would have that adequate level of resources.
With this bill, I don't see a study, I don't see an analysis of if we give a two-year moratorium, what will the effect be, what school districts will be affected, will they be able to continue to provide adequate level of education? Are the school districts that are approaching 350 able to put on adequate education? Would the function of their test
Speaker 103
1:03:27
scores not give us the answer? I think it's more than just test scores.
Speaker 103
1:03:38
answer, but you also have to look at it. Your opinion of educational adequacy just lists the state's testing system, sufficient funding, and then the curriculum and frameworks, right? What the
Speaker 52
1:03:56
Supreme Court opinion referenced was an adequate curriculum, adequate facilities, and adequate equipment. I think to answer that question, it would be good to look at the matrix that looks at
how many teachers is required to put on the kind of curriculum that the state has required, how many secretaries, how many principals, how much equipment is necessary,
Speaker 103
1:04:24
I know we all love this matrix and have embraced it and have found no fault in that matrix and there's no inadequacies in the matrix so i'm wondering why we cling so desperately to
it when we need to defend something but uh you know there could be some problems with it
Speaker 129
1:04:49
well to defend it i need an evidence-based study and that's what he's asking yeah done the word yeah
Speaker 109
1:04:55
Is that what we're asking for, an evidence-based study over two years?
Speaker 52
1:04:59
Well, he's gotten it backwards, though. He's changing the 350 number and then doing the evidence-based study. It needs to be the other way around. He needs to do the evidence-based study, and then based on what comes out of that study, follow those recommendations.
Speaker 103
1:05:17
Okay. All right, I've taken so much time, and I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Dr. Kimbrell and Mr. Scott. Thank you,
Speaker 130
1:05:27
Representative Douglas. And, Chair, thank you very much for your indulgence. That's okay. We've got one more quick question, and then we've got a lot of questions. Representative Viviano, do you have a question? How quick? Quick. Okay. Representative Hobbs, quick, and then Representative Viviano, quicker, and then we're going to move on.
Representative Debra M. Hobbs
Unverified
1:05:43
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That means I'm recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Kimbrell, you mentioned the appeals process and rule changes. I was a little bit concerned when I read in the paper or heard, and like I said, I was not there, but one board member indicated that she felt like it was a waste of her time to hear the appeal process, and then the other made this statement that she was not on the ground. She did not feel like she should be voting on that, and so my question is, with rule
changes if there is an appeal made to the State Board could you require the State Board to meet in the community where they are closing the doors could I
Speaker 41
1:06:31
require them do through rule changes I don't think
Speaker 43
1:06:33
I don't think we could do the rule changes I think it would require some statutory changes and I think again you would have to go back and you could see the the video of that conversation because some of that was taken out of context I believe if you'll go back and
see that I think the comments were not probably as they may have been shared with you because I don't think it was in either of those contexts the board either board member felt like it was a waste of their time or that they weren't in the position to make a decision of that nature I think it was And in one of them's opinion on the issue of not qualified, it was these were decisions that were local decisions, in their opinion, and should have been a local decision that
was being made. And in her opinion, that's why she supported that local decision. They were on
Speaker 74
1:07:26
the ground every day knowing what was going on. They had all of the information from the day-to-day operations,
Speaker 47
1:07:34
et cetera. MS. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. MR. Thank you. And we are closing
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
1:07:39
it out with Representative Viviano. And, Dr. Kimbrell, you know, the main concern here is closing of facilities in small communities, and I can understand that. Do you have any proposals or suggestions of that if a consolidation still occurred at the administrative level
and certain other levels at those facilities, any scenario, they could stay open for a period of time? I guess in
Speaker 41
1:08:00
your question, are you asking, is there any recommendation as to should there be a time period in which those facilities should operate? Yeah, we've asked for a two-year
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
1:08:09
study period here. Would that be unreasonable? Because the real issue is closing those facilities. Well, again, I think,
Speaker 43
1:08:19
you know, the concern that I brought up has to do with some of the timing issues
that would occur with some of the districts that we have on the bubble and which one of the issues that would happen first for those districts. Would they drop below the 350 and this kick in, and in a year they're still operating because of this, yet they're in academic distress or fiscal distress, and they don't have the funds to continue to operate? How do we handle that issue? I think I don't have any recommendations as far as having a period of time. You know, right now, as far as I know, over the next two years, we've got one school district that we know this is the second year that they're under 350.
The next year, I think we only have, at this point, one district that is under 350. So I don't know of any other school districts that will be dropping below 350 between this time period that would require a consolidation. There are some other school districts that were consolidated that could have campuses closed. The issue of the Gillette campus that's part of the DeWitt School District is still an issue that at some point that board could decide to bring up.
But a two-year moratorium on this, the only district that I'm aware of right now that this would even affect from a district's perspective would be the Stevens School District right now. I'm not aware of any other district that would fall as a district under 350 that this would catch anyway. So I'm not so sure, except for the issue of closing a campus already consolidated under Act 60, that this would stop anyway except for the one that I just mentioned.
Speaker 47
1:10:15
Thank you. Thank you, Representative Viviano. Dr. Kimbrell, Mr. Richardson, we appreciate your testimony here today. We have several people who want to
Representative James McLean
Unverified
1:10:22
speak in favor of this bill, and we're going to get all of you all together. The folks who are from Wiener, the friends of Wiener, and it looks like we've got about four of them if y'all want to come to the end of the
Speaker 142
1:10:33
table and we should have room if not we'll make sure we get you some seats
Speaker 130
1:11:01
And we appreciate y'all coming up today. This is a very emotional issue for the
Representative James McLean
Unverified
1:11:21
folks in your community. I think it's appropriate that y'all have an opportunity to speak to your legislature. If it's all right with y'all, if maybe we could have a spokesperson kind of, if that's okay,
kind of give us your presentation because we've got about four or five of you
and we've got a couple other folks who want to speak for the bill and then
Speaker 145
1:11:46
we're going to vote. If it's okay with you, Mr. Chairman, our combined, we may take two minutes apiece with a
Speaker 147
1:11:56
prepared statement. I'm going to hold you to that. Okay. You're recognized. Three at tops. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Madam Co-Chair. My name is Michelle Cadle. I'm a concerned parent who established the Friends of Wiener School District in rural Arkansas in 2010
when our district became a victim of Act 60, solely based on an arbitrary number. You all may wonder, what is a small rural school? The Arkansas Department of Education does not have a definition of that, but the U.S. Department of Education does. That definition is the average daily attendance under 600 students or districts with fewer than 10 persons per square mile. Two Rivers is now four school districts combined for a total of 600 square miles.
Foosh Valley brought a case against the state. The issue is whether excessive travel time violates students' fundamental right to an adequate and equitable education is guaranteed by the state's constitution. Further, plaintiffs pointed out that the General Assembly ordered the Arkansas Department of Education to conduct a study of isolated schools to determine the most efficient method of providing opportunities for an adequate and substantially equal education for students without excessive transportation time, but that the Department of Education has not made
that determination. Unless and until the General Assembly determines whether isolated schools are necessary to an adequate educational system, the Constitution of Arkansas prohibits closing isolated schools. To this day, the Arkansas Department of Education is closing isolated schools, and the General Assembly has yet to determine what constitutes excessive travel time for children. We have children in Arkansas who ride a bus in excess of four hours a day.
I ask you, how many adults would be willing to commute to work like that? We are questioning why we have such poor test scores, our highest prison rates ever, and an obesity epidemic. Wouldn't that travel time be better spent studying, bonding with family, exercising, just being a child. Not to mention, it prevents children from being involved in extracurricular activities while deterring parental involvement. Currently, there are 17 schools coming up
on the Act 60 Watch List, including Nevada, Norfolk, Mineral Springs, Hillcrest, Dermott, and Mulberry. Many of them are already consolidated districts. You don't have to travel far to see the irreparable harm that's been inflicted upon rural Arkansas. The systematic closure of school after school rips the heart from these communities and strips them of their identities. We are the backbone of Arkansas economy and the heartland of our state.
Please remember, charter schools are allowed to operate with fewer than 350 students. There is no basis to support the 350 number due to the fact that school districts can continue to increase their millage rates if their patrons are willing to support it, such as in our case. The Department of Education does have authority to close schools of any size by the Omnibus Act, which was created six months prior to Act 60. I would like to remind you all that you have recommended passage of a bill to extend time
for schools in distress. We have yet to be provided with that transportation study, we have been told that it exists. On behalf of my community, the children and parents across our state, I humbly ask of you to do the right thing. Vote yes for House Bill 1938. Students from Weiner to Stevens and schools in between are depending on you to be the difference. Thank you. Ms. Cottle, I just want
Representative James McLean
Unverified
1:15:58
to let the folks know here in the audience and in the
committee, no one's worked harder for the Wiener schools, for the patrons, for the students, than you. You have led this group. You have been an emotional and inspirational leader for your community, and regardless of what happens, you are to be thanked and I appreciate you very very much and I know the folks
in Wiener appreciate you very very much
thank you for being here go
Speaker 150
1:16:52
right ahead ma'am you'll have to excuse me
Speaker 151
1:16:56
I have a tendency to be empathetic, and I'm not sure that I can overcome my emotional involvement to contribute very much.
Kenneth Camp
Unverified
1:17:05
My name is Kenneth Camp. I am a former school teacher, principal, and superintendent, a former member of the Arkansas House of Representatives and a former member of this committee where I sat for eight years and battled such characters as Bill Abernathy and some of his contemporaries on a very friendly basis, I might add.
I want to address you from the standpoint of looking at this as an opportunity for us to get our foot out of our mouth. And that's where I see that we are by allowing what Michelle has just referred to with regard to the charter schools. I think anyone who was fair-minded and looked at our situation would wonder what kind of
idiots we are by saying that 350 counts in one place, but it doesn't count in another place, and that it doesn't count if you've got schools in the charter area less than 350, and they're fine. I was quite shocked whenever I started looking at the web, and I didn't, charter schools came along after my day. Now, I'm not a dinosaur. I don't want anybody to accuse me of that, but the first thing I saw was is that a charter
school makes application to the State Board to exempt itself from all of Code 6 of the Arkansas statutes. They're exempt from school law in Arkansas. And now then, here we've got this situation where a community is about to be decimated by closing, over, and I'm going to take issue that it is an arbitrary number.
I was here when that number was arrived at, and I know how it was arrived at, and there wasn't any scientific study to make it a number at that time. And I'm surprised that these folks sat here and said we had a number of 350 and Ogden and Pisces created a scientific way to validate that number. I would submit to you that Ogden and Pisces could give you a formula to say that you ought to put a sawmill in this room.
That's their job. That's how they make money. And if you will follow some of the things that they have done on the net, you see that it gets just about that ridiculous sometimes. One point that's important is that school policy is no longer established by school boards and legislatures working on the basis of what they know about education. The comment was made.
It's established by lawyers and consultants because that's the field of money for them. I was reading in one situation, and the man made the statement that this looks like a fertile field for attorney fees. And that's exactly what this has all turned into be. Okay,
Speaker 151
1:20:55
enough about that. But let me say something about the economic impact.
Kenneth Camp
Unverified
1:21:03
After my career in education, I worked 10 years for the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, and we had some interest in economic development at that time. Let me give you one brief example of how that impacted us. In the 10-year period of the 80s, all of the legislation that the State Chamber supported passed, And all that it opposed was defeated.
Now, that's a 10-year record. During that period of time, we had an average of 43 plant openings or expansions a month. I've got the numbers. In 2008, I called the Economic Development Office and asked them to tell me how many we had in 2008. five single-digit five we're not doing economic development in in our state and
we're not paying attention to it but my question is is what is the impact of the 59 schools that have already been closed economically how much would that tally up to folks I think we're swallowing a camel here and that we we're focusing on everything but what's important and that's the kids and the
communities of our state thank you very much
Speaker 47
1:22:51
Representative Camp, we appreciate you being here. It's always an honor to have former members, especially former members of this committee here. Thank you very much for being here. We appreciate your
Greta Garino
Unverified
1:23:04
time, sir. Ma'am, you are recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Madam Co-Chair. My name is Greta Garino. By occupation, I'm a farmer, and I am a patron of the Wiener School and a concerned grandparent
at this stage. In 1883, Wiener School District began in a one-room schoolhouse. Wiener is a result of previous school consolidations with Fisher, Waldenburg, the Booker T. Washington school students who had been attending in Jonesboro in 1964, and the district also gained students when the local Catholic school closed in 1972. In 2004, the Wiener School District received the Golden Apple Award.
In 126 years, the Wiener School District has never been in academic or fiscal distress prior to the forced annexation. In answering Mr. Richardson's question, we were doing our job with 342 students and nearly a million dollars in the bank. In addition to $2.7 million of consolidation incentive payments the Harrisburg District received upon the annexation, they received more than $400,000 from the Wiener account
balance. The Wiener Board did give teacher bonuses and made necessary repairs to facilities and miscellaneous campus repairs prior to closure. According to school board minutes, in May of 2010, the superintendent informed the board and presented pictures of a charter bus to be used for trips. They have two buses now. In July of 2010, they approved a bid for $27,900 to replace a scoreboard on the football field.
In August of 2010, the board approved $170,000 for fencing around the campus. Looking at this beautiful fence, you can see the broken windows of the high school building. Forty thousand dollars was spent on renovation of the new Fine Arts Building. Fifty thousand dollars was recently spent on expanding the administrative building. They also recently purchased new office furniture for all of the Harrisburg campus' offices.
The debt on the Harrisburg campus is huge compared to Wieners. bond is six hundred and fifty thousand dollars and the Harrisburg bond is four point three million the Wiener high school is the newest facility in the entire Harrisburg district having been completed in 2001 this is the facility they want to close the facility that houses the Harrisburg high school was built in 1967 as in it and is in need of serious repair Wiener patrons have
continually supported their school by passing every millage request. The current millage is 39.9 mills. Harrisburg's millage is 35.5 mills. And the school board has campaigned against a millage increase every year since the annexation. Weiner is poised for future growth. Area businesses are currently expanding. Heartland International just completed a $2 million expansion to their business.
Wiener is home also to Greenway Equipment, which is John Deere. It's their central office. Of the 16 branches throughout Arkansas, they are headquartered in Wiener. We turn away families weekly who want to move into our area. Now, if I confer with our city hall, they would probably tell you that it is daily, that they turn people call in and want to move into Wiener, but they are unable to due to the fact that housing is currently unavailable.
But we have a developer who is ready to commit to develop desperately needed housing in Wiener. They are only waiting to hear that the school will be anchored in this community to begin the construction on a 14-acre project. Closing the campus will have an adverse effect on everything that I just mentioned Please do the right thing and vote for the rural children of Arkansas by passing this bill
Speaker 47
1:27:44
Thank you We thank you all very much for being here today I appreciate your time, appreciate
Representative James McLean
Unverified
1:27:49
you all coming up And thank you very, very much I believe we have one more person to speak for the bill And that's Ms. Brown from the Stevens School District Is Ms. Brown available? And, Ms. Brown, we would just, the committee would just ask, with all due respect, to be brief. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you to the committee and the chairman.
Speaker 162
1:28:16
And I will try and be as brief as possible. I think my testimony has already been given today. I would just like to add a few things that takes place in Stevens. I heard the testimony by Dr. Kimball this morning when he said that the Stephen School District was in physical distress and academic distress. The report that I received as of last week that we are not in physical distress. The Stephen District has maintained a consistent end imbalance of $1 million with a declining
enrollment. The Stephen District is not in physical distress. The Stephen District has transportation fleets that is sufficient to meet the need of our students. The other thing that I wanted to add, after listening to Representative Douglas this morning asking about the support on how we support these schools with less than 350, the reason why we are having a declining enrollment is because we have students that are attending school out of their district without the approval of the school district.
So if I'm in, if it's okay for me to ask the question, has a study been done to indicate how many students in the state of Arkansas are attending schools out of their district? Because we feel strongly, as a matter of fact, we know that there are a number of students in our district, because if those students were going to school in our district, our numbers would be up, even though we are in isolated schools. And we are, as of last night, the city board of Stevens met, and my husband came home and
asked me, what are we going to do about saving our school because of the number of rumors that are taking place? And there are so many parents that are coming to them wanting to know what they can do to support, because our school is the number one employment in the district. And one of the things they did pass last night is a tax on beer. So hopefully that will also help the city to improve. So in the matter of being brief, I want to thank you and this committee.
And would you please support the bill, 1938? Thank you. Thank you very,
Speaker 47
1:30:33
very much, Ms. Brown, for being here. We appreciate it. I believe we have one more person who wants to speak for the bill.
Speaker 164
1:30:44
This is Renee Carr. I hope I'm pronouncing it. Thank you. Yes, I'm Renee Carr, Executive Director of Rural Community Alliance, and we have 1,500 members across Arkansas in 55 different places. I'll tell you that so that you know this is an issue that is impacting all of our membership.
When Act 60 was passed almost 10 years ago, the talk then was, it's simply administrative consolidation, not school closure. Well, 10 years later, we all know that was not true. From what I can gather, there have been 52 high schools closed. There have been 39 elementaries closed. And all of that adversely impacting students, families, and communities.
Now, you heard some reports and statistics that would tell you what the circumstances are of those students, but I would ask you, I sent links to videos yesterday evening. You may not have been able to watch them yet, but youth videos telling what it was like to have their school closed, telling in their own words the difficulties they've experienced, experienced I think are a lot more compelling than the statistics.
So now what we have almost ten years later is we have children riding the bus for longer hours, students driving longer distances to participate in extracurricular activities. All of that eroding the time that families have to spend together causing additional hardship. We also see parents that are less engaged in their schools simply because of time and distance issues when they're so far removed from that school.
So I think you all hopefully have a handout that has a list of school districts with their enrollment. Did that get passed out? Thank you. I thought you would like to know who sort of has skin in the game with this issue. And so that list shows the school districts with under 500 in enrollment this year. So that list has 37 school districts.
In addition, on the bottom, there are other schools that have already been annexed or consolidated yet still have elementaries and some have high school campuses as well. So that's another 28. So we are looking at 65, which it's not immediate with some of these. They may be in the 400s on enrollment, but it's something that they're certainly interested in. I would add that the most devastating result that happened with Act 60 was the loss of local control
because no longer are you in control of that school district. And in many cases, our small schools, it was already mentioned, had higher millages than the receiving districts that took them in because the small school people were willing to pay that extra money to keep their schools open. You lose local control when you're one board member of seven or two, even two of five. So no longer can you do what is necessary to keep that school open.
So it wasn't the loss of a superintendent. It was the loss of local control that has been the cause of these schools closing. I know you did not enact Act 60. Even Governor Beebe did not do that. But I ask you to be bold here and now. you now have case history almost 10 years to look at and see what impact this has I would ask you to please support HB 1938 thank you thank you very much ma'am
Representative James McLean
Unverified
1:34:50
do we have anyone else to speak for against the bill if not, Representative Alexander you may close for your
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
1:35:05
bill sir thank you Mr. Speaker Mr. Richardson says that they
have a matrix that below a certain level, which is 350, a school does not have adequate funding to provide a quality education, and yet Wiener and several of these other schools do that. He says the three important areas are adequate curriculum, adequate facilities, and adequate
equipment. Let's talk about adequate curriculum. Wiener has two times the AP courses as Harrisburg. Wiener has an award-winning GT program. Harrisburg doesn't have one. With regard to adequate facilities, as was mentioned, their high school is 12 years old. I believe Harrisburg's is 30. Much worse condition from what I've heard.
I haven't been to it. Adequate equipment, Wiener has smart boards in every classroom. Somehow they've been able to do this, despite the fact that they're below 350. So we have a matrix, but we also have actual performance here. We've heard recently a report that we now rank fifth in education, an educational analysis published by Education Week.
This first came out in January. The analysis, the total analysis, ranks states on six education policy and performance categories. And this study indicates that Arkansas ranks fifth in education policies. They give us a D in K-12 achievement and a C-minus in chance for success for the students that graduate from my high schools.
A more comprehensive analysis by the American Legislative Exchange Council based on student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, that's referred to as
the Nation's Report Card, ranks Arkansas 45th in the nation. 45th.
There are other ways to approach this.
I looked at a study by, I think it was the Ethan Allen Foundation did for Vermont, another small state who only has two or three cities of any size, lots of rural areas. And in their report, titled Better Value, Fewer Taxpayer Dollars, one of the summary quotes was this. The fundamental premise of this report is that a policy of creating an ever-enlarging system directed from the top down, populated with thousands of teachers, administrators,
bureaucrats, controlling the annual expenditures of $1.45 million taxpayer dollars, jealously protective of the benefits enjoyed by the people employed in the system and dismissive of the abilities and preferences of parents and children is a policy headed off in a totally wrong direction. Such a policy will ultimately, and despite the best efforts of many persons within that system, shortchange our students, defeat the preferences of many parents, and spend ever-escalating
amounts of taxpayer dollars for little or no added educational benefit. How did we reach the point where we are now? Another handout you had was from a column written by Dana Kelly in the Democrat Gazette. And just a few of his comments. Pick any education standard in Wiener scores well above the medium. rate, test scores, average ACT, cost per pupil, throw in the intangibles, overall thriftiness,
parental involvement, local funding, community support, et cetera, and Wiener earns straight A's. In only one respect does Wiener fall short. It doesn't meet the arbitrary state minimum of 350 students. A school with a 100 percent graduation rate that sends all its seniors, either to military service or college, with a zero dropout rate and above average ACT scores, all achieved for thousands of dollars less per student than metro school spend. A school with high participation in AP courses, higher than the district seeking
to close it, and an award-winning GT program whose director was named the 2013 recipient of the Arkansans for Gifted and Talented Education's Top Service Award, a school that in 126 years has never been in academic or fiscal distress. And it goes on. I'm not
going to read everything I was going to read. I don't really think we need to. How did we
reach the point where a Department of Education could look at a school like this
and see a problem instead of a solution. Inputs are easy to control. We can spend more money. We can provide more professional development for teachers. We can write wonderful education policy. We can even count to 350. We've done all that. But high-quality output is what really matters. That's harder to achieve. But the Wiener community has figured out how to do it. They've demonstrated a high level of commitment to student success as measured by a variety
of criteria, most importantly, actual student success. Is this really something we want to punish? The determining factor for consolidation ought to be academic performance and financial stability, not enrollment. It's time to take a comprehensive look at how well our efforts have impacted student performance, and that is what this bill will do. We're only asking for two years. There is no need to close more rural schools until that question is answered.
Speaker 47
1:41:24
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, Representative Alexander. We have one question, I believe, from Representative
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
1:41:33
Eubanks. Representative Alexander, there seems to be some concern about how this is going to impact schools that are on academic or fiscal distress. Would you be willing to amend
Speaker 27
1:41:43
this bill to exclude them from this two-year period? I don't have a problem with that. My problem is closing a school that not only doesn't have academic distress, they're excelling. I understand that.
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
1:41:55
But like I said, there seems to be some concern from the Department of Ed about schools that are on fiscal or academic distress in that two-year period. And I'm just wondering if you will amend this bill to exclude them so it doesn't
Speaker 27
1:42:09
impact this two-year period would affect them. And if that's what the committee wants me to
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
1:42:14
do, I'll do it. I'd rather study for two years what's happening because we may find answers that would address those other issues as well.
Speaker 47
1:42:25
Representative Alexander, we appreciate you very much.
Representative James McLean
Unverified
1:42:28
Do we have a motion from the committee? we have a motion do pass on house bill 1938 all
Speaker 98
1:42:48
in favor all opposed motion fails representative Larry we got to have two hands we have
Speaker 177
1:43:05
two hands mark call the roll Representative Hobbs, Representative Carnot, Representative Dale, Representative Hopper, Representative Dickinson, Representative Edwards, Representative Edwards, Representative Viviano,
Representative Cadillac Representative Linderman Representative Deffenbaugh Representative Eubanks Representative Lamkin Representative Ratliff Representative Cozart Representative Cozart Representative Douglas Yes.
Unknown speaker
1:43:52
Representative Lowry. Yes. Representative Armstrong. Yes. Representative Talley. Yes. Representative Klemmer. Yes. Representative Klemmer. Yes. Representative Klemmer. Is that a yes, ma'am? Yes. Where are we? We've got ten points. Motion fails. Ten votes.
Speaker 166
1:44:23
Representative Hammer, if you are prepared, sir. Representative
Representative James McLean
Unverified
1:44:44
he had to deal with. That's why he was not here today. we apologize Representative Hammer we are going to give you at least 45 minutes
to present your bill and hopefully at that point if we have a little time left we'll get to Representative Overby's I'm
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:45:02
going to be fairly quick sir and I prepared a printout I would ask have those been passed out to the committee we're going to get those passed out right now and with the chairman's permission for the sake of time I'm going to file this print out. I think it will help everybody kind of have a point of reference and keep it organized, keep it flowing. And if I could go ahead and start, I'd start while it's being passed out. Yes, sir. Go right ahead. Previously, a grandfather school choice
bill cleared the House Education Committee, the full house and the Senate Education Committee. The grandfather bill was drafted to provide a safety net for all students who are currently exercising school choice in the event a permanent bill addressing future issues is not passed from this session. This bill that's before you today, House Bill 1507, is the second bill that is intended to address school choice issues moving forward and should provide future opportunity for
students who want to exercise school choice. It specifically addresses the issue which has taken us to court. Specific points to the bill, and I've listed the page and the line number in case you wanted to reference and look at those places in the bill. This bill requires geographically contiguous to the resident district. It includes language that is in the grandfather bill that was previously passed by this committee.
Section 4, beginning on page 3, line 6 through 7, line 22 is the old law, which has us in court, and you'll notice that it is stricken from the bill to satisfy the Eighth Circuit Court, has made the date for student requesting school choice, moved it from July 30th to July 1st, and you'll see as we get into the notes that we moved number five, have moved the date for schools to respond to August 1st, creating a 30-day gap between the request and the school granting the request, requires the requesting parent to notify both the school
they're leaving and the school they're going to, and then the substantial portion of language in the bill, beginning on page 8, line 22, through page 9, line 4, basic language, establishing expressions of the General Assembly, going all the way back to why did we have to pick this subject up in the first place, and carrying it forward to the issues of today. Also establishes definition of key participants involved in the school choice, and there's four definitions that are listed on page 9, line 6 through 16.
But then you get into what is really the heartbeat of the bill, and it's page 9, line 18, through page 10, line 18, which establishes a list of reasons why students can school choice. And as you go through those reasons, some of those are reasons that were in various places of the law, but they've been assembled into this bill for easy reference and to show and display to the court the intent of this school choice bill. bill is to show multiple options and opportunities and reasons why a student can school choice.
Employment of a parent, student's place of residence meets the criteria, student is a victim of a violent crime, student is attending a persistently dangerous school, student has been a student of a level one school for two or more consecutive years, the resident district is classified as being in academic or facility distress. The student is military dependent. And if you flip over to the second page, you'll notice at the top it's bold printed for you.
This is actually the newer portion of the bill. Number eight refers to the transfer will promote greater integration in the non-resident district and will not adversely affect the desegregation of either school district. And this was also, if I remember right, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Chair, we adopted the amendment the other day, did we not? Okay. Yes, sir, we did. Okay. This one, number eight, is what refers to the amendment that was adopted in committee the other day.
Number nine, the student has performed at or below basic on state benchmark exams for two consecutive school years. My word, that's bad grammar. and my English wife would get all over me. School years, while enrolled in the resident district should be while the student has obtained the agreement of both the resident district and the non-resident district for a transfer based on the student's educational needs. And then the rest of it is pretty much technical language, a lot of which was in the previous bill.
And then get down to the two key questions. Why does this bill, what does this bill do differently from previous law? In the previous law, you note on page 5, line 26 through page 6, line 28, the sole option for choice was based on a race factor. The bill before you for your decision to pass out of here today addresses choice by including up to 10 reasons for a choice out. Each choice is weighted equally, including dealing with the race factor. And race is a contributing factor, but not an overall determining factor.
As I understand that the federal court has ruled that race can be a factor, but not a sole factor, and by listing 10 choices in the school choice bill, it brings equal quality to each one of the reasons that may be exercised. Secondly, this bill includes language contained in the grandfather choice bill that was approved earlier, so it would also have that safety net built into it to protect kids that are currently school choice up until and whenever the Eighth Circuit Court issues a ruling. Now, let me just speak, if I may, with the Chair's permission.
I know there's two other school choice bills out there, and one of the questions I've been asked is, what's the difference between this bill and the other two? And if I may have liberty, I'll tell you what I know to the limit that I know, reserving the right to be proved wrong, if that's okay. You can proceed, sir. Thank you. Regarding Senator Key's bill, as I understand it, all schools participate and choice is open. So it would be referred to strictly as an open choice bill, where this is a school choice bill. And I think the primary difference is that in this bill, you've got to maintain,
you've got to butt up against the district that you want to go to. You couldn't skip over one to get to another one. So that's one of the big differences between this bill and Senator Key's bill. As I understand it with Senator Elliott's bill, to the best of my ability to discern, may seek an exemption if the transfer would lead to the resegregation of the school district and reporting requirements on transfer students, which one thing that's in my bill that probably is similar to that aspect of Senator Elliott's bill is that there is a component in there that requires that the parent of the student who's going to transfer
must go to both schools, the sending and the receiving, and express their, you know, desire to come and to go. And that establishes connecting of the dots that was absent previously. And with that being said, I'm going to stop for the sake of time and begin to answer questions. Representative Armstrong. Thank
Representative Eddie L. Armstrong
Unverified
1:52:24
you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Hammer, your bill is going to create a problem like we have with Wiener that just came in here and some of these other schools on the bubble if we start allowing school choice to come in and take over.
What's the stopgap method that you have for not causing that problem? Well, I wouldn't
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:52:43
want to speak for the Wiener School District. But schools in similar
Speaker 200
1:52:46
situations, not Wiener. Sure. Well, first of
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:52:48
all, unless we take school choice away, which is going to disrupt 16,000 current students, this issue is going to have to be dealt with. In my opinion, this is the safest way because one thing that could happen in the case of the Wiener School District or any school district is if you want to jump over a school district to move, that's going to create a bigger problem.
At least this maintains the limit that it has to be with the district that you're bordered up against, number one. Number two, this bill, and as is written in the original intent of the bill that was passed way back when and is preserved in this bill, speaks to the fact that parents want a choice. They want that option. Me personally, I didn't get up and speak in favor of it because we were limited on time. I graduated Southside B Branch. I can talk to you all day long about the benefits of small schools. I was one of 18, and there were a lot of people that wanted, well, not a lot.
If you had 18 in your graduation class, that's not a good argument, But there are a lot of people who respected Southside Bee Branch and
other small schools because that's the environment that their kids thrive in. School choice is provided as
an opportunity for schools like Wiener to attract people, not necessarily lose people because of their excellent record of educating children. And, Mr. Chair, may I ask you a question? Yes, sir. When it gets down to the finer points of the constitutionality of this bill,
I'd like to ask if Scott Richardson could come to the end of the table at the chair's discretion. He might be better rehearsed when it
Speaker 13
1:54:20
comes to those kind of questions. Oh, yeah. He's on his way.
Representative Eddie L. Armstrong
Unverified
1:54:23
Don't worry about that. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I would like to have another question. Yes, sir. You mentioned race and dangerous schools. What brought that about? What brought about the dangerous schools? I mean, I thought we worked on all schools to make them safe and sound for everybody. Sure. And let
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:54:39
me qualify. First of all, I did not mention race and dangerous schools in the same statement.
Well, I dropped race off. That's okay. Okay. One of the exceptions is dangerous school. And if I'm not mistaken, and let me double check my notes, but that
is actually part of the original language. It's not part of the new portion of the bill. So that's an argument you have to
take up with whoever wrote the last bill. I mean, I've left it in here because it was one of the choices that was already identified as a reason why a student can choice out.
This bill is not intended to make the argument of which school is dangerous and which school is not or what qualifies the school to be dangerous or qualifies the school not to be dangerous. And with regards to the race issue, as mentioned in here, and Scott could probably give greater credibility or discredit me, one of the two, that according to federal law it is or could be a considered factor. That's why it's in here so that we can help comply and get as close to what the federal intent is as possible. Representative
Speaker 47
1:55:48
Hammer, with your permission, do we need Scott to come on up and just kind of be available?
Speaker 207
1:55:54
Anytime he wants to come jump in this
Representative James McLean
Unverified
1:55:57
boat, he can. Scott, if you wouldn't mind just coming on up, and maybe you can kind of help with answering some of the questions. And
Chair
Unverified
1:56:06
we appreciate you very much, sir. And Representative Armstrong, you're still
Representative Eddie L. Armstrong
Unverified
1:56:11
recognized, sir. Okay. We don't want to get into a situation of re-segregating the schools. So therefore, I believe school choice might do that. I'm not saying it's going to do it, but it might. And that's a possibility. And I would like to wait and see what the 8th Circuit is going to do about this before
we jump into this school choice, jump into it now. So why can't we wait just a short while until the Eighth Circuit rule? Well, we could except for one problem. The grandfather
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:56:37
bill that's sitting down in the Senate did not pass yesterday. I don't know if you're aware of that or not, but it did not pass yesterday. As far as the impact that the grandfather bill has on any decision that the Eighth Circuit court makes, I don't think that there's any connection at all, nor do I think that there's any reason that the grandfather clause would have any impact
on any one of the three school choice bills that are out there. That is my personal opinion. The vote did get expunged, so to my knowledge, it's still sitting out there as an option. But, folks, and I mean this with all due serious respect, we are going to have egg on our face as a legislative body if we don't come out of here with something. And I'm presenting a bill that
addresses it from a school choice. The problem with school choice of bringing a solution that deals with school choice and is not a reason to promote or to present any other idea the way we go about doing business.
So for that reason, I would just beg of you to give this serious consideration, not for a feather in my cap, but because there's 16,000 kids and their family out there, that, yes, the Eighth Circuit Court may make a decision, but then what are we going to do in the meantime because we won't be back in session for another two years to deal with it, and we're going to have a whole lot of explaining to do. Thank you, Representative Hammer. Thank you, Mr.
Representative Eddie L. Armstrong
Unverified
1:57:56
Chairman. Thank you, sir. Representative Carnot, you have a question, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Les "Skip" Carnine
Unverified
1:58:05
Representative Hammer, do you have any statistical base on the 16,000 students that have already transferred? Are there individuals that have actually transferred to districts that are beyond the district that is contiguous to the original district? In other words, you mentioned in your particular bill that this will be prevented. In other words, by, I won't say hopping a district, but attending a district that isn't necessarily the next one to the district.
What I'm saying is if you analyze the 16,000 students, how many of them would actually be barred by your current bill? To my knowledge, because that complies with
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:58:57
the current law as far as having to transfer to a district that is contiguous to your district, that's already in there. So all 16,000 of those school students that have transferred currently should be neighboring school district to neighboring school district without jumping over.
Otherwise, you know, they'd be in violation of the current law. However, that doesn't mean that a school district couldn't award that, but that situation you're referring to would not have happened without each school district being aware of that. So it would have been their decision to do that. Now, to my knowledge, and I can speak to the district that I represent, which has four schools, those four schools, there has been no jumping over of the district to get there. I don't know if that answers your question.
I'll be glad to try to
Representative Les "Skip" Carnine
Unverified
1:59:50
readdress it if that didn't. It doesn't really answer what I was
getting. I don't understand why that should be prevented if you're talking about trying to serve young people. And as we look at districts geographically, it appears to me that in many cases parents come to the district and say, I'd like to transfer. I happen to work at this particular area for a variety of reasons, child care, a number of other things with family,
and you're actually saying to them because of the law that they would not be able to transfer because it's not a contiguous district. I don't understand the reasoning.
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:00:34
Okay. Well, the reasoning would be, and that's part of the reason why there are ten choices that are here, is because this is in surveying the districts and looking at the reasons why students are school-choiced in the first place. These reasons that are listed are a summary of all the reasons that have been placed out there for why children want to school choice. In the example that you gave, yes, I maybe misstated it, the contiguous district.
That is part of the law. However, if you look at number one of the choices or the reasons, employment of a parent, that is addressed, and it would be that school board's choice decision to allow that student to go to a district that may be on the other side of another district on the basis of employment of parent. It boils
Representative Les "Skip" Carnine
Unverified
2:01:21
down to the school having that choice. In other words, it's not to prevent. It is the fact as long as the other school district okays it, then that's an acceptable reason?
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:01:34
Yes, sir, because that's why both school districts in this bill have to be notified by the parent so that the district that is being left and the district that is going to have good open lines of communication
Representative Les "Skip" Carnine
Unverified
2:01:47
and they can track where their students are. Okay, let me ask another question here because I'm a little bit confused with the numbers now. And I apologize. Again, I may have just thought. Let's say that we have eight reasons that a child could transfer. are you saying then that as long as there is one of the reasons that's acceptable
that they can go ahead and transfer regardless of the other factors? In other words, there's no prequalification. You're just saying as long as you can find one reason that's acceptable, then you can transfer. Any one of
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:02:26
these reasons on the list of ten would be a reason for consideration to go before school and ask for transfer or ask for school choice. And if you look at number 10, it's kind of the open-ended one that covers all of, you know,
kind of an open-ended statement. The student has obtained an agreement of both the resident district and the non-resident district for transfer based on students' educational needs. These 10 reasons that are listed capture all the reasons that have been used and even creates one, that if on the basis that somebody feels their student, their child, would have a better opportunity of educational, they could even use that. Okay.
Representative Les "Skip" Carnine
Unverified
2:03:11
If that's the case, then I don't understand the restrictions regarding race, then, as part of this, as a prequalifier. It is not a restriction. It's an option. And maybe if
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:03:23
you would allow, I would let Scott Richardson speak to this
point, if you would, because this is specifically the issue that has got us in court in the first place. So if you would allow me to, I'll yield the mic to
him to help address the race issue.
Speaker 52
2:03:42
Scott, you're recognized. Thank you. Scott Richardson again with the Attorney General's Office. Thank you. Just to be clear, our office's position is we would like to wait to get the ruling from the Eighth Circuit. We feel like it will provide us a lot of guidance on our constitutional obligations going forward, which are complex in this area. We support the idea of choice. We support the idea of expansion of choice consistent with the best interest of the state,
which we have to weigh in a balance between trying to provide additional opportunities to students and the constitutional obligations that we face, and we have a significant history in this area of segregation and desegregation, some of it that continues to today. This bill, as I understand it, works to open choice options but does it in a managed way,
which our advice is if the decision of the General Assembly is going to be to expand choice options that the most constitutionally permissible way to do it would be in a managed way so that we know that the transfers that occur after choice is expanded are legitimate choices that that will not promote or run the risk of segregation of the schools one of the main cases or the main case currently on this issue which
is essentially what the school choice case was decided under is the parents involved in community school school district or community schools case that dealt with assignment of students within a school district and how those students were allowed to move around the school district the Supreme Court was split on that case with for the two school systems that were at issue the decision
came down to uh to a sole factor of race the race was determinative of whether a student could transfer four of the justices including the chief justice decided that was unconstitutional that the race could not be a consideration of majority of the court uh again it's a split decision so So you have to kind of add judges to get the result, but Justice Kennedy often considered
one of the pivotal members of the court, one of the swing votes on the court. He offered an opinion that said, to the extent the plurality opinion, which would be the four justices I just referenced, suggests the Constitution mandates that state and local school authorities must accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools. It is in my view profoundly mistaken. He went on to say that in the administration of public schools by the state and local authorities it is permissible to consider the racial makeup of schools and to adopt general policies to
encourage a diverse student body, one aspect of which is its racial composition. So as we read this opinion, the majority of the justices on the Supreme Court would approve student assignment policies that considered race, but not as a sole limiting factor. In other words, it can be one of the options, but cannot come down to be the only option.
The way I understand this bill, it addresses that by providing a number of options, or at least pulling together a number of options that are currently in the law, and then has a factor based on race that is one of the many factors, and there are essentially two constitutional obligations that we have in this arena. One, we have to respect the court orders that are out there on desegregation and not interfere
with their implementation, and there are many out there. There are many school districts that are subject to desegregation court orders, the most well-known one being the school districts in Pulaski County, but there are others. The school districts in Garland County are subject to desegregation orders, and there's many others. The other obligation we have is what stems from the Brown v. Board case, is that if there are segregated schools,
we have an affirmative obligation to try and desegregate them. The way I understood and the way we argued the prior school choice case is it met that second obligation by encouraging transfers that would be integrative among the school districts. And it was adopted in 1989 in the same session where the General Assembly approved what we call the 1989 Settlement Agreement in the Little Rock School District desegregation case, which was what we call inter-district
desegregation case, the theory being that when you compare the three Pulaski County school districts, there was segregation happening as between Little Rock, Pulaski County, and North Little Rock school districts. So the way we've understood the former School Choice Act, the one that's under litigation now is that it meets the requirements that flow from that case regarding watching how
students move among school districts and making some effort to promote integrative transfer. So we're watching those constitutional obligations. I think I've answered the question, but if you have more questions on that, I'd
Representative Les "Skip" Carnine
Unverified
2:10:15
one just follow-up question with you. And as I understand it, again, the way this is written, there are a series of reasons that a student may or may not transfer as long as the two districts.
where, like I said, I was thinking it was one way, but in reality, the controlling factor here still is race. Without any question, it appears to me, we've walked ourselves right back into the same circumstances because if race again is affected,
then this transfer cannot happen. Is that not correct?
Speaker 52
2:10:53
The way I understand this bill, each of the ten factors stands alone. So a student can qualify under any of the factors, including the tenth factor, which
is obtaining the agreement of both resident and non-resident district. And then if they are denied a transfer under any of these factors, they are then allowed an appeal to the State Board of Education, who can then determine whether or not that student ought to be allowed to go. The way I understand the tenth factor is the student can make whatever their case is for why they think they ought to be allowed to transfer to their school board, and if their school board doesn't agree with them,
they can continue on to make that case to the State
Representative Les "Skip" Carnine
Unverified
2:11:38
Board of Education. Well, I mean, again, help me with this, because I'm reading all these factors. Now, if race does not control, like I just asked, then for what reason couldn't they transfer? In other words, are you saying then that each of these are equal, that there's no controlling thing? If you have ten reasons, and I'm not even the most creative person in the world,
I would think any parent could find one reason out of ten to say I need to transfer my child. So if that's the case, then race is really a non-issue, and so why is it here? If, in fact, we already know that that is one of the things the court has said, you better be very careful not to deny a person a transfer based on the race issue. Like I said, and I really am very complimentary.
I think this is an extremely difficult issue for us to grapple with. But as I read the bill, and I guess because of a little bit of my background with Representative Armstrong, I come up with the idea that there really isn't a reason why you can't transfer. I don't know why we cluttered the piece of legislation with all these other factors when, like I said, I'm not the most creative person in the world, but I don't think there's a reason why any parent couldn't say,
hey, I need to transfer as long as I can find two willing districts. I question, for example, when you say it has to be contiguous. Now, again, I'm preaching and I'm not asking questions, so I'll shudder my comments from
Representative James McLean
Unverified
2:13:34
the sermon if I can, Mr. Chair. A fine sermon indeed, Representative Carnot. Now, Representative Hammer, you and Scott, proceed as you wish in terms of responding to Representative Garni's question.
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:13:46
Okay. And Scott can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he just read from one of the opinions of the justices that says that the reason we're in this situation in the first place was because race was the sole contributing factor. If we as a legislative body come back, I think, and present, and maybe it's
just thought and time will prove out who is right and who is wrong. You know, we're going to make a
decision, and ultimately it'll probably end up in court either way we go, but we want to pick the path of least resistance as far as showing the court that we did
not stick our head in the stand and ignore what was a blatant issue identified by the court, by the justices,
one in particular that said this is a factor. We have kept the fact that we have addressed the issue, But we have also provided
other options, nine other options that could be chosen above that one-tenth option so that it's not the sole reason for it. And we have incorporated it in it and shown to the court through this bill, good faith effort, that we recognize that this is an issue. Do I like that? Does anybody around this table like that?
No, I don't like it. But I think the court clearly, in their opinion, has sent a signal that says it's something you need to consider. Now, I would be as a representative, if it's a heartburn to everybody around this committee, I'll pull that one out. But it will be with the understanding that into the future, if we get back in court because we pretended like something wasn't there that the court addressed as an issue, let it be known that the solution was originally presented. So I think with all due respect, we need to respectfully address the fact that that is a consideration
and address it in the least aggressive and insulting way. And I think that's partially what this bill does. There's nine other good reasons. Well, some aren't good because, unfortunately, by the way they are identified, as was spoken to a minute ago, they shouldn't exist in any of our schools. But in reality, they do. So we have to provide an avenue for students to be able to deal with that. Representative Viviano, you have a question, sir?
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
2:15:56
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Hammer, in the context of your bill, who do you think makes the decision on which school a student goes to? I
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:16:08
think it initially starts with the parent who makes the choice that they want to choice out of the school that they're in. So ultimately it starts with the parent. And then it goes, as I would understand through the process, it would go to the school that the student is going to be released to in order to go to the school they want to.
So, subsequently, it would either be the superintendent or the school board, ultimately, with the appeal process
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
2:16:35
going to the state. So, in your bill, you defined race and you defined nine other reasons. What about if there's something outside of those nine reasons to represent Carnine's point? Is that not discrimination to those parents? I don't
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:16:51
think that this bill precludes anybody from being
able to go to their school and ask to be choiced out.
It sets the ten parameters that are most commonly recognized among all those who have school choiced out, number one, or that were presently in the law somewhere, and they're all simulated into this
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
2:17:11
one bill. Well, except for the situation if they're not in a continuous geographical district. Except for that. Okay. So if you have a parent that one of the reasons they want their child to go to a different school is for some academic reason, perhaps another school district can offer some form of classes, whether it's AP or whatever,
and that district is not continuous to the district they're currently in, And would we not be then discriminating against that student and that parent? Well, I guess
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:17:45
that would be determined by probably a good lawyer in the court as to whether there's a school district that is neighboring to them that can offer that option. And I'll just, I don't know, with all due respect, I don't know if this is where you're going, but I'll say if you want open choice, this isn't the bill. Just point blank. This isn't the bill.
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
2:18:06
I appreciate that. And I applaud you for bringing this. We need choice. However, I think we need open choice.
Speaker 12
2:18:16
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. MR. We have several questions. Representative Lowry and Representative Linderman,
Speaker 13
2:18:21
do you have a question as well? Okay. We'll pick you up after Representative Lowry. I'm sorry
Speaker 89
2:18:27
about that, sir. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On this issue, the one barrier is this issue of whether the school districts are contiguous. Of the 16,000 students that we're trying to help here, plus others, how many of those are operating under a school choice in a non-contiguous school district?
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:18:48
To my knowledge, none. and I'll qualify that by saying that the student had to go to their school district in order to get permission to school choice out, and therefore there would have been a stopgap that would have kept that from happening, I think either on the school that was receiving or the school that was sending. So that restriction was
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:19:15
part of the current law as it's written now.
It is not new to this bill.
Speaker 89
2:19:20
Okay. You're just pointing it out that it's different. That's what makes this different from Senator Key's bill. And, yes, because,
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:19:26
you know, let's just get it all out on the table and everybody know where we are. Nobody thinks anybody's hiding anything. That's one reason
I made sure to point it out in my notes, that you would know that this bill has that as a factor in it. Okay.
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
2:19:43
Thank you. Representative Linderman. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think my question is probably for Scott. right
now we're under the gun waiting on the eighth circuit court is it your opinion that
we are better off to do nothing until we hear from
Speaker 52
2:19:59
the eighth circuit this is such a complex area of law we think that there will be good guidance from the eighth circuit and what our constitutional obligations are going forward and you know addressing the idea of open choice is that a permissible option for us is do are we still under the mandate of the Eighth Circuit from 1985 when it found that the state had caused inter-district segregation in Pulaski County and it
held the state liable for that and an order that we've been under for some 25 years now okay if and I'm gonna have
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
2:20:38
to ask your opinion maybe about what you think the eighth circuit may do but if we wait until the eighth circuit rules how would we address this representative hammer appears to be trying to address this in anticipation of the eighth circuit ruling hat would we have to be
we call back in to a special session to address this, or how are we going to address this
Speaker 52
2:21:09
if we do wait? I don't know. That's a policy decision that's beyond my pay grade. But it also kind of depends on when the decision came in, and it's, I mean, it could take some time
Speaker 61
2:21:20
to get the decision. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 102
2:21:29
Representative Douglas. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you again.
Do you think that school choice is
Speaker 103
2:21:35
going to be constitutional if we limit it to contiguous districts? Is that really school choice if we say that you can only go to one that is bordering on your present district? And the example I would give, if a kid is needing to get in, you know, a certain school maybe, a certain class, and they had to skip a couple of districts over maybe to be able
to get that class, you know, would we want to limit
Speaker 108
2:22:10
that possibility? MR. I think that would be a
Speaker 92
2:22:15
policy decision for the General Assembly to make. I don't
Speaker 52
2:22:19
know that the Constitution would drive that sort of a decision. I think where the Constitution does come into play is the issues of race and the balance between how much, what sort of limits do we need to put on choice, how far can we open
choice. I think that's where the constitutional issues
Speaker 55
2:22:40
really come into play. Okay. Mr. Hammer, do you have
Speaker 103
2:22:45
a mechanism to handle that? If a student honestly shows a need to have to skip a couple of districts and apply to, you know, another school that's not contiguous? I think if that was an issue, that's not to say it
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:22:59
can't be made an issue. You get a good lawyer and enough money, you can take anybody to court for anything you want to. In this case, we got taken into court because it was the sole factor of race was the reason why the lawsuit was filed in the first place.
I would wonder why, if it was such an issue, why somebody didn't file a lawsuit on that basis of contiguous districts. I don't know that it won't turn into a lawsuit down the road. I don't know. I can't predict that. We certainly don't want to make
Speaker 103
2:23:40
the question of school choice left to the pocketbooks that are the deepest.
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
2:23:45
Well, and I would wonder why, if it was an issue, there wasn't a lawsuit filed
already, given the fact how long the current law has been on the books, and that has been an issue up to this time, why there wasn't a lawsuit already filed by somebody
Speaker 103
2:24:05
somewhere. Correct. MS. I don't know. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 47
2:24:08
Thank you. MR. Thank you, Representative Douglas. Do we have any other questions from the committee? Okay, folks, it's
Representative James McLean
Unverified
2:24:14
1230, and what we're going to do is we are going to go ahead and adjourn
and pick this back up Thursday. Mark will be sending you an email. It looks like we're going to reconvene upon adjournment Thursday. We're really getting backed up on our agenda, and we need to get some bills moving. So Thursday morning at 10, we're going to pick up right where we left off of Representative Hammer, Representative Overby. You will be next up after we take action on Representative Hammer's bill. We're going to see how much we can get done in the morning. We may not get a lot done, but if we don't, if we just get these two bills heard,
we're going to come back after adjournment on Thursday and meet and see if we can get some of this agenda taken care of. With that, the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn. Meeting adjourned.
Agenda
HB1938
HB1507
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Representative James McLean
Unverified
Speaker 8
Speaker 10
Speaker 13
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
Speaker 29
Speaker 41
Speaker 43
Speaker 46
Speaker 47
Speaker 52
Representative Homer Lenderman
Unverified
Speaker 71
Speaker 72
Speaker 74
Speaker 80
Speaker 81
Speaker 78
Speaker 88
Speaker 89
Speaker 91
Speaker 92
Speaker 55
Speaker 93
Speaker 95
Speaker 102
Speaker 103
Speaker 107
Speaker 48
Speaker 87
Speaker 108
Speaker 116
Speaker 115
Speaker 120
Speaker 126
Speaker 129
Speaker 109
Speaker 130
Representative Debra M. Hobbs
Unverified
Representative Mark Biviano
Unverified
Speaker 142
Speaker 145
Speaker 147
Speaker 150
Speaker 151
Kenneth Camp
Unverified
Greta Garino
Unverified
Speaker 162
Speaker 164
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Speaker 27
Speaker 98
Speaker 177
Speaker 166
Speaker 38
Representative Kim Hammer
Unverified
Representative Eddie L. Armstrong
Unverified
Speaker 200
Speaker 207
Chair
Unverified
Representative Les "Skip" Carnine
Unverified
Speaker 12
Speaker 61