ALC-Higher Education Subcommittee
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- October 2, 2026
Speaker 6
0:24
you turn that off real quick this is nothing we have to do right A I going
Folks are gonna call the meeting to order itemte B report on institutions of higher education for our annual certification or solvency there's no action that we have to take on that that just that report will be on your desk Friday so we're going to move immediately to item C and the folks on the presentation on AI if you would come forward and take a seat at the table
Remember it's just by way of a little bit of introduction these are students from Arkansas State Valley View School and UCA we appreciate all the work they've done they're working closely with the department of higher edd I attended a meeting last week at UCA on higher ed and I'm really impressed by all the work that's going on so the these folks have done some research they have really impressed me and the work they've done and their their
vision of what AI looks like going forward so folks would you please we'll start here on the my right if you would press the button right there in front of you and it'll turn green or red or it'll turn some color turn green and you would just go down the line and introduce yourself please
Matt Carpenter
Unverified
2:30
well hello everyone my name is Matt carpenter. I'm 1/10 grader at Valleyview High School in Jonesboro, Arkansas and it is an honor to be here before you all today and just real quick I've worked with senator Sullivan
before about an interview for our school media class so that's just kind of our history working together so uhja you want to go ahead
Speaker 22
2:52
and go? Hello everyone my name isun Hoian. I'm a master's student in Arkansas State University. I've been working forenatorulllivan since February and I did a lot of research in terms of AI and AI usage within classrooms. I'm currently doing one with the Arkansas Department of Higher Education thanks toenatorulllivan and Do Ken Warden on AI perspectives within the classrooms which would be elaboated more in this
Johnny Toma
Unverified
3:14
presentation today Hello everyone my name is Johnnyhoma. I'm a double major student at Arkansas State University. I'm studying finance and accounting and I've been working for Senator Sullivan for about a year and I'm very grateful for this opportunity
and John you might fill the committee in on you were honored as one of I think 15 people nationally explain so let's say a word or two about that place. I was very fortunate
Johnny Toma
Unverified
3:38
to be selected to study as one of fi5 people at Harvard University this summer. I'll be studying public policy and international
affairs and I'm looking at forward to a possible grad program
over there these folks all started out as interns for me and now I'm their intern. next please
Speaker 33
3:58
right hello I am Honey Norfolk. I am a double major in engineering physics and sociology at the University of Central
Speaker 34
4:03
Arkansas I do some of my own research on AI in its social impact on education at the University of Central Arkansas and I've just been invited to be here to help support our wonderful leaders here for this conversation.
Speaker 36
4:20
hello, I am Kyle Irban. I am also from University of Central Arkansas. I am an undergraduate in linguistics and I met Senator Danulllivan at the stem posters of the capitol presenting my research on large language models and their ability to understand implied language Go ahead I I just
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
4:41
heard that one of you, came fromlake Hamilton school is that correct? that would be me sir yes sir you
know that's my homeschool that's where I went and graduated we're proud to have you here and it looks like you're representing us really well so continue
on really appreciate that and members would encourage you if you haven't reached out to your higher ed communities and your local high schools there are some very qualified people that know a lot about what you're gonna hear about so with that folks go
Johnny Toma
Unverified
5:15
ahead so today we'll be discussing the future of higher education within K through 1el and also
colleges here in Arkansas and we'll start with the James discussing that. So
Speaker 22
5:26
start to to start off I want to start with the elephant in the room. I think when we talk about AI people usually think of employment rates and employment rates it it is true that it has been falling since the creation of AI in2022 and since its implementation into businesses in 2023 but while I was doing research in this topic I found something very interesting and similar, which is this next graph you see right here. now this is the graph of employment
rates from 21989 to1993. This was when computers began being implemented within businesses similarly to the United States but as you might all know what happened after computers were assimilated was almost a golden age for the US where a lot of small businesses appeared a lot of new businesses appeared a lot of employment rates happened as you know AI really is a tool just like a computer and history repeats itself. It may affect the overall employment rates currently and it might go a downward trend but then when we
have a good strategic plan to be able to use AI effectively within not only classrooms but in businesses we would be able to bring another dawn of the golden age for the United States. when you go down the only way you can go is up and I believe that when we're able to use AI effectively we're going
Speaker 26
6:42
to go in a very upwards tra ject ory using AI as a very good tool such as a computer.
Johnny Toma
Unverified
6:50
I like to speak about the competitive advantage that implementing AI K through 1el and in the higher education
programs here in Arkansas so if we teach students when they're young how to master AI they'll be more prepared to contribute to society when they're ready to enter the workforce they'll have access to better internships competitive internships and they'll also have access to the high paying jobs that the tech industry is now providing. as with computers artificial intelligence is here to stay currently Arkansas is becoming a tech hub where you have a4 to10 billion dollars data center being built in West Memphis we have another6 billion dollars data center being built here in LittleRock and within the next
few years we're gonna have another 2 to3 data centers being built and with this the tech jobs are going to be on the rise and we don't need those jobs to go to people from other states if we do a good job of teaching our K through 12 and college students how to use AI at the maximum level possible those jobs will stay in Arkansas and the companies that come here and start data centers will only hire from Arkansas which will be a great for everyone here I'd also like to talk about the workforce and how AI integrates with that so according to an anthropic report, Arkansas
ranks46 out of50 states in AI usage about 14% of all the businesses here in Arkansas are using AI and this is a very low number The Federal Reserve in Dallas said that the wage growth for AI expose industries is actually growing so the low level jobs are being siphoned out because of AI but those jobs that AI can't take over the wages are increasing. If we teach our students how to be in that higher echelon of people with the skill set to use AI they'll be getting paid more and they'll have a better job security than everyone else.
and like google AI is gonna be used probably just as much as Google is going to be in the next few years so it's I I believe that it's going to replace Google it has a lot more information and the more we teach students how to use it the more opportunities it's going to bring for Arkansas and for our citizens the companies are going to move over here they're going to bring their businesses here and they're gonna hire from our talent pool which is gonna just do tremendous things for our economic growth as well as our citizens. and then I also like I would also like to discuss the necessities for us teaching the
students AI a lot of these students K through 1el they're very you could they're very easily influenced and with this it's our job to ensure that we provide a curriculum that is going to give them the opp that's going to give them the opportunity to learn about ethics and how to use AI for the betterment of society and not for their own personal gain c cor ding to an FBI special agent the average age of cybersecurity crimes the people arrested for cyber cybersecurity crimes is 19 and the average age of people arrested for regular
crimes is37 and this shows that students and a lot of young people are more often and more likely to commit a cybercrime and according to aharvard Business Review study, fishing has become fishing which is a type of cybersecurity scam through the emails is 95% more cost effective now because of AI you're just putting in a prompt in a chatbot it gives you an email you can just spam send that to a bunch of people and also in their study out of 112 people60% of them fell for AIlate scams.
and with AI amateurs students who are looking for a way to make a quick buck are just as effective as experts in the past you had to spend years learning how to master your craft of scamming you had things like the triad manual that taught you how to be an effective scammer but now amateurs can just go on chatbots and do it so if we teach AI in schools and we teach students how to use it as a tool then we'll dissuade them from using it as a way to facilitate crime. Yeah let me see if I can
encapsulate that a little bit so what you're telling us is with the growth of data centers and such in the state that in our schools elementary through K-12 it's gonna be critical that we are teaching the proper use of AI and appropriate use all the way through our grades and from what I'm hearing that we're not we're not doing as well as we need to be doing in the future is that correct yes sir that's correct great ok go ahead and now I'll pass it on to James
Speaker 17
11:07
we're gonna talk about actual researchurrently
Speaker 22
11:10
I'm conducting a research as I've already said thanks to the co-chairenatorullivan's introduction to doctor Ken Warden and Miss Kelly Griffin within the Arkansas department of higher Education to really to really find out in surveying 9 different districts which are LittleRock Springdale, Jonesboro, Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Hot Springs, Texarkana, Elorrado and Stugart the educator's perspectives within the classrooms on AI usage for students. and while I'm doing this survey among them73% of teachers agree
that schools should teach students how to use AI responsibly as Johnny said there's a lot of crime such as cybercrime risks there's many risks when it comes to morality and when it comes to ethics and responsible use of AI is key to preserving academic integrity. 74 % of teachers agree that students who have less access to AI tools would be at a disadvantage this is why infrastructure and standardization such as the Access Act will be very important in AI integration in the coming future.
66 % of teachers disagree that students should be able to use AI in their homeworks. This is because 100% of them, everyone agrees that when you use AI the wrong way students lose critical thinking skills. This really places the ethical and responsible uses of AI tools andentage. Over 97% of teachers agree that AI needs to be managed at least in a district level and75% of teachers agree that they would welcome training on using AI effectively. This means that teachers around the state would welcome legislative
implementation in some way regarding management and training for AI tool users within classrooms for both educators and students. Now passing it off to Johnny Tomo. this will be the timeline for the next 5 years within
Speaker 51
12:50
the future of education in K to12 and higher education on AI usage. So I'm a college of business student in a
Johnny Toma
Unverified
12:58
state and I'd like to talk about how they've implemented AI and the College of Business at my university so my cost accounting class we have a project once a semester where we have to do a case study
and we're allowed and encouraged to use AI because it's a very challenging data set and in my accounting technologies class we use AI daily for analyzing large amounts of data and also coding. AI' is very good at teaching students how to code. and in our tax accounting class the concepts that we cover are very challenging and our professor recommends that we use chatbots outside of class to help explain everything that we covered while we're in the class. and I like to discuss how the Access Act can help us integrate
AI K through 1el and in the colleges in Arkansas so theAR system is now the Arkansas education system is not very standardized because of the Access Act the course codes are virtually the same across the universities you can transfer credits easily and we might be having a syllabus coming to James' might be working on that project to have a standardized syllabus for the entire state but what we'd like to do is create an AI library that has that uses the current infrastructure of the access system and it provides AI tools to K through1el students and
also all the students who are in the universities in Arkansas and I'd like to discuss how some of these universities have already implemented their own programs and how we can do something similar with the library the AI library. So at the University of the Ozarks they use AIs in courses like climate scienceence where they receive decades worth of data from NASa and they analyze it and see how the climate is changing throughout the US and throughout the world and then in their urban forest management class I thought this was very cool. they take aerial photos and they use AI to analyze those photos and they
create a map of all the trees that are in urban environments and also what type of tree they are and their goal with this is to provide cleaner air in urban environments and they also expressed interest in having an AI library they believe that if their high school if the high school students in Arkansas who are coming to the University of Ozarks are already exposed to AI they won't be blindsided when they have things like data visualization and predictive models if they can study this stuff in high school and get an unders general understanding of it they'll be more prepared for success when they go to higher education
and UCA has already implemented a very interesting platform it was created by their faculty they have AI tutors they have practice exams that are AI generated there's an option for you to take a picture of your homework and AI will analyze it tell you where you went wrong with certain steps and also provide you the steps necessary to get to the right answer and now I'll pass it back to James to discuss more so the future
Speaker 43
15:41
of AI within five years before that I do want to also talk about initiative that
Speaker 22
15:48
senatorulllivan and we discussed which was the AI library to be used within different universities cause such as University of Central Arkansas and University of Ozarks they have a great system when it comes to AI usage and when you have an AI library that all the universities within Arkansas thanks to the Accxes Act could have access to that would be a very great asset for the students to be able to learn about AI with this effective tools that are working. now let's talk about the future of AI within five years. I want to start off with a code. nearly all men can stand adversity but
if you want to test a man's character, give him power. this is a quote by Abrahamlinncoln that describes the world we live in today this is because to be a great leader you need to surround yourself with the best people you can find another quote from Ronald Reagan AI is a very very powerful tool not only within the next five years but even now AI can serve as a very powerful assistant due to a technology called the AI agents. They can serve as expert advisors that were only accessible to the most impactful leaders in history With AI everyone will be a one man army.
a leader with a swarm of AI agents that could help with any task. This person would need to use AI responsibly, have agency and lead AI not to be led by it. the only reason we are not there yet it's because currently AIR yes men they are not assistants with So
Johnny Toma
Unverified
17:12
I would like to discuss free speech and AI as it comes to12 and also in higher education so many of the major chatbots that we use now, immini, ChatgBT
Groc they're all made by a handful of small companies and they have a large market share of the questions and the reasoning used in AI chatbots so you know one of the important things for us as citizens of Arkansas and also the United States is that the government can't censor or manipulate public opinion and this is fundamental to our democracy how these handful of companies that are controlling these major chatbots they are allowed to censor and they are allowed to manipulate the public. Now we all agree that corporations should have the freedom of speech to you know give a corporate stance on
something but I believe as the Lawns actct pertains that indoctrination especially in the K through 12 school system in Arkansas should not should be free of indoctrination and a lot of these chatbots are accessible to students K through 1el and if you ask them questions that we don't allow to be discussed by teachers in K through 1el because of the indoctrination requirement from the Laarres Act these chatbots aren't held to the same standard so I believe that for the systems that we have in school they should be held to the same standard we should determine what can and
can't be said to the students from the chatbots and it should be regulated by you guys. and I'd also like to discuss the intervention so in the form of the ethics training so A state taught me how to use accounting to the maximum ability possible but with that you know there comes the possibility of me committing fraud or something like that and then while they taught me how to use AI how to use accounting to the maximum level possible they also taught me the ethics how to put my community first and this is something that we really need to do for our students K through
1el so they have access to use AI at the maximum level possible but they're also aware that they need to use it
Speaker 22
19:08
for the betterment of our society Now moving on to K to12 and higher education. how higher education? how does this connect back to K to1el in higher education. The important thing now is to be a great leader. and to be a great leader it requires unquestionable integrity. integrity can be broken down to agency, character, ethics and
morality. These will be the most important aspects of humanity moving forward how do we do this? I believe that Ronald Reagan said it best within the covers of the bible are all the answers for all the problems that men face. in terms of education in the future we need to go back to agency, character, ethics and moral education and the best way to do that would be to follow again going back to character education to ethics education based on the bible So
Johnny Toma
Unverified
19:59
as I like to close I like to point that the time to act is now AI is how people are understanding the world and I believe it's our job to provide something like an AI library as well as ethics trainings to the K through 1el students to be better prepare them for the careers that are now using AI and requiring AI. and I believe that we should also ensure that the systems remain accountable and open to responsible inquiry. it's important for us to be able to explore our ideas and things that we want to learn about to the maximum ability possible but
also be taught how to use it to innovate for the
Speaker 29
20:33
society and how to do it all responsibly. thank you. folks I
appreciate your comments Mac I think you have some boots on the ground experience at school so could you I know you have had some teachers communicate can you can
you share that with us in the next couple of minutes? would love to and thank you like
Speaker 58
20:54
I said before it is an honor to be here today. I see some familiar faces out here Senator
Davis, I was your page just a few years ago Representative Beck, I think he may be here somewhere but I was his page just last year and just real quick I would like to thank Senator Sullivan. thank you for letting us be here today. So Johnny and James over here talked about the use of AI in high school colleges and how it can be used in the workplace. Right now I'm going to talk about mainly how it's used in high school like you said boots on the ground. So I believe that AI can be used greatly to enhance learning opportunities when it is used
correctly. when AI is used the wrong way that's when you start getting into problems Recently I had my whoops sorry recently I had the great honor of talking to a group of teachers and their personal thoughts on AI and how or if they are using it in their classrooms. I had some responses where teachers were optimistic about the use of AI and other teachers that were not very happy with it at all so before I start talking about these responses I want you all to keep something in mind. Most of these teachers no matter
whether or not they were using it in their classroom or not they all had pretty much the same belief is that whenever AI it is here to stay so we might as well go ahead and teach kids how to use it so whenever they get into the real world someday they're not caught off guard we need to teach them how to use it in high school so let's see here so they've kind of talked about it and sorry if I'm kind of repeating the same thing but we need to teach students how to use it the
right way because it can be used in the right way whenever you need help with homework or something you just take a picture and if you really ask it to explain it it'll do it for you so we just got a need to want to put into the effort so I'm gonna go ahead and start with some of the responses that I got. this teacher in particular is an English teacher she's not open to the use of AI at all let's see here she's concerned that when students tell her that here's the deal students are
always like ok I'm gonna use AI to help me get ideas but really they just use the AI version. they they don't use it to help them get ideas so that is her concern with this one because she wants the student's thoughts she doesn't want the AI's thoughts so the second teacher that I talked to is a professional communications teacher he told me that he is concerned about the use of AI in classrooms because it has brought the concern upon teachers to wonder if anything that's well written, if it was even written by the student or not
and I can kind of personally testify that for a second. so let me kind of go on this for a second. whenever I'm writing, whenever I'm writing something for my English class I often wonder, well, do I need to kind of dumb this down because I don't want to sound too smart, you know, talking to my friends I don't sound that smart and that's when my teacher sees me the most so whenever I'm actually using my brain herelas had the same problem well sorry I'm just worried that my teachers are going to think that it was AI and there's no you
have AI checkers but they're never really accurate. there's no way to tell if they're accurate or not so that's just kind of a concern with that one so back to the procom teacher he was overhearing a conversation and he told me that he heard a student say why would I even need to write a poem when chaggyBg can make one for me so this just kind of ties into what we've been saying about how we need to start teaching it responsibly so real quick here umm can you kind of summarize what you've got? I want to
hear from you let me go ahead and go down here
Speaker 58
24:39
I had some more teacher responses but I'll just go ahead and summarize it here. These teachers all whoops sorry these teachers all have their personal concerns about AI and I think it's valuable to hear what they think because they're shaping how the next generation is gonna use AI. I like most teachers believe and all of us believe that we need to start teaching it responsibly let's see here and speaking on my own experiences, I don't think that it's just teachers that need to be responsible with this. me and other students like us who
understand how to use AI need to testify to our peers you know here's how we can use it honestly and we don't need to just put all the responsibility in the teacher's hands we as students can be good examples and testify to that as well so let's see here it's an honor to be here before you all today and thank you all for listening
to us. thank you and you there are folks from UCA you're you didn't prepare come prepared to speak but you were spoken about and
if we talk about you you ought to be able to respond to it so just tell us
briefly you you're you're kind of raised up for saying UCA has some good
programs can you kind of describe what those are and how you do it so yeah
Speaker 34
25:54
the University of Central Arkansas we have a wonderful professor herr name is doctorctor Amy Hawkins and she's done a really good job creating a almost like AI learning center it's the center for teaching and excellence but we have a lot of AI teaching trainings for professors and students if they're welcome to come if
they're have an interest but the main goal that she's been tackling is just reaffirming our professors that this is a new technology but you it's better for you to learn it now instead of letting it take you over and she's done a really good job for like helping our professors learn it. They have book groups on like the ethics how to implement it into their teaching how to handle academic dishonesty and things like that so that's really been the biggest like support that we've had from the University of Center Arkansas which has been great. thank
you and members we're gonna this is just the first of
several I hope that we have going forward I'm going to call it kind of a hard stop at3:30 we have another group that wants I need to get up here this this group will be out in the foer afterwards you're welcome to meet with them talk with them but they've already have a job working for me so you can't recruit them and I would say go out and recruit your own team if you want them and again I started out they called themselves interns and after about 0 minutes I realized that they're way out ahead of me and I'm so thankful for the effort
they put a lot of work in they had a candidate for them we had commissioner Warden at AU that they put that on they have several other events that are that they are running and just doing a great job of and I will mention this that I met with a Jonesboro school district who is trying to make sure all of their students are com are performing up to level at third grade great goal but they have a huge churn kidsds
that come in at preK they leave the school they come back to school they leave the school again and that tends to pull their grade overall grade down so they need to analyze that data to say these are the kids that churn this is where they when they came in they were here when they left they were there when they came back to us they were here and help us factor that that's the next task I'm given to these guys did you know that Yeahpri surprise they're also working with the chancellor at
ASU to do that so we'll fill just a few questions uhpresentativeladydyman you're recognized thank
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
28:24
you Mr Chairman. I'm over here guys. Well thank y'all for being here and Dan thank you for putting this together very interesting I mean great to have you guys here especially matt from Valley View my my son's graduated from Valley View I was a soccer coach there for a few years. you you did a very good job representing our school so appreciate that Asu is in my
district as well as as Dan's so you you guys did great you see we hadn't hear much about you but I know your school is great so real quick you talked about the teachers can y'all what about the students I know you all are all in. I mean I can tell that you've studied this you like it you you know you're going to go forward with it and your gut suggestions what about your classmates are they all on board do you talk to people in your classes that are like some of the teachers matt that
you mentioned that aren't into it can you give us a feel for that? Maybe all three of y'all with your different
schools well I'm going to limit it to one response so Johnny and see I think you two guys are the chair of this group so I'll let you one of you to respond go ahead.
Speaker 22
29:39
there really are mixed reactions when it comes to student and AI usage especially in the arts they really are negative about AI usage because within the arts and different things they're worried about the copyright that they have like you are you
sealing from different artist artist pieces to make art that's not your own your own so that is a really big worry but then when it comes to others like public policy I don't think there's denying on all of the students that they realize that this is a very effective and powerful tool and it is being used act in the real world fields where in the workplace that they're going
Speaker 26
30:10
to go to within their careers it is already being utilized and students realize
that and commit members you know right now we are supposed to have common course codes the
problem in doing that is they have different syllabus they have different objectives they may be the same objective they're written differently the same thing with the the the materials that are out there for resources so we can plug that into AI and AI can come up with what the objective is that they can use across the board and I I know commissioner Warden is working on that right now and just the ability of AI to consolidate that material is unbelievable
folks thank you for being here you mentioned me way too much this has been your work and what you've done and again I can't tell you how much I appreciate your efforts thank you very much and you're dismissed thank you. and while they were ending you'll notice on your agenda discussion of Arkansas accelerated common sense you you can read that for yourself originally we had planned on having you know the the goal
is to have our schools working with the community working with higher ed and working with K12 Pine Bluff has really got some good things going on they have a strong community input they have UAP B s doing an excellent job of partnering with the school and the school district is really doing a good job in there pre-k and on up working they were going to come and show up and testify here today UAPb
and K12 they were not able to be here today but we do have a community resource folks if you could come to the table paststor Jesse and your team could come to the table please they are the community outreach group in Pine bluff and I will let them kind of introduce themselves or handing out a little handout right now pastor Jesse is leading the way here and folks just so you know I visited his office a few weeks ago and one of the things he showed me is he has a letter
from six different presidents commending his work and their group's work in the community of pine Bluff so this is not a group of people that are just they've got the rids and they've got the experience in their community and again I can't tell you how much I appreciate them being here and the efforts they have in representing their community and starting with paststor Jesse if y'all would introduce yourselves none of you are employed by the school district correct? so this is a community effort
Jessse Turner
Unverified
32:53
but Jessse go ahead and introduce yourselves again my name is Jessse Turner, local pastor in Pine bluff and now paststor emeritus for the Elgrove Baptisthurch which is the oldest formed baptist African Americanurch in this state and so I was glad to serve there for31 years. Thank you senator for for giving us the opportunity Sulllivvan and to
the rest of the distinguished officials here we're just glad and excited'm sorry to interrupt but
would you let the rest of the folks let's let them introduce themselves too please if you'll if you just hit the button
Yolanda Pitts
Unverified
33:38
there and tell us who you are thank you my name is Yolanda Pitts and I'm the pastor of the Turning Point International Outreach Ministries I'm also the executive director of the Turning Point Youth Center which is a nonprofit organization thank you. Hello my name is doctor
Sonia Watkins
Unverified
33:57
Sonyawatkins I have a business that is called Ru rose coaching by Soa.
James Hill
Unverified
34:04
Hello my name is James Hill junior. I'm a minister at the house of reid andle Church. I'm the founder and president of BbFK mean being brother for the kids and I'm also an outstanding warrior for pass on patrol inside our school district in pine bluff, Arkansas. Good afternoon. thank you for
Alexander Watkins
Unverified
34:27
the opportunity to be here. My name is Alexander Watkins senior. I'm the associate pastor of the Sant andrew Missionary Baptist Church located in pine Bluff. I'm also a proud US Navy veteran and I'm also a youth coach coach basketball and football and again a volunteer pastors on patrol thank you. and Mr Turner go ahead thank you. thank
you sir as I was saying that
Jessse Turner
Unverified
34:58
we serve as the president of the Pamela faith Community coalition ministerial alliance in pine bluff where we worked with the schools. we work in all of the schools in Pinebluff and Watson Chapel district, Pine bluff school district as well as friendship aspire public charter school a little bit about me I am a graduate of southern Newhampshire University where I earned a master's degree in community economic development.
I'm a 30 year veteran of crime prevention tools I a crime prevention practitioner. I led the development of two federal programs in our city of Pine Bluff. that is a program through the US Department of Justice Office of Justice gra m me s it was called weed and Seed. Weed means to weed out crime. Seed makes to seed in positive programs that will keepry from coming back. Also it
had four components that was law enforcement that was community policing that was prevention intervention and treatment and there was neighborhood restoration. So these four components went with the weed and seed programme in pine bluff also I've been working extensively with alpine bluff schools since 1997
and so from 1997 we did mentoring we did other programs that would benefit our young people and we have a program called pen or pencil pen or pencil. pen stands for penitentiary pencil stands for education as we implement this program in the schools we try and push kids away from the negative behaviors that would cause them to be in that pipeline to the prison and we pushed them to the pencil
which is education because we want them to be productive young people in our work at these schools we have participated in a number of things the pastors on patrol had been recognized nationally for our work. we've also the work that we do has also been mentioned on the congre floor bypresentative Westerman it has shown our work has shown
that we have reduced negative and violent behavior by at least33% in one of our schools and another school that we did bullying anti bullying, training we had the superintendent to report that there was a75% reduction in referrals and another thing that we did we did some things that thirtyourth avenue School
that showed a 15% reduction in negative behaviors. So one of the major things that we do as pastors on patrol we're there we walk the halls we encourage our students and let me just say this too as pastors we don't go there and we don't go into the schools and try to influence anyone about
their faith. We go there to help them learn and to encourage them to graduate from schools. So I just want to say that right now also as we compare as we combine two different national organizations to produce our product in the schools. We use the national alliance offaith and justice, which is an organization out of Washington DC That organization we use to promote the six
principles of Drctor Martin Luther King Jnior. programs that we call from nonviolence to no violence and when we use the no violence approach we tell the kids we don't want we want you to not bully, not fight, not have demeaning language against another student. no fighting, no hitting, no pushing. this is part of our nonviolence approach with the Nationall of
faith and justice and also we use civil rights template but we kind of turned it around a little bit when we when we are using it we talked to them about rosaarks and the bus boycott but the way we use it is we ask kids to boycott the negative behavior. We asked them to take a stand but keep a seat. We want them to take a stand by keeping their seat not moving messing around with other
people. not focusing on other things but keep a seat.tay in your classroom, stay in your seat. listen to what the teacher is saying so that you will be able to learn and we also tell them one thing special is that if you want to make a's all as's in your classes, whatever class you're in. we believe that you can make all as's. How do you do that? Simply by listening Listening if they listen
to the things that the teacher is saying and writing on the board, she's never going to give them a test on something that she has not talked to them about. So we encouraged we encouraged them to listen and so those are some of the things that we do to get our kids to make learning become fun and so those things that we are talking about they actually work and as pastors on patrol
we are just a presence there Our presence there as clergymen causes our young people to pick up and become more excited the teachers are excited. The students are excited. just to see us on the campus and when we come to the campus we always ask our ministers, our pastors said we don't need but one hour per week
if you give us one hour per week and be on that campus where the students can see you. you'll make a difference and this is how we make a difference. We also use these programs but just our presence there on the campus, make the students and the teachers and those custodians who are working there feel a lot better about seeing a pastor. We often hear those students who walk the hallway when we were walking there some would point and say that's my pastor there. that's the
minister at my church. They like that they want to see that and this is what we do. We are just if I can see it like this we're just the church on display when we are walk in the halls they see us they'll run to us. they will ask us, would you pray for me? because we always have a good word for them. We never say I need to pray for you Johnny. I need to pray for you willie because you just look like you need praying for.
we don't do that. that's not our purpose. Our purpose is to encourage to get them to get the lessons out to be good citizens because we want to promote citizenship and scholarship. Those are the things that we do. There's another program that we work on that we call API. and that API stands for et promise institute. We as pastors
believe that every child we don't call them at risk we just we stopped calling them at risk but we call them at promise because every child in the school no matter who they are has promised and we try to pull that out of them by doing the things that we do and so PBICBR stands for pine bluff Interested Citizens foroter registration also let me also regress just a little bit and talk about the Woodsonenter
The Woodsonenter is another national group that we work with The Woodsonenter helps us with the black history part the national alliance of faith and justice help us with the six principles of Martin Luther King and teaching nonviolence. But when we come down to the Woodsonenter, they have a curriculum K12 it's free. it's online. Anybody can get it The Woodsonenter teaches about
lesser known African Americans. there are so many African Americans that our young people don't know about During Black History Month we don't talk about what we do mention them Martin Luther KingRosa Park, Frederick douglass, Harriet Tubman, but we start asking them about do you know whobidy Mason is? Do you know whoRobert Smalls is do you know who Elijah McCoy is. We asked them about the
lesser known African Americans. We don't focus on the past we focus on the present We don't focus on what they did to me. We focused on what I can be we can't live in the past and try to defeat the ghosts of the past but we want our kids to look forward and so that's what we do with the oodsonenter lessons. We want our kids to focus on what they can do, what their skills bring to them
because of times we talk about the hanging the weapons the mistreatment. we don't leave that out but we want to talk to them about the future cause you can't change what has already happened you can't do anything about the future. So what they have is right now and we want to teach them right now how the beasts the best that they can be and it's in them every one of them has promise and so we are there to try to
get these kids to understand that you have promised. don't don't just stay on that old thing. but look at a new thing that you can do and so the PBICBR has developed programs aimed at providing positive and enjoyable activities for pine bluff schools and the public charter schools These programs focus on cultivating leadership character development and sound decision making because they
need to learn how to make good decisions. It's not always you got a conflict that you need to start fighting we want them to look at how can I solve this problem without having a fist to cuff or how to go to fighting. we talked to them we we encourage them to make sound decisions and for these young individuals we emphasize that it is the pen or the pencil for them
highlighting the importance of education, learning and making thoughtful choices pen stands for penitentiary. pencil stands for education. It's a choice and we tell them that's a choice you make. Some choices you make can be long lasting and life changing and we want them to understand that the primary goal of PBICVR is sponsoring these programs to develop and empower our young
ladies and our young gentlemen in our schools to become future leaders and nonviolent through regular meetings that we have at the was Chapel school district. we have projects they learn they go to public events they are wild cats they call themselves the Watson Chapel Wildcatsciety ladies club and Watson Chapelwildcat Society gentlemen'slub.
these young men will and young ladies we're building to become leaders. We do this in pine bluff and we do this in the schools we guide them to make good decisions at home we don't leave at home we have them to to be respectful at home and in the community we encourage them to become critical thinkers. don't just take what somebody's saying but
become critical thinkers. Think about what's being told you. Critical thinkers about nonviolence.ritical thinkers about our civic responsibility and academic success. PBI sponsors sponsorship ensures that these young scholars have structured opportunities to grow and to be responsible and to become community minded we have them doing a number of things that relate to community service and
so we want them to be the best that they can The members have met with the rotary Club in pine bluff. They have been exposed to a dirt roma in the community they have done leadership services in the community. interacting with other scholars to help in community service leadership and participation we want our children to be the best that they can be and the only way that that can happen is
that we as clergymen we as a community engage with them on the campus we asked for one hour per week. Make yourself visible. Choose your time that you wanna go. if you want to go on Wednesday, go on a Wednesday if you want to go on whatever day you want to pick. all we ask for is one hour per week and we got5 preachers down there and know you
could keep on going could you wrap it up here please because I wanna give members a chance to ask questions that they have but
again thank you very much if
Jessse Turner
Unverified
50:16
you could wrap up I'd appreciate it right all we're saying to us is that the community must get engaged with our schools the the proficiency is the civil rights issue of today not what went on then but the the civil rights issue of today is proficiency proficiency in math science, English, social studies. these are the civil rights issues
today. We have too many kids falling through the cracks and we have too many resources out here that can help them. We can't turn our back on these children. They need us they are the future now and they will be the future when the time comes Thank you so
much uhpresentative Macgruder uhmcgrew you had a question you're recognized chairman and thank y'all for
Representative Richard McGrew
Unverified
51:15
being here with us today I applaud what you're doing. I think it's great the impact that you're not just complaining about it that you're out there and doing something to it. My question is a lot of the problems in the younger generations is the drugs and alcohol that come into them are y'all seeing what you're doing make an impact in that area or you're looking at that? We look at we
Speaker 89
51:40
look at all of it because there's a program that
Jessse Turner
Unverified
51:47
we have that we use I basically do that. It's called defy ug d uc ation for youth helping them to understand about this vaping reverend has we we we keep our eye on the kids because they do things that they feel like they can get away with we don't claim to be perfect
but sometimes some of the kids will bring a vape to school they'll hide it but we we we do what needs to be done to stop that. You have to talk to them and let them know because they get in trouble for that and we talked to them and we take that and we give it to the proper authority. So and then they'll do the dealing with the kid. we don't
but that's what we do we do talk to them about drugs alcohol we show videos on on that we do have that where we show them about marijuana, all those kind of of of drugs that will that will be harmful to them Representative Duke you're recognized for a question thank you Mr Chair
and thank you for the latitude and let me
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
53:08
ask a question since I'm not a member but first of all I think what y'all are doing is absolutely amazing and I'm so glad that I was here today to hear your testimony and what
you're doing I mean that's what it's all about its people and communities getting involved and getting engaged so my question is some of
these things as I look through your packet are just like great programs do you have are you have templates for other communities that want to I mean I'm looking at this going we're having discussions about this in my area, similar things and I actually texted one person saying hey I think this might fit some of these what we were looking about and talking about how to help our kids and help our young adults so do you have
templates do you push this out into
Speaker 83
53:55
other schools or how does that work? Well when
Jessse Turner
Unverified
54:01
it comes to the programs they are trademark but we can share with those help those communities set them up to be able to do what we do but the trademark comes from Washington DC because the national alliance has trademarks but when it comes
to the curriculum of learning about the Africanmeric history that's a free program. I already spoke to doctorctor Oliva about it before he has indicated that he would use it on the website as a resource. because it talks about the folks that we don't know. it gives them curri it gives them vocabulary. it teaches them skills in terms of what that particular person may be
doing just say like abity mason to learn how asbity mason did she was a slave. she was born a slave but she died a millionaire. She learned how to buy property. She learned how to get some of her fellows free by paying for it. She built schools and so when you hear about abidy mason, her name really is Bridget but they call herbity she was born a slave but died a millionaire and that's where we want those kids
to understand. You may have a problem. she had problems but you can become what's in you but we have to pull that out that's that promise that's in them and we call it that promises and
Speaker 89
55:35
we just believe we don't call a child at risk. We always refer to them as that promise it's I'm sorry but this
is one of the reasons we're having this group here because it's about the
community it's about the school it's about higher ed it's about the communities that pull together to do this and I think Pine Bluff is doing such a good job
and admirable job and again I appreciate you being here I
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
56:01
apologize I inter r up ted go ahead. no worries just was saying when you when you first mentioned the promise that makes me think of that song I amm a promisemise which I think is an absolutely fantastic way that you are reaching the kids because they are that so are your are your programs like the pastor's program that you have and the gentleman's and ladies' clubs that you have are those trademark programs or are are those ones that you all started within your community? No ma'am
Jessse Turner
Unverified
56:23
that program the gentleman'slub started by Mr Crockett he's a teacher over
there at Watson Chapel. and what we did we just came along to to support that because we were already there walking the halls and encouraging the students and because of the networking that we have I just use some of those programs to help them. We learnt we recently we just brought a judge in to speak to them we did a gun violence deal with them because we say use words not weapons to
solve your problems and so we did a a national day of concerned gun violence thing that they led getting other students to sign a pledge not to bring a gun to school. So we use kind of innovative things with them to help them understand what the problem is and how they can solve that problem and this is what the critical thinking comes from. We want them to be able to look at something and be able to figure out what's the best choice. but we know pen or pencil they know that
take that negative you go to the p p you're going to be on the fast track really but the princial will put you in a position to where you can become a productive citizen.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
57:40
thank you thank you Senatorulllivan and I really again appreciate what y'all are doing I'm convinced that we have schools all across the state they're doing things just like this maybe not as we may not know about them so I appreciate Senatorulllloan that you shed light on that and I'm thankful that I was able to hear it and I hope you continued success. Well if if someone calls us
Jessse Turner
Unverified
58:03
we always willing to share with them and to work
with them did you I've I've got the start following paststor Turner on Facebook Pastor Jesse's called on Facebook and read some of the things he was talking about what he's talked about here and I was amazed and eventually called him and said hey I'm headed to pine bluff and drove down there and met with them and I think we previously had had aed
meeting in Pine Bluff focusing on the good things that were happening in pine Bluff school so you know there's there's a lot of information out there we want to be sure and get out the good information these folks are doing a great job and I applaud all of you that are here today thank you so much for what you're doing in your school. members I see no more questions I'm assuming I'll let you close but assuming they'll be back and they'll be here if you have questions you want to talk to them you're certainly welcome to do so and
Jessse Turner
Unverified
59:04
paststor Jesse you're welcome to close OK thank you again for allowing us to come and be here. There's another program that we're doing now where we're working with the kids that's been incarcerated even though they have made a mistake. kids who have been incarcerated and coming back it's a youth diversion program to stop those kids that's on the verge of going to detention it's a youth diversion program it's a national program that we're working with right now. it
involves different states and it's in your packet that I gave you and we're getting ready to take two of the best ones to a national returning citizen conference where they'll get an opportunity to hear others who have been in prison but came out and turned their life around and are now business people international chefs and things of that nature so we want them to see that thank you so much and I see my mentors are back in
the back sitting down so if you'd
like to talk with them or the folks here
Unknown speaker
1:00:06
at the table you're welcome to saying no for the business we are adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Report from Institutions of Higher Education for Annual Certification of Solvency as Required by A.C.A. § 6-62-609 [Exhibit B]
C. Presentation of the Future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education [Exhibits C1-C2]
D. Discussion of the Arkansas Acceleration, Common Sense, Cost, Eligibility, Scholarships, and Standardization (ACCESS) Act: Pine Bluff School District and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff [Exhibits D1-D2]
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC - HIGHER EDUCATION SUBCOMMITTEE, Mar 18, 2026 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit B - Annual Certification of Adequate Funds FY2025-2026 | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit C1 - The Future of AI Presentation | Exhibit | 13 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit C2 - The Future of AI in K-12 and Higher Education | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit D1 - UAPB-PBSD Partnership Initiatives | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit D2 - Pine Bluff UAPB Initiatives | Exhibit | 4 | Official source ↗ |
| Handout 1 | Exhibit | 4 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Speaker 6
Senator Dan Sullivan Chair
Unverified
Matt Carpenter
Unverified
Speaker 22
Johnny Toma
Unverified
Speaker 33
Speaker 34
Speaker 36
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
Speaker 26
Speaker 17
Speaker 51
Speaker 43
Speaker 29
Speaker 58
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Jessse Turner
Unverified
Yolanda Pitts
Unverified
Sonia Watkins
Unverified
James Hill
Unverified
Alexander Watkins
Unverified
Representative Richard McGrew
Unverified
Speaker 89
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
Speaker 83