Education Committee - Senate and House
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Members if you could go ahead and start making your way to your seats we'll start here in just a couple minutes. I know we got some other folks still coming from filing
Good afternoon how ucate our joint education will come to order members and guests if you would please stand with me and Representative meeks is gonna start us in prayer We
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
2:43
need to govern wisely we pray now Father that as we go through our deliberations and our meetings that everything would be done in order and according
to your will we pray this all in Christ's name amen
representative members thanks for being here today we're glad to be joined by a few other extra guests our members who are with us have something going on in the capitol today so it's nice to have a few additional faces in the room I do need a motion consideration to approve the minutes from October6th and October7th. have a motion we have a second all in favor CI all opposed that has been adopted
onto item C item C we have consideration for adoption of a couple interim study proposals first off, are there any questions on any of these ISps uhpresent Mcenzie I have
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
3:34
questions on ISp 2025082 by Senator Krowllll. Senator Krollll I don't believe is
here so we will pass over that for this month and we will take it back up next
month. Any additional questions on the other two represent Gonzalezoren or uhpresentative Barnett see no questions I need a motion
to adopt those two ISps have a motion is there a second have a second all in favor say aye all opposed those have been adopted all right members moving on to itemd the adequacy study binders so everyone who has on their desk the study binders for the adequacy process as you know this is a fairly lengthy process over the next 10 months we will actually slightly longer
than 10 months but I guess 10 meetings roughly we will be going over all the information relative to funding of our public school system within the adequacy process and this is just kind of our initial outlay of that and what to expect here's my ask and I know that Senator English would would agree with me on this as well. My ask is that you really engage in this process it's a very complex lengthy process and this binder is gonna be extremely full with a lot of
information and yes and leave it here don't take it home don't lose it don't say the dog ate your homework if you would please make sure that those are always here so that staff can continue to put all the documents in it so we have appropriate we can appropriately refer back to it because this is a very very important from the standpoint of of how we fund our schools moving forward in the next biennium beyond the 2027 session and so it's something we want to make sure that we give the appropriate amount of importance to which is extreme so with
that I will recognize Adrian beck to go ahead and and ladies if if all three of you would just go ahead and introduce yourselves and we'll just roll right through what you have for us
Speaker 28
5:39
today. adrian beck with the bureau lo ri ri Bowen with policy analysis with the bureau julie he also with the bureau Great.
Speaker 26
5:49
so I'm also on the policy analysis and research team here at the bureau and as many of you know the House and Senate Education
Speaker 31
5:55
committees are responsible for conducting the biennial adequacy study
and this is set to officially begin next February so you'll hear more from me and the rest of our team at that time but I'm here today to give you a brief overview of the adequacy binders just mentioned that you have in front of you these will be used to compile all of the adequacy reports, presentations and other applicable adequacy materials that will be presented or shared during the study the binders stay here like they mentioned so you don't have to worry about keeping up with those and we'll go over them again when we start again next
year but since today's presentation on educator surveys will be the first presentation added to the binders I wanted to briefly introduce go through the materials currently in the binders so these are separated into three sections and I'll briefly go through those with you here today so at the front of your binders you're gonna find a table of contents and this is detailing the contents they're currently broken up into three sections so that starts with tab one
which is the adequacy study guiding documents and I will briefly go through these but these are documents that you may need to refer to throughout the adequacy process and they'll remain at the front of the binders for easier access. in tab one, so the first one which is tab 1A this is going to be the Arkansas statute. This is the statute regarding the adequacy process and it lays out all of these statutory adequacy requirements and you'll hear more about this
and its history and a future adequacy report. Next in tab 1B which is the tracking sheet this lists out all of these statutory requirements along with the reports and presentations that will meet each of these respective requirements along with the anticipated presentation date for each of these reports. Next we have tab 1d this is the
good one see excuse me this is the current definition of adequacy which was the most recently updated by the House and Senate Educationittees during the 2018 adequacy study. in tab 1D this is our adequacy recommendations worksheet this is a list of all possible decision points to be made during the adequacy study that will provide funding and policy for public s for public schools during the next biennium
it also includes the most recent recommendation for fiscal year 27. these are based on the existing funding system and past committee recommendations so they are not the only recommendations that you the committee can make. Next we have the funding summary one pager. So on the front this is the matrix which is used to calculate the per student foundation funding amount and on the back this is a summary of
other state funding applicable to adequacy so this includes categorical funds and other categoricals including professional development ALE alternative learning environment amongst a couple others and then other supplemental fund s such as enhanced transportation and isolated funding and you'll hear much more about these in a future report. and our final guiding document is in tab 1F and this is the
tentative schedule for the adequacy that takes us to tab two you'll see this is pretty this is scant right now but this is going to be where you can find the book of the adequacy materials including today's educator survey presentation that you'll hear from shortly going forward you'll see the most recent adequacy meeting reports and presentations at the beginning of this tab. Finally in tap three this is our
appendice section. So similar to finding an appendix at the end of a report. This will grow to include supplemental materials for upcoming adequacy reports so right now you'll see tabs for acronyms and then definitions and methodologies these are still in progress but you'll see those in advance of the with the February meeting but you will see materials for tabb3C and this goes through 1 through3 these are the
educator survey results for the superintendent principal and teacher surveys and that is conclusion of the binders but I'm happy to answer any
Speaker 36
10:50
questions on that senator flowers you recognize? this may be for
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
11:01
the chairs since we will not be taking the binder home will this be information be accessible online? Yes so all the information if you look at even
today the documents on thearkleg website all the documents are listed within the meeting for today's meeting that will continue to be available yes ma'am
the binder will be online I believe that
Speaker 31
11:28
the guiding documents are with the current online agenda. I'm not sure about the rights of materials but the reports and presentations will absolutely be included with meeting agendas for a subsequent meetings and then we'll be happy to provide the any appendices items
supplemental to those as well so we can look
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
11:47
up those guiding ones under one now they should be if you go to the meeting agenda and
Speaker 31
11:54
the documents tab with the agenda you should find those there so we always have to reference the meeting agenda of
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
12:01
today as of right now yes that might be something we could possibly try to
Speaker 31
12:07
add to we have another portion of the website that has all of our adequacy materials in one spot so we can look into the
including those there to make those more easily accessible Well the reason I'm asking
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
12:20
is because you've listed statutes and other guiding information and I'd
like to take some time and study that so I mean am I supposed to remember today's date and go to the tab that has that information on it
we can also be happy to provide that email that material to you
Speaker 31
12:40
so you have that in one spot but we'll work on getting that in a more central location in
addition to the meeting agenda documents section at least with
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
12:51
the guiding documents since especially the statutes and the statutory requirements it's not very long but at that'd like a hard copy of those documents so I can we would be happy to email those to you so you have those members would say
be anything that anyone needs then feel free to request that
of the chair request that of of staff
and just like any other typical committee meeting we'll make sure that that's sent out as needed Additional
questions see no additional questions thank you Miss Beck. We will move on to item E in the agenda Ms Bowen and Miss Holt to present the surveys thank
you uhpresentative and good afternoon we are here to
talk or give a presentation on the surveys and as Adrian said these are found in tab three of your binders. We have supplied reports for probably the last3 or4 studies with all of the questions and responses but this is the first time that there's actually been a presentation and the chairs thought it would be a good idea and so we're glad to get to talk a little bit more about the role of the surveys and how they are put together
the surveys have a long history with the adequacy study when the bureau started performing the study back in about 2007. all superintendents were surveyed and this was at that time how the team got a lot of the what's called quantitative data so the actual numbers what are the teacher salaries how many teachers do you have? what classes are being offered that kind of thing. Over the years more of that data has been
available in the Department of Education's public school computer network system so we pull a lot of the quantitative and have been able to transition questions over to what is called qualitative data. So really asking the educators more for their opinions and their experiences related to adequacy in in education.
So the so the adequacy study as Adrian said is a statutorily required study that these committees perform every two years and the statute prescribes what all is in the studies was to be considered and also goes on to say how to do it and one of those criteria that it be an evidence-based report and so that really explains the role of the survey is that it is one of the
pieces of evidence that you will read in each of the adequacy reports on all of the topics all of the individual topics. So there are four kinds of evidence that are included whenever possible with each topic one being the schoolle data and that's as I said it includes spending it includes expenditures it could include student achievement, it includes teacher salary. So everything that is
what I refer to as kind of the is. so you'll know exactly what's going on in Arkansas schools. The other three pieces of evidence are provided to give some context to that is data that you have. So there's you'll see a lot of research cited that's looking at best practices and what qualified researchers have found or research organizations have found you'll also see whenever
possible comparisons to other states' data and those are often presented in your reports as maps so you can see visually the trends of of different scenarios and then finally the fourth piece which we're talking about today in your educator surveys and that's so you have sort of that voice from the practitioners telling you what their experiences and their
opinions and I can't think of the word I'm trying to say but anyway, how they feel about various aspects of adequacy so in putting together the surveys we also try to follow best practices in survey methodology and and to make sure that the responses we're getting from the educators are not biased and that their ballid and reliable one important thing to remember
and I think sometimes it gets a little confused but is that we're really sort of being the pass through for the the educators information. so we might you might hear in one of the reports next spring that educators say x is very important. well that's us reporting that the educators think it's important because as you know it's bureau staff we will not be trying to influence that and so just the same way we wouldn't do that we don't want to do it in the way we ask our questions
so some of the things we do is really consider how we construct the questions are we using the correct wording? are we presenting it where it's a balanced question we will look at comments from previous year's surveys to make sure that questions have been clear or if people are having trouble understanding what we're trying to ascertain through a question or terminology for example this year going
through the surveys we use the term guidance counselor and we heard back several times that guidance counselor is not really the term that's used at school counselor. so I imagine in the survey next go around those terms will be changed a lot of our questions call for Leichardt scale type responses which are those responses that take you either from smallest to largest worst to best least positive to
most positive. so we make sure that those likehardt scale responses are ordered in the same way and as you can see on this example question of up here we always go from the smallest to biggest type framework or the least to most and that way we're not influencing and it's funny when you write a question and then you go back and make sure you've done these things. you can see where oh we know that salary is very important so we
may put most important there but if we make sure we're consistent through this then we're not introducing bias into the surveys. The another thing that is similar that we do is if there are multiple choice responses those are always listed in alphabetical order. So again we're not implying that one thing is more important than the other we also have at the end of each section and then at the end of
the survey open s open ended responses where they're free to write as much as they want and again this is often where we can see well we've we need to make sure we have rewarded this question to be more clear or we are keeping up with the terminology or that last question that's at the end of the survey we can often get see themes that maybe we need to address in the next sur ve y and in that case we present those to the chairs and make sure that that's something that the committees would want on the surveys
Also when putting the surveys together we consider our samples and we're really lucky in Arkansas because we have samples that are the populations that we're trying to find out from. like I said the first surveys were sent out to superintendents and that's always been sent to all superintendents in the state and about 2010 or 201el is when the principal survey was added and again that was sent to all principals in the state
and in about 2016 the team started surveying teachers and in the beginning there was a sample of teachers is really all teachers at a random sample of schools that was surveyed and then several years ago we discovered that teacher surveys are actually recorded an appscan and so we've for the last two studies all teachers have been sent emails. they haven't all received them but they've
all been sent emails to the addresses that it recorded in appscan. we also of course are concerned with trying to get good response rates so this year we went a step further than we have in the past and sent a mini survey asking when the educators would like to take the survey their survey and then of course we follow up with multiple reminders we calculate our margin of error at a 95% confidence level
and as you'll see and it's because we have we know the size of our population so you can mathematically see all the possible combinations of answers out there and calculate the response rate and we have a very small response or margin of error I'm sorry on each of the surveys. So I'm gonna talk about some of the background of all three surveys or or the overview of all three surveys and when we get to the superintendent survey, Laurri will actually
take you through each question that's in the survey. we decided not to do that with all three for the sake of time and it could also just be maybe mind numbing but they are all in your reports and we do hope you'll spend some time looking at those so like I said we sent a mini survey in December and requested we presented three windows a time for each educator group and then got the plurality of their responses and sent the surveys
at those times and I will say that that was effective in that this was the first year I can remember that we've not had a single complaint of oh you sent this at the busiest time of year. so we did not hear that which was was good you can see we sent the superintendents and principals both in april and the teachers opted for earlier in the semester in January. So again we sent the teacher survey first that went January
twentyseh. we sent them out on a Monday morning and always requested them back the following Friday so they were two working weeks in the field. We kept the teachers survey open for responses so February 24th we sent um4 teachers we received4 reminders. The reminders only went to nonresponders. so teachers who had already filled out the survey were not being bombarded
by the end of February there were a little more than4830 completed surveys but there were some duplicates. There were also some and we had a we have a list and we sent this on the surveys the classroom teachers we were looking for which included special ed teachers ALE teachers, K through 1el teachers including art music andPE basically everyone but nurses and teacher's aids. we did receive a few surveys from people who went on and
answered those and so we pulled those out and ended up with a count of4830. and that represented 15% of the32,00702 that we emailed the surveys to with the survey software that the bureau has we could see that actually 12,000 teachers actually looked at the survey so the response rate can be calculated based on the full population and that was 15% of
the ones that actually opened the survey and looked at it it was a response rate of39%. that we this flyer Marisa White in our office designed and sent out and we sent this to both the administrators and teachers asking them to share it. We know that teachers are the least familiar with the bureau and adequacy and the least likely so we really tried to take some extra steps to assure them and
and it was amazing that we got calls asking if we were real and then I noticed like even on my Linkedinn account I had teachers looking to see if we were real. So hopefully over the years this survey will gain even more credibility among teachers. but we did take these steps we our results our teachers responded from 254 school districts and charter school systems and that's out of 258.
so most districts and charter school systems were represented in that survey as well and the margin of error calculated at less than plus or minus1%. the topics or questions were divided into6 these6 topics for teachers so you can see those and some of the topics among the surveys are duplicated because we want to
get vaing opinions and then some of them are very specific to the positions so principal survey was the last one that we sent out that was April14th asked for that back by the end of april kept that one open till June 22nd so almost another two months and this was because in the previous years we've had70 to75% response rate we really really
worked this year to try to get that response rate up and final ly had to close it so we could start analyzing but you can see there were 16 email reminder emails sent to principals asking them to please, respond to the survey. We ended up after there were a couple of duplicates we took out so496 completed surveys for almost48% response rate we had 228 of the districts and charter school systems
represented and again the margin of error was very small. the principal topics you can see here were divided into seven area And then for the superintendent survey we sent that out april7th ask for it back on April18th, kept that open till June 16th, um, our population size
obviously was the 258 we had to send 8 email reminders to superintendents or the nonresponding superintendents and then also made an additional5 calls to each of the nonresponders. I think after that it was early June and we were down to about 8 nonresponders so the chairs graciously called nonresponders for us and that got in all but two of the remaining ones. So we have 256 out of the 258 and you know
minuscule margin of error with that one andloriri will now take you through all of the questions as Julie said we're
Speaker 69
29:43
looking at the superintendent survey we thought it'd be helpful just to go over kind of do a brief summary of the responses that we received again just a reminder this is in tabs3 C1 through3C3 or all three principal superintendent and teacher surveys
and we begin with questions one and two which gives us a little demographic information about the responding superintendents it showed us that 98% of the respondents were non-ispanic,90% white and7% black or African American. then next section of questions that we ask questions3 through6 and you'll find that summarized in this and the next slide relate to
adequacy funding and it relates both to the foundation funding matrixx that Adrian made reference to that's in tab 1E if you want to see the different categories that are included in the calculation of foundation funding and also includes the rates for our our four categorical programs alternative learning environment enhanced student achievement which is sometimes called poverty money English learnarer funding and professional development the
as many of you know the foundation funding matrixx is based on a list of resources that were determined to be necessary for school districts to provide an adequate education so the survey asked the extent to which the foundation funding matrixx guides their decisions both in spending and in staffing and the majority of them said it at least moderately impacted their decision making on those two decision points on staffing and spending 17 % said that it extensively
guides their decisions on spending and 23% said that it extensively guides their decision on staffing. in addition we the survey did ask for each of the matrix line items they were asked if they were either not in need minimally in need a moderately in need or extensively in need for additional funding for any of those lines and the matrix line items for which the highest percentage of superintendents reported an extensive need for
additional funding with special education teachers operations and maintenance and transportation the foundation funding matrixx line item that had the highest percentage saying they were not in need of additional funding was librarian media specialists continuing with adequacy funding they were also asked if there was anything not included in that list of matrixxx resources that they think is important to providing an adequate education and the three most commonly
cited items were safety measures or s safety resource officers social and mental health workers and dyslexia services. superintendents were also asked to rate the extent to which each of those categorical funding streams that we've mentioned already met their district funding needs and English learnarer funding received the highest percentage of responses responses indicating it does meet their needs and alternative learning environment received
the highest percentage saying it doesn't meet their needs The next section of questions relates to mental health staffing in school districts. you can see questions 8 through 10 on page five of your report. they were specifically asked if they have mental health therapists on their campus and almost three quarter or71% of the superintendents reported that they do have therapists serving their students on their
campus of these hundre83 superintendents40% or73 of them so that they employ those noheal therapists directly 85% or 155 of the districts have outside organizations or agencies coming in and providing those services to their students and you can see the average FTE count for the directly employed is 2.1 and for those coming in from outside4.2 is the average FTE you can see that those percentages exceed 100 and
that's because there are54 districts that use both methodologies for the the next series of questions relate to staffing of nurses.uess11 and 12 on page 5 and6 of your report and they use a mixture of methodologies to employ nurses as well both direct employment as well as purchase of services or using a vendor contract,
to there's a large percentage of the superintendents that do actually directly employ 96% or 245 districts responding and an average FTE of4 in addition 10% or 26 districts purchase services nursing services and again we have a little bit of an overlap there are 23 districts that both employed them directly as a as well as useur services the next question relates to substitutes which is a line
within the foundation funding matrix and you can the the question was asked about the the payment for of substitutes for two broad categories. one is the the type of preparation that the substitute has and the other was for their length of tenure and the level of preparation includes certified, non certified but someone with a bachelor's degree and then non certified without a bachelor's degree and then there's two options on tenure were either
short or long term and typically it's my understanding that short term is30 days or less iss their tenure and long term is anything above that and the lowestd daily rate of pay that was reported by superintendents was 93 dollars50 cents and it was for non certified substitutes serving on a short term basis and conversely the highest daily rate of pay was 171 dollars76 cents and that was for certified teachers who were there on a long term basis.
the next series of questions relate to one of the categorical funding of programs that we'd mentioned alternative learning environments question 16 and 17 on page 7. They were specifically asked if they directly serve their ALE of students or if they have outside districts or educational service cooperatives that provide those services and about quarter of the districts responded that they do in fact pay some another district or co op to provide these services and
they reported that they spent over $21 million to serve 1,368 students at a per student cost of 1500 for43 superintendents were also asked a few questions about their career and technical education programs specifically we were they were being asked if they were using the secondary career centers that exist around the state to serve students that are pursuing career and technical education
and about three quarter of the district's reported that they do use the centers and there were two common reasons for why those districts that don't send them they report and one the most common was that they had enough CTE courses already being offered on their campuses and the second most common reason was the the distance to the center it exceeded the 25 mile distance because it takes up too much instructional time to transport students.
the next series dealt with school safety questions 22 through 24 and the survey provided a list of safety issues and they were asked about the extent to which they were concerned about these issues and the issues that they most often were concerned about were online and inperson bullying among students the survey also listed school safety measures that it that can be placed put in place to ensure a greater safety level
in the in school campuses and they were asked if either none some most or all of their campus buildings had these measures in place and the safety design that had the highest percentage reporting that they don't have it in place with safe rooms and the measure that had the highest percentage saying they did have it in place was video surveillance of their campus spaces they were also asked how they pay for school
resource officers and63% report that they cover the entire cost themselves34% say they share the cost with the local law enforcement agency and the remainder is covered entirely by local law enforcement another area that that we also the state provides funding for school facilities and so we had a section of of questions in the survey for school facilities questions 2826 through 28 and
the survey first tried to identify those districts that only have school buildings so we do have a few virtual only built school districts so this the next series of questions are only for those that are not virtual only so 99% essentially have school buildings that they could respond to these questions about when they were asked about the likelihood that they could address their facility needs and this would have been we were asking in the context of school year 2425, 13% said ir
only 13% said they would be able to fully address all of their facility needs when asked to name their greatest unmet facility need. they said that it was the warm safe dry kind of system projects including like electrical plumbing, heating ventilation those kinds of roofing systems that was the type of project that they had was their most unmet facility need. continuing with facilities
the superintendents were asked if the sun some most or all of their school facilities created a conducive learning environment and three quarter of the superintendent said most or all do create a conducive learning environment and the most frequent reason that they said that they buildings don't present that type of environment was building age we also the survey also asked about the if they thought
there was any additional oversight or state support that would be necessary for them to address facility needs and30% of them said they do want additional support and the most often cited need was for additional state funding. the there was the last question about what is the greatest impediment to them being able to meet their facility needs and they reported that the additional state funding or the I guess the lack thereof is what they reported
as their greatest The next three slides are going to deal with some district operation questions specifically relating to school district transportation programs first with the question asked was asked about their ability to recruit bus drivers and51% of the district's reported that it's extremely difficult for them to recruit bus drivers and 14% say that it's not difficult. in addition, when we asked
about retention they said 23% said retaining bus drivers is extremely difficult and 26% said that it's not when asked about the number of driver positions their district has 91% or 234 districts actually have driver positions some school districts or charter systems either don't have transportation programs or they use outside companies to provide their transportation and the average number of positions per
district was 15.7. We also asked about the pers the number of vacancies that they have and on average it was 2.8 FTs that they had vacancies for and65 that represents65% of the dish In addition, when when they were asked about the greatest barrier to recruiting drivers low wages was the most frequently cited a barrier and when asked if students are missing any instructional time. there were30 superintendents saying
yes that they they did have some students missing instructional time and for those 30 districts about77% of them said that it affected less than 10% of their student population and about 80 % of that those 30 districts said that the amount of time being lost was30 minutes or less the next section of questions relates to technology and digital learning questions43
through44. superintendents were asked about the sufficiency of their broadband in both in their districts and also in their communities and they reported that generally speaking the broadband is more reliable in their districts than it is in the community at large They were also asked about what the whether or not they allow their students to take homeschoolowed computers and tablets and a little over half said on average said that they
do allow that there were30 districts though that said that they don't allow any students to take home tablets or computers and49 allow all of their students to do so superintendents were also asked the extent to which students have accessibility to computers in their homes and 15% of the superintendents said that 25% or less of their students have access at home and 14% said that greater than75% of
their students have access to a computer at home. we're getting close to the end the next we have two more sections preschool and school choice and ums questions'47 through49 As districts about whether or not they offer preschool programs and68% of the districts did indeed offer a preschool program and 96% of those districts offered preschool to four year olds 81%
to 3 year olds and 19% to children younger than3. they were also asked the extent to which they charge tuition and a little over half at least charge some tuition and then there were41% of the districts that don't require the payment of any the last section of question or or it's just one question related to school choice superintendents were asked how many students who attended their district in 2324
year elected to use school choice in the2425 year and seven total districts had no students exercise the option for school choice but 228 had at least one student that left under the school choice option and for those districts losing students they lost an average of37 students that kind of concludes my overview of'd be happy to take any questions and Julie has a few more remarks to finish this up. en ator ll iv an you're recognized for a question
questions are more directed to my colleagues you're the administrators of the survey not the source of the survey so I get that but on page two on the administrative one it looks to me like we talked about spending and staffing about 80% of our superintendents don't place a real high priority on using the ir using the adequaccy information I'm on page two of the
superintendent survey at the bottom of the page down there where it says number3 spending and staffing so you have only 17% and23% use the matrix it appears used the matrix as very very important is that what it's telling me ga in not your fault you're just taking the survey. The, the question is referring specifically to the matrix and
the report actually and that's whyloriri pointed you toward the matrix but shows the level of funding that's provided for each line on the matrix and it's asking them are you following this as a guide so you're allotting it exactly this way and are you following the staffing that's in the matrix that's the get that but only 17%
say they place a high priority on that they follow it closely so that I'm disappointed in that the
other thing that a lot of the survey is based on how people feel do we like it not like it like a little bit like it a lot that that kind of a survey are there included in the survey are there some guidance or clear guidelines on how to rate that for example on the safety issue one could have one severe incident and nothing else but the incident was severe enough that they would give it a high rating. Another school may
have 20 incidents but feel like well they weren't that big so do you the question is is there guidance and what qualifies to be a high need low need or in between no
on us that's not your responsibility that's on us for making those comments it just concerns me Mr chairir that that some of these are very selective and with very little
guidance given and it seems like the the answers could cover a whole range I'm just not sure how valuable the survey is to gauge since we play such a high priority on on the system that we use it doesn't seem like others do thank you thank you ladies. thank you Senator Sullivanpresentative Mckenzie you're recognized for a question thank you Mr Chair. So I whenever you
were presenting I thought there'd be a little bit
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
49:11
of a a moment where we could jump in about the overarching questions before we got on the superintendent so some of these are directed at you relative to the the overarching scope of the surveys so this is just just general questions because remember we had some comments last last go around about the stimuli that we were giving to teachers or giving to educators and to remove any and all control bias what elements of the surveys changed Was it was there a new provider this year what was the type of like me not necessarily methodology but
was it modalbas like can you help walk us through if there was any substantive change in how they received the educator s received the survey as well as how they reacted or responded to it in
the process we use the same we're in a multiyear contract so we use the same survey software we did add the December survey which served the purpose of asking the questions so that would be the main difference if they selected the time period
that they wanted to take it. then it also allowed us to see which emails were not going through and do some additional cleaning that we had not been able to do last time and that was especially too with the teacher's emails Mr Chair and just some latitude I got a few rolling questions so and that's good
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
50:31
you don't have to name the vendor of the service but is it it's a hands on keyboardblr service it's
not an independent contractor or consultant correct?
Speaker 89
50:44
for the survey itself the right for the survey we put the survey together using software
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
50:50
yeah software vendor software is a service in terms of and I mean you you're respondent base fluctuates and know you mentioned you had a70% respondent base for the teacher portion years
past and it's in the teens now I think how are you able to directly certify the the emails for individual teachers if you're sending over 2 1000 emails to individual teachers how are you able to verify that
it's actually getting to them and that's not disproportionately affected your
respondent mix. The and that's where
we can see well we can't see if it's answered by the email that we sent it to. So and and that's that's some of the you know they worry about confidentiality so we send out a lot of emails saying that yes this is confidential we're just using the emails to make sure that so we can verify who we're getting the responses from. but
the and I'm I'm sorry I don't
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
51:52
how are you getting the32,000 emails to send to32,000
teachers we're we're getting the email addresses from ade where they're stored in the public school databases system and are was there
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
52:04
for this is less about teachers and more about administrators and principals but are you able to directly certify pardon me the individuals that are that are filling out the survey and this gets to a question of I know a lot of districts where the superintendent
works off of a cellphone and doesn't work behind a computer and they're kicking some of these things to you know deputy superintendents are you able to directly certify that if you're sending this to the superintendent of you know equipment or rogers or Bentonville that it's actually being completed by them? Well we
can see that it's coming from their email but we've also in the past they've always been parceled out with who can best answer. so so that's if it's coming from their district but they also receive a copy of all of
the responses at the end of the survey no participation
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
52:54
is compulsory like it everyone's able to so we like we had two superintendents that just for some
reason didn't check their spam filter or something but there's nothing that compels them to take
the survey they superintendents usually do feel compelled. I mean we always have I mean this is the first year we've not had a 100% response rate from them one of the superintendents was not was leaving the district where
they were from so I don't we but we again we made those calls. The other superintendent we never could reach email or phone call so and and I understand I'm just saying like there's
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
53:31
nothing that there's no lever against them if they don't participates'm just trying to our control bias and understand that we're reading from the same hymnal you mentioned something relative to teacher type. so you you held up that piece of paper and you said these are the different types of teachers were trying to pull out is that self ident ified in terms of you know library media specialist or special education teacher that you're asking them to self
identify and then you are creating segments of those population types correct margin of error you mentioned that in a few different other the summary slides that I'm just assuming that you're taking the percent of completed or percent of incomplete surveys over percent completed divided by the entire numerator which is
all participants correct I can send you the formula yeah that I used it's a little more
complicated than that and then can you help me understand the December you sent
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
54:25
out a survey relative to December saying when would you like to take it that went out to all of the respondent base. What was the the participation rate for teachers? It was I'd have to
Speaker 93
54:36
go back and look. it was um, about it wasn't I'm going to say it's50 to75% of what we got of
the responses that's healthy I do have one question relevant to superintendents if that's all right I'll switch on question 27
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
54:58
what is the likelihood that your school district will be able to fully addressed identified facility facility needs requiring immediate attention in 2024 or 2025. there was no explainer as to what you mean by immediate attention, correct it was the the the sentence that
I'm seeing here the stimuli I'm seeing here is all that the respondents saw correct? Yes I believe
Speaker 69
55:22
that's correct and so it did leave it up to their latitude to define immediate need. OK. and then and
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
55:29
this is just going to be like a a global statement but anything that has an anecdotal response space so you know what's one of the examples it's like you know, fill in the blank with what you think are additional comments obviously you know we don't want to we don't want to violate PII we want people to feel anonymized if that's the way you've conducted the survey but are we ever going to get a boiled up version of that across any and all of these surveys. That's in the reports we listed what other
responses were some are you know when relative to like what are the needs or what are the needs based on the matrix and let me get to it here yeah question five you know provide some of the examples not included in the matrixx safety and safety resources social mental health workers, dyslexia services but you had 254 respondents with I'm assuming a relative degree of separation between the answers are we gonna get any more of a drill down in that anecdotal we can provide that we
Speaker 112
56:30
we haven't prepared that but we can provide that would be
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
56:33
great just as we look at it you know and and again I know I'm gonna trust that you're you're moderating this very well but this doesn't give me the percentage of which in the first bullet point you know is that a preponderance of the preponderance iss it51% iss it 10% seem to have the exact same answer I just it helps us because as you know the matrixx is I think75 line items and to boil it up to to three is great it helps us with prioritization but it also you know I would I would assume that special education should have been on you know one a on
this list because it's only a categorical line item fund and not within the matrix so why why did that fall and is this like a I don't want to say a coordinate effort but are these you know three groups that are trying to push their needs to the top of the list as opposed to what we have seen over years as a need so if if you could
Speaker 107
57:18
provide that that'd be helpful that's fair and well if if there are
more questions but that does get to my the final slide of how these would be used and and these hopefully will generate more
questions from the committee members and our team will be you know as we present the reports he'll be glad to dig further into the data to provide thatonder. thank Represent duke you recognized for a question thank you, Mister
Chair
Unverified
57:43
Chair. thank you all for being here and thank
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
57:50
you for your work on this. I always find it fascinating. I Ials also wanted to say thank you for asking the teachers and that part that was a question that we had last year about are we getting them at the right
time and it looks like at least it seems to me that time when I saw that was like well that makes more sense from a teacher's standpoint rather than trying to do it in May or over the summer or in august so I appreciate that I I don't know if you felt that there was a improvement in that in the responses or if it was the same I mean I think there may be have to be some time there's a lot of issues there with teachers and responding to surveys
Speaker 117
58:24
that we have to overcome we we we thought the
response was was good. We didn't get the huge bump that we hoped it would provide but I think it
especially seeing how the other two were such a struggle to even get to where we'd been. we we thought that was helpful. I do but I do appreciate you all being responsive of that
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
58:43
and I think it was a good move and also your efforts in trying to get them to respond I I guess some questions I have along with that line is I think it would be helpful at least I would find it to be helpful if if we knew when those were going out because we all have our social media accounts and things that we can use to kind of let our you know the teachers because they have the
relationships with us and the administrators and so forth to be able to know yes you this is a trusted thing for you guys to participate in it is very important that we get your feedback so that we know even some of the likes some of the other issues that are on here whether they're legislation that needs to be used to address it so I don't know if that's something that could be done but I think that would be helpful some of the questions that I had also can you tell when you go through these the districts that have higher teacher participations are you all the able to break that down we can OK because I I
am curious on that you know I don't know how specific you can get with us on how many other members but I'm curious just even in my area how are my districts how in our co op area how are they responding to these surveys from the teachers the admin and superintendent so I I would think that would be helpful also can you tell me are your school board members notified in any way shape or form that any of these surveys are going out. No, we don't work with the school board members. So I
Speaker 64
1:00:02
don't know if there is a way that that notification can happen whether
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:00:09
through the department through the school board association through us or whatever but you know this is an important piece of information and they're ultimately responsible for managing their budgets and everything for their school districts if they're not getting this inf if we're not getting this information as we go into adequacy from their districts. I think they need to know that right? I think they need to know that these surveys matter and they need to be holding their superintendents accountable especially like the two that didn't fill them out you know holding them accountable to why are you not filling these things out? it
shouldn't have to take a call from us it should be the board who's that's fine but it should be the board that's holding them responsible for those things. same thing with the results of the surveys do the school boards get those in any way unless the superintendents give it to them? we do not
directly now send them to the school board. Now if we're requested to do that we can send it to the we'd probably have to work with the school board administrators to or association to get that to the members because I don't know
Speaker 64
1:01:10
that we have a ready list of all the school board members. Again I think that
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:01:14
just is that's helpful information for them just as much as it's helpful information to us so I don't know how we can do that and don't know if the chairs but how how we need to move forward with that but I think that as a former school board member I think that's information I would like and I know some of my school board members would like it they're serving now and on the school safety issue, um, when you have some of those questions on this some of these things I guess one I'm curious because the teachers weren't asked this correct? this was just superintendents
I'm kind of curious if it would look different but I'm also curious I don't know if you have access to it does this does this stuff does it correlate with the information that they're plugging in on discipline information into the state website because the state DE whatever has a website where they have discipline issues and they have to report it and I'm does does it correlate or do we compare that or do we see if that's that's a great question but that's something that when the request comes for me like
that that we'll be glad to look at that's not something we would
Speaker 105
1:02:15
just pick up and understand and try to work out but yeah that's a great question
Speaker 118
1:02:19
that's just because something I noticed here
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:02:22
and also just the question and and I don't know how new this is but I would venture to guess especially depending on how big your district is the superintendent's perspective on the sexual violence among students might be different or even the online bullying and may be a little bit different than what the teachers are seeing so maybe in the future we may want to wrap that into some of their questions too since
they are obviously mandated reporters but they're the ones closest to the kids more so than maybe sometimes the superintendents are especially the larger district my last question has to do with bus drivers and subs substitutes. so on those areas again can you see that by regions I mean I guess you can if you break it by districts um, again I'd be curious. I I would think there would be different needs in different regions. Some regions maybe are not having the same struggles as others although I think some of these are across the board um, but I if we were
able to see that again I would be I would like to see that for my area but even in comparison across the state I think that can give us some good perspective of where we are and where we're going in some of these things because I, I had a phone call last week on bus drivers that had a district that had not had trouble and now is having trouble with bus drivers as well and so and and it helps me be more informed with my members across the state what they're facing because sometimes I just see mine but I I need to know what's happening with my my colleagues across the state and their kids.
So if that information could be available I would I would find it useful. I think other members may as
Speaker 93
1:03:50
well yeah and that that leads into like there are there's a lot we can do with
this data. we don't feel like we can go in all kinds of different directions but we'd love to do that and I know the team would love to analyze so those are the type questions that we'll take back to the office and run with so thank you for for asking those. there are also a lot of
our questions have been consistent from year or from study to study so they're trendline questions that you might be interested in those comparisons among regions or size of districts there's a lot of that work that can be done. So yeah that's great and that's that's there's a lot of powerful information here that can be put together you and Mr Chair I'm curious and'm I'm assuming we're able to we have I know this has
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:04:39
been out here for a little bit but as we dig into a little
bit deeper be able to revisit these surveys and studies and come back and ask some questions in the months to come if we have something that kind of sticks out to us when we get home and look at it a little bit more detailed and get some more feedback so OK, thank you appreciate it thank you
all pointsentative I think that's a great reminder to yes don't let this just be a a static document it's it's a dynamic opportunity for us to all just sit with his data and look at it and find additional questions in my experience and I'm sure other members has been that our our our staff atblr is
is pretty outstanding and so if if we think of additional questions that these these lead into they do a great job of of finding the data and helping us understand that and getting more information as we go along so they do
not turn down requests for information from what I find. Representingbayberry
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:05:34
he recognized at the end of some of these little sections you'll have like a line that says OK I'm on page se ALE number 18. it says respondents were allowed to
make comments about the preceding topics so and and that's you know common theme on on each one of these questions so I'm curious do they do they actually leave written comments on every section or is that just hardly ever done and if so if it is done, if someone a legislator perhaps they they want to know more about ALE Can they come to you and ask for all of those written comments and can we see them if that's something that is of extra importance to that
Speaker 96
1:06:20
yes, not all of them leave comments on all of them but there are
a lot of comments that are put on there we go through and try to code them to report topic that they would apply to and then as the team works on their topical reports they will look at those comments to see if there are any themes that come through but we can try to quantify we need to be careful and make sure because sometimes people mention their school or have some identifying
information we'd want to be careful to redact anything before we just turn the comments over but but yeah we we use those and and all of the questions will come up during the topical reports and as they're applicable to to what they're writing or what the research says but this is what our teachers say. so you'll hear that context and you'll hear some some give and take there too but but if you have specific questions you'd like to see more
information about those comments just let us know. thank you p
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:07:30
re s ent Gonzalezworthy you recognized Yes, thank you for your report. very indepth report and I was just curious now I'm new so this is my first my first legislative session so I know that in light of the three different groups that are surveyed the superintendent's principals and teachers, I wondered if there are incentives for
completing the surveys I know a lot of times in survey research there is an incentive for filling it out either monetary or gift card or your name goes into a raffle. I don't know just I I'm just curious being that the largest group32,000 teachers teachers are really extremely busy etc. and I just I'm just trying to look at additional ways in which those surveys might be filled out. so that's my question
I don't have any I mean we'd have to have permission to do that and then probably need to check into the legalities for the bureau doing that but I mean that's a possibility that could be looked into obviously thank you are there additional questions from members thank you I'll let you
Chair
Unverified
1:08:43
go ahead and move on to oh sorry, Senator flowers you are recognized it took me a minute to catch
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:08:51
up because I you were referring to the things
in the survey and I just realized that's in them this binder I
was trying to go with the scrolling of the this computer but anyway I heard a couple of things that I would like more information since you are dealing with evidencebased information to provide us with the report that
will help us determine adequacy amm I saying that correctly so when you talk about a couple of things one is school facilities and I saw in there where maintenance and operation funding wasn't considered adequate by I don't know which group teachers superintendents or principals but
I'd like to know more about that because there were some other reference to facilities but I'm concerned I mean I think initially we had the school dude and so we expected there to be use of a computer in the classrooms and different places in the school to say we need this
corrected or attended to something and I'd like to know more about that the training or I guess they would be referred to professional development courses or something but in my experience going around looking at schools and stuff it just doesn't seem to be great attention to maintenance
of the school buildings and the grounds and I'm wondering what kind of requirements are made you make a distinction between substitute teachers that are certified and those the short term or long term that have a college degree and certified or whatever what about the maintenance people ument flowers there is a division of
Speaker 69
1:11:28
public school academic facilities and
transportation and I think they do provide technical support to districts and it is a required a requirement of districts that they participate and it was initially the provider was school du they have transitioned to a new provider now whose name I don't recall the the name but they are supposed to put in all of their maintenance re information what have a schedule of what's to be maintained and it does impact their eligibility or at least a
prioritization in the funding decisions that the division makes when they're trying to make funding decisions about how much facilities money is distributed. so that is something that is being monitored and there is as I understand it there is some support to districts who need help in making sure that they're putting in all of that information into that computer system so the division can verify that they're staying on top of their maintenance issues well
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:12:34
well does the legislature or this committee get a report from facilities and
transportation division because I haven't seen it and and I don't I won't remember the month
Speaker 69
1:12:45
but maybe Emily can help us but they did they have made a presentation somewhat recently and I'm sure they could answer and respond to questions that you might have about that process and which districts or you know if there's a particular issue that districts are
struggling in maintaining either their documentation. Sometimes I think it it can be a matter of districts just not entering the information in the computer but with
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:13:15
the report that you the the the reference in this report to not enough
funding for maintenance and operations and then something about facilities it just doesn't line up and I'm asking the chair now do we get a report? I don't remember
Maybe I missed the meeting for facilities and transportation division people to come up here do we get that so theoctober6th meeting we had a
presentation on that so we can report there was a presentation so I
Speaker 140
1:13:48
believe you can go back and look at the
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:13:53
documents that will be online for that or also watch the live stream should have that information
yes ma'am October th ok and the other
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:14:05
question I have it was concerning the bullying online and in person and I didn't see anything and I don't know if I missed that meeting on the students that may be referred to juvenile court or that are in the juvenile court system as a dependent neglected child or either
some thinn's case referred by the school and my experience has been that the school should know because there's a tie between that juvenile court and the school and so you have people going out there they might be taking urine tests from the kids or samples or checking on their attendants or testing different things like that so is that in this report
Speaker 96
1:15:09
or does the survey even touch on that this was a question that
we actually picked up from I believe it was a survey that in national Center for Education Statistics send out to superintendents and we tried to duplicate some of their questions in some instances so we could compare to national data in when we got to the reporting period. So but we
haven't I don't believe we know we didn't have any questions about finns or we've done
Speaker 105
1:15:45
some research and we again we can do some research into that but that was not a topic
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:15:52
of the survey question. Well
I would like to know or at least have a question included for these educators administrators to respond to because I remember from this past session we were
in a uproar about sending kids that had some behavioral issues to special locations and special school room or something it it was vetoed by the governor thank god but I think that's something that we need to have some information on you have what do you call that human services they have attorneys and they keep a list
of these dependent neglected kids and families that appeared before the juvenile court so I just think that we need to know how many of these children these students are having to come from troubled backgrounds and appear in juvenile court or you know ALC the administrative office of the courts they have forms and stuff that have to be submitted by lawyers or the
court personnel about what kind of cases are coming up there who the participants are what is the reason for the child being in court so if we could pursue something like that I think that would be helpful I would like to know I don't know about the other committee members but I'd like to know because I believe in my district and as practicing attorney when I was more active it was more than what I thought
should have been appearing in the courts and it seemed like the state just we weren't addressing it as a legislative body so I would like to know more about that so I don't know how you would develop the question but like I said there are some reports that are filed with the administrative office of the courts then DHS ought to have some things and you have nurses at the school or you have
vendors or whatever these nurses have to deal with that if you call it a you said you changed the name of a guidance counselor or something to school counselor so what does the school counselor have to deal with how many cases because when it when you go to the funding page and I
don't remember it's hard for me to like I said I just found what you were talking about when he
was referring to page se. I'm scrolling up on this thing
this has got no I'm used to getting a report that I can take home and look at and you're saying we can't take it home the physical one and these screens are jumping all around so it's kinda so we can't we we can't take the binder home that's it's
Speaker 145
1:19:04
just a recommendation to leave the boundary. how the content
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:19:07
within the binder we can certainly get to you in a format that can be taken home should you need another copy of that that's easy person mean these computers
jump around the screen is jumping around my eyes are jumping around but I'd rather have a piece of paper in my hand looking at so
Speaker 146
1:19:26
if I could get a report copied I'm sure the
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:19:31
staff would be happy to do that. yes ma'amsenator but hope you understand where I'm coming from and what kind of information I'd like to see and whether the school actually when they refer those fins down there I think that's $100 a pop. so are they paying for that where where's that money coming from?
I think it would be a really good idea for us to sit down with you and and some of the information I've heard you want we could probably get from ALC and and the more we can get quantitative data we like that that and there but there may be some things that do have to be asked in a survey format that were was not covered in the adequacy survey questionnaire but that we could you know work with you on on doing
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:20:21
for sure well I was flipping to try to find the I think it
was in something else about the money it was a two ppage document one was on the front and back page. I don't know if you could just the matrixx what page was that on
Speaker 148
1:20:37
that's in your bier one in your binder so in this
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:20:53
I don't see anything here that dealt with expenses for referrals to juvenile court what what the districts are paying for or are they funded for the purpose of paying these expenses these fans
fees Senator just in the interest of time because they've got additional
reports to present to us today.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:21:24
could we maybe come up with a list of questions that that staff at Blr would be able to to provide for you that that are ancillary to all the information that's already in here and maybe they can get that specific information to you because
I want I wanna be respectful of their time and other members understand and and but I'm new to the committee and you know this one and a quarter ppage matrix and other funding s summary
I just want to know what what these things go to I mean I'm confident that the information
is is likely out there and and and the professionals at the bureau do an outstanding job of providing additional context should we need that so let's go ahead and have it that's all I'm saying and I'm
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:22:10
sorry that you know I just I leave to ask questions to understand what it is I'm dealing with. I think that's outstanding. I think the more questions the better for all of us you very much
right you're recognized to continue your presentation we're going to finish up. I have this last slide if you have questions for further areas of research this is the adequacy team here so please if you want to take a picture of that they're all sitting back there as well so you can go talk to them afterwards and umlori and I are not on this list because we're both retiring so everyone wasn't trying to push all them
work on other people but anyway that' s the we'll be glad and its and while we're here we'll also be glad to help research any further questions that you might have Thank youlourri thank you Julie see no additional
questions from members members we will move on to item F with Secretary Oliva, Secretary Oivvy if you
would please come introduce yourself for the record and he'll provide us an update on the early childhood commission the work relative to the childcare vouchers which I know is very important for a number of people on this committee as well as statewide.
Good afternoon Jacob Oliva Secretary of Education for the great state of Arkansas and first want to thank you for allowing me to come back and give an update and some of this updated think will be helpful some of it may be frustrating because I think the last time that I was here to provide an update we had some concerns about a federally funded grant most referred to as the SRA grant the school readiness assistance grant and we had received a reduction in funding in 1/4 quarter we were working with our federal counterparts and our
congressional delegation to kind of get a better handle on why the formula has changed what can we do moving forward but since then since our last meeting we all know the government's been closed and they're still closed so it's hard to get any information from the federal agencies because there's nobody there that's able to respond so that's I just want to start off by saying there's still a lot of work to do there but we've fortunately been in touch with our congressional delegation who's been 100% committed to working with the
state to make sure that if there's any dollars that can be updated allocated competitively asked for they stand ready to work with us and make sure that we can make that obtainable for the state so there there's there's kind of one updates like I really can't give you much of an update because there hasn't been yet an update and we're going to continue to work and move forward. The the other update that I wanted to talk about in in share with the legislation
is around the recommended proposed rates if you remember when we looked at kind of the sustainability of this federal program our agency knew that we were currently spending about6 to8 million dollars more a month than we were receiving in the program's long term sustainability was in great jeopardy and so we put out some proposed recommendations for reimagining reimbursable rates and looking at the implementation of copays we heard from a lot of
the providers out there saying that this would be really hard on such a short amount of notice to be able to implement and sustain and as far as to consider putting a pause on the implementation of the proposed rates from an october 1st implementation to November 1st if you remember I spoke at I think it was joint eddittee around the6 to provide an update on how the rates are calculated what is the overall state and health of the federal grant why are we in the predicament that
we're in and then also heard from a lot of the legislatures that they they wanted to make sure we were listening to the field and getting input and if we're gonna make changes that it reflects stakeholder feedback and so we made a commitment not only to the providers but to the legislature to do just that so the following week after joined starting all the way back in October 15th we called a special early childhood commission so there's an established early child commission we call a special
session and invited stakeholders that we have heard from and and in fact they represent a lot of different groups and they were wonderful to work with to be a part of this conversation to start digging into the reality because there was just a lot of confusion and a lot of wondering a lot of misunderstanding and want to make sure everybody understood what is the program what is the intention of the program what is the funding amount of the program so that workgroup started having some really good dialogue and the early learning commission as well as the folks in the office
of early childhood were able to listen to providers provide up to date information they reviewed budget they reviewed the proposed plans and made a commitment to seek some of the stakeholders feedback to say maybe they have some better ideas maybe they have some different strategies we're willing to to make sure we get this right it's it's an unfortunate situation we still have a lot of work to do that started the dialogue and then that following week there was already a regularly established commission meeting on the 21st
so during that meeting the department proposed several recommendations to the commission on some of the feedback that we heard from the stakeholders so the commission wisely decided to create an emergency task force to look at a lot of this in a much deeper situation to make a recommendation back to the commission so at thatoctober 21st meeting the early learning commission established that emergency task forcece and some of the members on the commission participated in the
task force asked for different representatives because we want to make sure that it was reflective and included voices from all over the state on the twentyeightth the office of early childhood hosted the task forcece and facilitated some discussions and gather different recommendations and was able to do some follow up feedback on questions that they wanted more information about before and then on October30th this the
the task forcece commission formed and presented their recommendations to the early childhood commission through kind of a zoom format because it was hard to just keep facilitating in person meetings so we had to do some hybrid so we're able to have the early learning commission hear the recommendations directly from the task forcece the early commerci early childhood commission received those recommendations and then unanimously voted to accept them and turn them to our agency for
review which I know a lot of this timeline's been kind of just going quick but we received that formal request from the early childhood commission I wanna say Friday afternoon we wanted to verify a lot of the data and a lot of the information because it there's a lot of moving parts when you're looking at changing and making some proposals and then just kind of that long term sustainability. so we received that in in basically there's I wanna say there's about if I had to chunk it say maybe3 major
buckets that we received from the task force in the early childhood commission so the first thing I wanna say is I think all of the recommendations that they've recommended our agency is in full support of and full agreeance of and we want to implement them there's some things that we feel like we can do right away November firstt like as far as the reimbursement rates some of them I think we may need to just tread cautiously and make sure that the program is getting the
intended results before we make some of those changes and we'll have to continue to monitor moving forward but I think when I look at some of the biggest concerns was making sure that we had reimbursement rates that recognize quality and that seemed to be a big deal from the field and it's a big deal for our agency you know and and for these folks because they've worked hard and they want to get recognized for their investment in making sure we have high quality learning opportunities for our children and so they established some new
rates so it looks a little bit different than what it was and it's a little bit different from what we recommended and I'm not gonna go through and look at all their recommendations but they said if we establish rates and this magnitude we can still have that base structure while having a different tiered system for quality and we fully accept those rates in fact we are going to notify providers if they haven't already been notified I know we have a website or excuse me not a website a webinar schedule with providers tomorrow to discuss but we're gonna use their
recommended tiered reimbursement rates which I think was one of the biggest things that they wanted to make sure we got across the the the finish line because that was a big big deal for the sustainability of the programs and the investments that they made one of the things is that they also recommended is making sure the rates on the table remain mostly unchanged from what they do we're going to adopt those looking at the different tiers and then those differentials to
recognize long term sustainability we feel like we're able to do that and then I can explain a little bit why why later there's also a lot of conversations around copays and making sure that if we do establish copays which they all rere that we need to get into a system and that was part of the the spirit of the gran is that it's it's a joint effort from the family and from the the providers to make sure that we provide access is they want
to make sure that the copays are calculated based on the bass reimbursement rate and not on the quality enhancement differential so we agree with that so that way if if a program's better it shouldn't have a more negative impact on the parent so we're gonna establish that one of the goals that they want to get to and and like I said we don't disagree we just want to make sure we can get there towards the end is make sure that there's not a copay for families under6 0 % of that median threshold I think we agree with it right now
it's at40% that's one of the ones that I think we're gonna monitor and see if we can move forward into getting that over time maybe in the next month or two we can accomplish that goal. some of the other feedbacks for eligibility was looking at minimum workout requirements being reestablished at30 hours we're going to approve and accept those recommendations. there's some other kind of nuances in there around like lifetime benefit limits like there there's a a policy and I don't know if it's in rural or
this program about eliminating families for a se2 month lifetime limit meaning that a family can't be in a program for more than 72 months which impacts families of multiple kids and they would like to see that be removed I agree I don't don't know why there was that limitation it's just you know we're learning a lot about this program and grant we want to serve as many students and families that we can. they also recommend our agencies's recommendation to maintain the4 million dollars in
cuts for for a different cont contracts with quality because they understand that we need to do that but we also need to keep continuing monitoring grants over the next few months so there there's been a lot of really good conversations I think you know we we may have kind of hit the panic button on early learning but it was needed and it's it's it's it's it's evolved into a great conversation around what are the types of programs that we want to have for our children and families and then what is it
that we want to invest in as a state I do want to remind everybody that this is just one grant right? like this is one federal grant and one federal program that relates to early learning there are a lot of other grants that are early learning commission needs to keep reviewing so part of those recommendations that we received from the task force is that they want to keep meeting right? We agree we want to keep meeting this is not out of the woods and in fact if we adopt the proposed
recommendations it's7 million dollars more than what we had budgeted, right? like when we built those original recommendations there there's a7 million dollars kind of gap that we're gonna have to monitor between now and the end of this grant cycle to make sure we get and and sometimes it's hard to factor out or you know map out what the reimbursements look like because it changes like every reimbursement cycle so when when I say we're not out of the woods yet like this is like just to kind of get
us through this year we still need to meet with with these folks they've given some great ideas suggestions of feedback we're committed to doing this in a transparent manner because we want to get it right but also just want to remind folks and I think I wrote them down but there's we gotta have conversations around Headstart as well you know what I mean? like that's another federal program that's had some impacts and we still don't know the impact of the preschool development grant in fact
I met this morning with headadart providers that were at a conference and started talking to them and and they have concerns too about the programs that they're receiving in their federal grants and the changes in the rates that that they're getting and that's not administered by our agency you know I mean the this is like feds to providers and all all of these early learning programs in AC and do we want to invest in that as we get ready to meet as a legislature like what do we want to invest in in our state programs all of these programs we're we're gonna ask
our early childhood commission to keep this battle rhythm up, right? Keep it going, use a different task force members so that we can make sure we're ahead of any funding cliffs or any future obligations that we may not be aware of because this is too important of a space to get right and we're gonna keep moving forward till we get it right but I think when we look at the recommendations that we received from the task forcece and our
early learning commission they're really solid we we support them we're gonna start phasing in the ones that we can do right away while looking at implementing the rest long term and then when the the government opens up that'll give us an opportunity to to see about getting some additional investments into these programs as well so with that chair I'd be happy to answer any questions thank you Secretary Senator Sullan you're recognized for a question thank
you so I assume your quality issues are related
to educational processes. So when the when the early childhood commission, did they submit to you what their outcomes were currently under the former program you know so that's a good
question and and when when I when I talk about quality theres there's a program called Better Beginnings that's been pretty established in this state and they use different screening like one is the environmental reading scale that collects that data to mes into
the definition quality as well as other investments to get to those tiers so our agency has to review and monitor and make sure that when they're submitting those documentations saying that they've hit these levels that they are in fact they did submit some outcome
data and we're negotiating how that works out the second question would be and maybe a consideration. some type of a trigger right now the state is gonna start assuming some of the funding that the feds are cutting
so I just want to be careful that if the feds are reassume that cost that we get to back out so and dont want to be clear
right now the state's not assuming any funding for this program right so we we put all the all the dollars that this grant receives and and and I don't have the exact amount but I want to say it was around70 dollars or 80 million dollars. The workforce worked under the parameters of this is the pot of money right so if if if this is the pie right I like to say if
everything's a pie you can slice up that pie a bunch of different ways some pieces might be bigger, some might be smaller but if the pie doesn't grow we only got to work in that pie and that that's what they're operating on because we we need this program to be self sustaining on its
own and that and I appreciate that and that's a tough effort to make on both sides of that coin but I would just caution if they we if we start dedicating dollars from the state that are coming from and are even reallocating dollars
from one section to another section that there's a trigger in there that says if the feds come up with more money are the feds engage more that we go back and we're not reconfiguring based on what our needs are ok thank you thank you Mr chairir. p re s ent ative painter you recognize thank you Mr
Speaker 166
1:40:09
Chair. I just would like to request if we can maybe the department send us what the secretary just said
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:40:17
over those recommendations and maybe the timeline so that I think it would be important in this committee especially when we go back home and visit with these folks that we can kind of update and help the department get that out. I think that would be really helpful. Yeah have we can send it we I just literally typed some
notes on the way and'd be happy to email them to you of course. Represent Mayberry I just personally wanted to say thank you thank you for listening to the
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:40:44
people with the boots on the ground who really
were concerned about everything that was taking place and thank you for setting up the task forcece the smaller committee, the work session just very, very much appreciated. moving forward, I'm I'm glad you're going to continue to monitor. I trust that that's going to take place. I I know it will. I sometimes believe that sometimes something bad happens so that good things can come out of it and I can see all this is really a positive thing. one of the things that I truly did love about the Larnes Act was that it was moving it
from DHS to Department of of Education because then we're looking at early education as part of the education system so that kids are reading by3rd grade so I I'm just just throwing the idea I know that we've had a session where there's been a focus on K12 with the Learns Act. there was last session of focus on access, you know higher ed I'm hoping that maybe there's a similar type of idea going into this next legis legislative session which I will not be
around for but this has been something many of us have been kind of trying to to get going. we've had some tax cut ideas for businesses that want to support their own workers with childcare that we've not been able to get through, you know, the revenue and tax committee. I know even the Department of Commerce I think this session had one that they were trying to get through you know also some some easier ways for those early
childhood educators to get more education themselves so that they know more of what they can do just a bigger bigger look at the whole thing. I think we're you've addressed some of the immediate oh no we need to fix this right now but you know I I I I have not talked to Representative Ggarner. She, you know has the the early childhood education subcommittee if we I'm on that committee if we can help in any way. I I think I think what
has happened can be a really good thing for our youngest Arkansans. so thank you. So if if I could respond I think that's
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:43:04
a great idea right like we we've looked a lot of K12 we looked at higher ed and and
Speaker 174
1:43:09
maybe it's part of the early child commission maybe it's just a committee what what are some of those best practices and investments that other states are making that we know have a good return on investment like you're talking about like these riesshare models and and this is our chance to define quality right?
like as we're looking atoff's observation tools and the data that leads to professional development and curriculum and standards and and it it's it's probably a ripe space right like if if we're gonna do it let's do it right right like we don't want to just piecemeal a program let's make a true investment early learning so I I'd be willing to engage in folks and I know you're saying thank you to us and and me but I I can't take the credit it's really the team at the office of of early childhood and umri
Barnes and Ashly and Sacy Smith and they they work nights and weekends to get as much information as we can to work with these providers because they really care and they're committed and the whole team there is really the the the ones that if any commendations need to be given they're they're the ones that deserve that credit and we're just we're just really fortunate to have people out in the field that really care about this space. people at our agency they care about the space the legislative delegation that cares about the space and the state, right? and as we make this investment in early learning
it's only going to make us better so let's let's just keep the conversation going thank you it's amazing what can
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:44:35
happen when people come together even with different ideas when they start talking and conversing so thank you thank you Stacy Smith back there. mckenzie you recognize you just a quick because I missed the beginning part of your
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
1:44:49
your I'll go back and watch it tonight yeah I know yeah anytime that you come down here
it's the best part how many closures have there been since I mean as as
the licensing agency I'd be making a bold assumption that you would be aware and that was a big big thing we heard about in that kind of emergency subcommittee hearing we we
had to your knowledge the best of your knowledge, how many closures of early to my knowledge I haven't heard of
Speaker 174
1:45:13
any closures because of this program. Now I'm not saying that that hasn't happened right? I we just may not know about it. I've heard about closures and headadart programs recently large ones which is a different grant but some of these
grants tie to other grants and I you
know I don't think one grant correlates
Speaker 174
1:45:31
to a closure versus a combination of all kinds of challenges that we're facing because some of our providers may receive participate in SA some may not we we have private providers that might not participate in any programs that are closing just because they can't sustain the the cost of increases in maintenance or or providing you know the care for children so I'm sure our our agency has some data maybe at a future
meeting I can get a much more detailed report
and and provide that to you because we don't want to hear about closures we want to hear about expansions and I don't either and it kind of
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
1:46:10
builds the second part and then I'll go back to the first part again but in again I apologize because I had to walk out of the committee room but we are implementing some form of a copay currently. yes sir that is correct because you know part of the the big underlying discussion back to the first point was you know distribution of copays or creation of a copay system and then a world without the same
level of tiered funding for SRA was gonna lead it was it wasn't correlation it was causation it was going to lead to closures so I I mean and this isn't a a directive I'm just asking because of how big and ferocious that that commentary was I'd love to know in like real time how many closures we're seeing or an access to information via dashboard and then how many unenrollments we're seeing as well because you know that was with that twoA person everyone that came and testified or that you know corresponded with the committee was if this happens we will close and so you know we want to make sure we're chewing
that up in real time as we get into the next obviously fiscal session we're not gonna be able to address this as full as we would a full general session but that what I'm really getting at here is this feedback loop is we you know we hear a lot about a lot about things in a fever pitch and then it dies and then we implement these plans and the sky does not fall but it's important for us to make sure we're we're monitoring it as best we can and I don't you know, I know Stacy's back there but I don't have access to this information day of and I don't want to have you come back every time we meet during adequacy to to give us these updates so even
anything electronic would be good that's that's helpful to
Speaker 174
1:47:35
to hear what is important of value to the legislature and I'm sure we can put something together and get into a pretty settled battle with them with sharing that that's great Represent garner you recognize thank you Mr Chair
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:47:48
and I too just want to thank the department and the staff were amazing to work with with every one of the teams that we that we worked with. also want to thank the providers they were amazing. they were so smart and so so
dedicated they too spent nights and weekends and zoom calls and umpresentative Mcenzie one of the things that was a wonderful thing I think that happened is that it pulled together a lot of the providers across the state and so that they're now communicating more with each other so we should be able to get that information more quickly and that's my hope is that we'll be able to get a lot of that that information real quickly but I think some of the things that we talked about originally that that could have c caused closures more
closures especially for those higher level of qualities I think we'll be alleviated many of those things will be alleviated with with some of these recommendations and also the I just want everybody to know that everybody sacrificed that nobody was there to make sure that somebody else took took the brunt of the cuts. Everybody worked together to make sure that first of all the parents
were taken care of and that there would be schools for their kids to go to or centers that the programs that their kids would be going to. So everybody worked together and the staff could not have been better to bring the information that they needed and that that that we had to have to make some of those changes so I too want to thank you guys and for those providers that are listening they were amazing and to watch that to watch that procedure to watch those meetings was amazing and it was something
that I hope we can do more across the board with government and I certainly hope we can continue to do that with with our early childhood and certainly the committee is willing to do whatever we need to do. We had a caucus at one time that we certainly could bring back. I think there are a lot of ways the commission is all in you know that so I mean I think that there are a lot of folks that are willing to help and the more folks that we can get involved the the better off our decisions so so thank you again for everything that you guys have done and and thank you and
especially to you senator English, I mean you you were at every meeting right that sometimes those weren't fun meetings to walk into so we we appreciate your willingness to to be there and
Speaker 174
1:50:19
and be knowledgeable and in in a voice especially representing the legislature that hey we're all in this together and I I agree whether it's caucus committee just standalone meetings we have not arrived right like we we've made a first big step I think in the right direction. We have not arrived and
as we keep walking down this path for quality, there's a lot of more opportunities so let let's just keep it going and and I agree the providers have been wonderful to work with seeing no additional questions, Secretarylibe, thank you
for your time and see no additional business joint education is adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration of a Motion to Approve the October 6, 2025, and the October 7, 2025, Meeting Minutes [Exhibits B1-B2]
C. Consideration for adoption of Interim Study Proposal (ISP) [Exhibit C1-C3]
D. Overview of 2026 Adequacy Study Binders - Adrienne Beck, Legislative Research Lead, Bureau of Legislative Research (BLR)
E. Overview of Adequacy Study Educator Surveys [Exhibit E]
F. Update on the Arkansas Early Childhood Commission’s Work on Child Care Assistance - Jacob Oliva, Secretary, Arkansas Department of Education
G. Other Business
H. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Senator Dan Sullivan Chair
Unverified
Representative Keith Brooks Chair
Unverified
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
Speaker 28
Speaker 26
Speaker 31
Speaker 36
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
Speaker 39
Speaker 69
Speaker 73
Speaker 81
Speaker 89
Speaker 93
Speaker 112
Speaker 107
Chair
Unverified
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
Speaker 117
Speaker 64
Speaker 105
Speaker 118
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Speaker 96
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
Speaker 140
Speaker 145
Speaker 146
Speaker 148
Speaker 166
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 174