Education Committee - Senate and House
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Speaker 2
0:00
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've got some
Good afternoon, our joint education will come to order, members and guests if you would please stand with me and Representative Meeks is going to start
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
2:38
us in prayer. we 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 thank you representative members thanks for being here today we're glad be joined by a few other extra guests or members who are with us have something going on at 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 october 6th and october 7th we have a motion we have a second all in favor say aye all opposed that has been adopted on to item c item c we have consideration
for adoption of a couple interim study proposals uh first off are there any questions on any of these isps uh represent mckenzie
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
3:29
i have questions on isp 2025082 by senator kroll uh senator kroll i
don't believe is here uh so we will pass over that uh for this month and we
will take it back up next month any additional questions on the other two represent gonzalez-worth or represent barnett see no questions i need a motion to
adopt those two isps i have a motion is there a second we have a second all in favor say aye all opposed those have been adopted all right members moving on to item d the adequacy study binders so everyone 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 agree with me on this as well. My ask is that you really engage in this process. It's a very complex uh lengthy process and this binder is going to 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 uh if you would please make sure 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 Adrienne Beck to go ahead and ladies if all three of you would just go ahead and introduce yourselves
and we'll just roll right through what you have for
Speaker 28
5:34
us today. Adrienne Beck with the bureau. Lori Bowen with policy analysis with the bureau. Julie also with the bureau.
Speaker 26
5:44
Great, so I'm also on the policy analysis and research team here at the Bureau, and as many of you know, the
Speaker 31
5:50
House and Senate Education 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 will 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 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 going to 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 in 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 1c excuse me this is the current definition of adequacy which was the most recently updated by the house and senate education committees 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 for public schools during the next by any home 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 funds 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 presentations that takes us to tab 2 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
appendices 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 tab 3c and this goes through 1 through 3 these are the educator survey results
for the superintendent principal and teacher surveys and that is inclusion of the binders but I'm
Speaker 36
10:45
happy to answer any questions on that senator flowers you
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
10:56
recognize this may be for 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 at the documents on the arc leg
website all the documents are listed within the meeting for today's meeting will continue to be available
yes ma'am so the binder will be
Speaker 31
11:23
online i believe that the guiding documents are with the current online agenda i'm not sure about the rest of materials but the reports and presentations will absolutely be included with meeting agendas for subsequent meetings and then we'll be happy to provide the any appendices items supplemental to those as well
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
11:43
so we can look up those guiding uh ones under tab one now yes they should be with if
Speaker 31
11:49
you go to the meeting agenda and the documents tab with the agenda you should find those there so we
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
11:56
always have to reference the meeting agenda of today as of right now yes that might
Speaker 31
12:02
be something we could possibly try to add to we have another portion of the website that has all of our adequacy materials in one spot so we can look into including those there to make those easy more easily accessible
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
12:15
well the reason i'm asking 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
Speaker 31
12:35
also be happy to provide that email that material to you 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
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
12:46
well at least with the guiding documents since especially the statutes and the statutory requirements it's not very long but at I'd like a hard copy of those documents so I can we would be happy to email those to you see have those okay
a courtesy should there be anything that anyone needs then feel free to request that of the chair request that of staff
and just like any other typical committee meeting we'll make sure that that's sent out
as needed thank you additional questions see no additional questions thank you miss Beck we will move on to item E in the agenda. Ms. Bowen and Ms. Holt
to present the surveys. Thank you representative 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 last three or four 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 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 education. 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, what's to be considered, and also goes on to say how to do it. And one of those criteria is 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 school-level data. And that's, as I said, it includes funding, it includes expenditures, it includes 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 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 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 to make sure that the responses we're getting from the educators are not biased
and that they're valid 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 educators' information. So 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, as 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 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 used the term guidance counselor, and we heard back several times that guidance counselor is not really the term that's used, it's school counselor. So I imagine in the survey next go-round, those terms will be changed. A lot of our questions call for Likert-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 Likert scale responses are ordered in the same way, and as you can see on this example question 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-ended responses where they're free to write as much as they want. And again, this is often where we can see, well, we need to make sure we have reworded this question to be more clear or we are keeping up with the terminology. For 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 survey, 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. In about 2010 or 2012 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. It was 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 in 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 are recorded in EPSCAN. 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 their survey. And, 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 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 going to talk about some of the background of all three surveys or the overview of all three surveys. And when we get to the superintendent's survey, Lori 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 at 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 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 good. You can see we sent 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 27th. 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 teacher's survey open for responses until February 24th. We sent four teachers, received four reminders. The reminders only went to non-responders, so teachers who had already filled out the survey were not being bombarded. By the end of February, there were a little more than 48, 30 completed surveys,
but there were some duplicates. There were also some, and we have a list, and we sent this on the surveys, of the classroom teachers we were looking for, which included special ed teachers, ALE teachers, K-12 teachers, including art, music, and PE. Basically, everyone but nurses and teachers' aides. 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 of 48-30. And that represented 15% of the 32,702 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%. If the ones that actually opened the survey and looked at it, it was a response rate of 39%. This flyer, Marisa White in our office, designed and sent out,
and we sent this to both 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 it was amazing that we got calls asking if we were real. And then I noticed, like, even on my LinkedIn 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. 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 minus 1%. the um topics um our questions were divided into six these six topics for teachers um so you can
see those and some of the topics among the um surveys are duplicated because we want to get varying 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 april 14th um asked for that back by the end of april kept that one open um till june 22nd so almost another two months and this was because um in previous years we've had 70 to 75 percent response rate we really really worked
this year to try to get that response rate up and finally 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 so 496 completed surveys for almost 48 percent response rate we had 228 of the districts and charter school systems represented and again the margin of error was very small
um the principal topics you can see here were divided into seven areas and then for the superintendent survey we sent that out april 7th asked for it back on april 18th. Kept that open till June 16th. Our population size obviously was the 258. We had to send eight
email reminders to superintendents or the non-responding superintendents and then also made an additional five calls to each of the non-responders. I think after that it was early june and we were down to about eight non-responders so the chairs graciously called non-responders for us and that got in all but two of the remaining ones so we have 256 out of the 258 and a you know minuscule margin of error with that one and laurie will now take you through all of the
Speaker 69
29:35
questions. As Julie said, we're looking at the superintendent survey. We thought it would 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 tabs 3C1 through 3C3, 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-Hispanic,
90% white, and 7% black or African-American. The next section of questions that we ask, questions three through six, and you'll find that summarized in this and the next slide, relate to adequacy funding, and it relates both to the foundation funding matrix that Adrienne 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
four categorical programs alternative learning environment enhanced student achievement which is sometimes called poverty money english learner funding and professional development as many of you know the foundation funding matrix 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 matrix 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 uh decision points on staffing and spending 17 percent said that it extensively guides their decisions on spending and 23 percent 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 minimal minimally in need 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 was special education teachers operations and maintenance and transportation the foundation funding matrix 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 matrix resources that they think is important to providing an adequate education.
And the three most commonly cited items were safety measures or 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 learner funding received the highest percentage of 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 5 of your report. They were specifically asked if they have mental health therapists on their campus, and almost three-quarters or 71% of the superintendents reported that they do have therapists serving their students on their campus.
Of these 183 superintendents, 40% or 73 of them said that they employ those mental health 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 outside, 4.2 is the average FTE. You can see that those percentages exceed 100, and that's because there are 54 districts that use both methodologies for serving their students.
The next series of questions relate to staffing of nurses, questions 11 and 12 on page 5 and 6 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. There's a large percentage of the superintendents that do actually directly employ, 96% or 245 districts responding, and an average FTE of four.
In addition, 10% or 26 districts purchased services, nursing services. And again, we have a little bit of an overlap. There are 23 districts that both employ them directly as well as use purchase services. The next question relates to substitutes, which is a line within the foundation funding matrix. And you can, the question was asked about the payment for substitutes for two broad categories.
One is the type of preparation that the substitute has, and the other was for their length of tenure. And the level of preparation include certified, non-certified but someone with a bachelor's degree, and then non-certified without a bachelor's degree. And then the two options on tenure were either short or long-term. And typically, it's my understanding that short-term is 30 days or less is their tenure, and long-term is anything above that. And the lowest daily rate of pay that was reported by superintendents
was $93.50, and it was for non-certified substitutes serving on a short-term basis. And conversely, the highest daily rate of pay was $171.76, 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 programs that we've mentioned, Alternative Learning Environments, questions 16 and 17 on page 7. They were specifically asked if they directly serve their ALE students
or if they have outside districts or educational service cooperatives that provide those services. And about a quarter of the districts responded that they do, in fact, to pay some another district or co-op to provide these services and they reported that they spent over 21 million dollars to serve 1368 students at a per student cost of 15,443 excuse me 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 quarters of the districts 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 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 in bullying among students. The survey also listed school safety measures that can be put in place
to ensure a greater safety level 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 was 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.
And 63% report that they cover the entire cost themselves. 34% say they share the cost with a local law enforcement agency, and the remainder is covered entirely by local law enforcement. another area that we also the state provides funding for school facilities and so we had a section of questions in the survey for school facilities questions 28 26 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 24-25 13 percent said only 13 percent 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 none, some, most, or all of
their school facilities created a conducive learning environment, and three-quarters of the superintendents said most or all do create a conducive learning environment, and the most frequent reason that they said that their buildings don't present that type of environment was building age. And the survey also asked about if they thought there was any additional oversight or state support that would be necessary for them to address facility needs, and 30 percent of
them said they do want additional support, and the most often cited need was for additional state funding. 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 I guess the lack thereof, is what they reported as their greatest impediment. The next three slides are going to deal with some district operation questions specifically relating to school district transportation programs.
First, the question was asked about their ability to recruit bus drivers. And 51% of the districts 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 number of vacancies that they have, and on average it was 2.8 FTEs that they had vacancies for, and that represents 65% of the district.
in addition 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 were 30 superintendents saying yes that they did have some students missing instructional time and for those 30 districts about 77% of them said that it It affected less than 10% of their student population, and about 80% of those 30 districts
said that the amount of time being lost was 30 minutes or less. The next section of questions relates to technology and digital learning, questions 43 through 44. Superintendents were asked about the sufficiency of their broadband, 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 whether or not they allow their students to take home school-owned computers and tablets, and a little over half on average said that they do allow that. There were 30 districts, though, that said that they don't allow any students students to take home tablets or computers and 49 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 than 75% 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 questions 47 through 49 asked districts about whether or not they offer preschool programs and 68 percent of the districts did indeed offer a preschool program and 96 percent of those
districts offered preschool to four-year-olds 81% to three-year-olds and 19% to children younger than three they were also asked the extent to which they charge tuition and a little over half at least charge some tuition and then there were 41% of the districts that don't require the payment of any tuition for preschool and then the last section of question or just one question related
to school choice superintendents were asked how many students who attended their district in 23 24 year elected to use school choice in the 24 25 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 of 37 students that kind of concludes my overview i'd be happy to take any questions and julie has a few more
Speaker 73
45:55
remarks to finish us up senator sullivan you're recognized
for a question thank you mr chair and these 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 when it talks about spending and staffing, about 80% of our superintendents don't place a real high priority on using the advocacy information.
I'm on page two of the superintendent survey. at the bottom of the page down there where it says number three spending and staffing so you have only 17 percent and 23 percent use the matrix uh it appears use the matrix as very very important is that what it's telling me again not your fault
you're just taking the The question is referring specifically to the matrix, and the report actually, and that's
why Lori 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? Yeah, I
get that, but only 17% say they place a high priority on that. Or that they follow
it closely. Yeah, they really, so I'm disappointed in that. The other thing, a lot of the survey is based on how people feel.
Do we like it, not like it, like it a little bit, like it a lot, that kind of a survey. are there included in the survey are there some guidance are 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
specifically okay and that that's on us that's not your responsibility that's on us for making those comments it just concerns me mr chair 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 Sullivan. Representative McKenzie, you're recognized for a question.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. So whenever you were presenting, I
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
49:04
thought there'd be a little bit of 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 overarching scope of the surveys. So this is just general questions because remember we had
some comments last go around about the stimuli that we were giving to teachers or giving to educators and to remove any in all control bias what elements of the surveys changed was it was there a new provider this year what was the type of like method not necessarily methodology but was it modal based like can you help walk us through if there was any substantive change in how they received the educators received the survey as well as how they reacted or responded to it in the process we
use the same we're in a multi-year contract so we use the same
survey software we did add the December survey which served the purpose of asking the question so that would be the main difference that 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 true with the teachers emails
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
50:25
mr. chairman just some latitude I got a few rolling questions so and that's good you don't have to name the vendor
of the service but is it it's a hands-on keyboard BLR service it's not a independent contractor or consultant correct for
Speaker 89
50:41
the survey itself the right for the survey we put the survey together using software yes yeah
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
50:45
software vendor software as a service okay um in terms of and i mean your respondent base is fluctuates i know you mentioned you had a 70 percent respondent base for the teacher
portion years past and it's in the teens now i think um how are you able to directly certify the the emails for individual teachers if you're sending over
30 32 000 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 see if it's answered by the email that we sent it to so 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 sorry I don't how are
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
51:47
you getting the 32,000 emails to send to 32,000 teachers
where we are getting the email addresses from ADE where they're stored in the public school databases okay system and ours
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
52:01
there 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 cell phone 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, Quitman 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 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 is compulsory.
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
52:49
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 um superintendents usually do feel compelled i mean we always have i mean this is
the first year we've not had a hundred percent response rate from them one of the superintendents was um 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
53:26
nothing that there's no lever against them if they don't participate no okay again i'm just trying to remove all control bias and understand that we're reading from the same hymnal um you mentioned something relative to teacher type so you you held up that
piece of paper you said these are the different types teachers are trying to pull out is that self-identified 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? Right, right. Margin of error, you mentioned that in a few different of the summary slides. I'm 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 that I used. It's a little
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
54:16
more complicated than that. And then, can you help me understand the December, you sent out a survey relative to December saying when would you like to take it. That went out to all of the respondent base. What
Speaker 93
54:31
was the participation rate for teachers? It was, I'd have to go back and look. It was about,
it wasn't, I'm going to say it's 50 to 75% of what we got at the responses.
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
54:44
Okay, that's healthy. I do have one question relevant to superintendents, if that's all right, I'll switch.
On page question 27, what is the likelihood that your school district will be able to fully address identified 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
sentence that I'm seeing here, the stimuli I'm seeing here is all that the
Speaker 69
55:14
respondents saw correct yes I believe that's correct and so it did leave it up to their latitude to define a
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
55:23
media need okay and then and this is
just going to be like a global statement but anything that has an anecdotal response base 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 uh 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
Speaker 89
55:51
across any and all of these surveys that's in the reports we
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
55:55
listed what other responses yes some are you know when I uh relative to like what are the needs uh or what are the needs based on the matrix and uh let me get to it here Question five, you know, provide some of the examples not including the matrix, 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 going to get any more of a drill down in
Speaker 112
56:24
that anecdotal direction? I mean, we can provide that. We haven't prepared that, but we
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
56:28
can provide that. That would be great. I just, as we look at it, you know, and again, I know I'm going to trust that 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? Is it 51%? Is it 10% seem to have the exact same answer? I just, it helps us because, as you know, the matrix is, I think, 75 line items. And to boil it up to three is great. It helps us with prioritization.
But it also, you know, I would assume that special education should have been, you know, 1A on this list because it's only a categorical line item fund and not within the matrix. So why did that fall? And is this like a, I don't want to say a coordinated 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 you
Speaker 107
57:13
could provide that, that would be helpful. Yeah, I think that's fair. And,
um, well, 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, um, the committee members and our team will be, you know, as we present the reports, we'll be glad to dig further into the data to provide that. Wonderful. Thank you. Representative Duke,
Chair
Unverified
57:38
you recognize for a question? Thank you, Mr.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
57:45
Chair. Thank you all for being here, and thank you for your work on this. I always find it fascinating. I also wanted to say thank you for asking the teachers on 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, I 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 don't know if you felt that there was an 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
58:19
that we have to overcome um 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've been um we we thought that was helpful I do but I do appreciate
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
58:38
you all being responsive of that And I think it was a good move, and also your efforts in trying to get them to respond. 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 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 there's 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 and some of the questions I had also um can you tell when you go through these the districts that have higher teacher participations are you all the bill to break that down we can okay cuz I am
curious on that you know I don't know how specific you can get with us on how any 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 superintendents so 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
Speaker 64
59:57
of these surveys are going out no we don't work
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:00:00
with the school board members so I don't know if there is a way that that notification can help happen whether 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 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 respect 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 no 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 our association to get that to
Speaker 64
1:01:03
the members because I don't know that we have a ready list of all the school board members again I think that
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:01:09
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 I don't have the chairs but how we need to move forward with that but I think 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 um 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 know if you have access to it does this does this stuff um does it correlate with the information
that they're plugging in on discipline information into the state um website because the state desi 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 from you like that that we'll be glad to look at that's not something we would just pick up and
Speaker 105
1:02:10
understand but yeah that's a great question that's just because something I noticed here and
Speaker 118
1:02:14
also just the question and I don't know
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:02:19
how new this is but I would venture to guess especially depend 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 maybe 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't you break it by districts again I'd be curious 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 these are across the board 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 where we're going in some of these
things because 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 it helps me be more informed with my members across the state what they're facing because sometimes I just see mine but 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
Speaker 93
1:03:45
may as well yeah and that that leads into um 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 um 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 there are 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 thank you and mr. chair i'm curious and i'm i'm
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:04:34
assuming I mean, we're able to, we have, I know this has 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, okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you
all. And to that point, Representative, I think that's a great reminder to, yes, don't let this just be a static document.
It's a dynamic opportunity for us to all just sit with this data, look at it, find additional questions. In my experience, and I'm sure other members has been, that our staff at BLR is pretty outstanding. And so if we think of additional questions that these lead into, they do a great job 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. Representative Mayberry, you're recognized. Thank you.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:05:30
At the end of some of these little sections, you'll have like a line that says, okay, I have on page 7, ALE number 18, it says respondents were allowed to make comments about the preceding topic. So, and that's, you know, common theme on each one of these questions. So, I'm curious, 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 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
Speaker 96
1:06:14
that is of extra importance to that? 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 want to be careful to redact anything before we just turn the comments over. But, yeah, we use those. And all of the questions will come up during the topical reports as they're applicable 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 give and take there too.
But if you have specific questions you'd like to see more information about those comments, just let us know.
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:07:25
Thank you. Representative Gonzalez-Werling, you recognize? Yes, thank you for your report. Very in-depth report. And I was just curious, now I'm new, so this is my first legislative session. So I know that in light of the three different groups that are surveyed, the superintendents, 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. I'm just curious, being that the largest group, 32,000 teachers, teachers are really extremely busy, et cetera, and I'm just trying to look at additional ways in which those surveys might be filled out. So that's
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, yeah. Okay, thank you. Are there additional questions
Chair
Unverified
1:08:38
for members? Thank you. I'll let you go ahead and move on to, oh, sorry. Senator Flowers,
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:08:46
you are recognized. Okay. It took me a minute to catch up because you were referring to the things in the survey, and I just realized that's in this binder.
I was trying to go with the scrolling of this computer, but anyway, I heard a couple of things that I would like more information since you are dealing with evidence-based information to provide us with a report that will help us determine adequacy.
Am 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 was 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 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, 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 short-term or long-term that have a college degree and certified or whatever. What about the maintenance people? Center Flowers, there
Speaker 69
1:11:23
is a division of public school academic facilities and transportation, and I think they do provide technical support to districts,
and it is a requirement of districts that they participate, and it was initially the provider with school due. They have transitioned to a new provider now whose name I don't recall the name, But they are supposed to put in all of their maintenance information, have a schedule of what's to be maintained, and it does impact their eligibility or at least their 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
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:12:28
their maintenance issues. 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
Speaker 69
1:12:41
won't remember the month but maybe emily can help us but they did they have made a presentation somewhat recently um 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
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:13:10
not entering the information in the computer but uh well with 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 the October six meeting, uh, we had a presentation on that.
So we can have something in writing, uh, report, uh, there was a presentation.
Speaker 140
1:13:43
So I believe you can go back and look
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:13:48
at the documents. There'll be online for that or also watch the live stream should have that
information, yes, ma'am, October six.
Okay. And the other question I have, it was, uh, concerning the bullying online and person and I didn't see anything and I don't know if I missed that meeting on these students that may be referred to juvenile court or that are in the juvenile court system as a dependent neglected child or either some fins 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 attendance or testing different things like that so is that in this report or does the survey
Speaker 96
1:15:07
even touch on that this was a question um that we
actually picked up from i believe it was a survey that in national center for education statistics sends 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 i know we didn't have any questions about fins or we've done some research and we again
Speaker 105
1:15:40
we can do some research into that but that was not a topic of the survey
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:15:46
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 uh kids that had some behavioral issues to special locations and a special school room or something it was vetoed by the governor thank god but
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 appear 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, AOC, 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 a school counselor have to deal with? How many cases? Because 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 seven. 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 uh these screens are jumping
all around so it's kind of so we can't we can't
Speaker 145
1:18:59
take the binder home it's just a recommendation to leave the
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:19:02
binder however the content within the binder uh we can certainly get to you in a format that can be taken home should you need another copy that's easy physical person
i mean these computers jump around the screen is jumping around eyes jumping around but I'd rather have a piece of paper in my hand looking at so if I could get a report copy I'm sure the staff
Speaker 146
1:19:21
would be happy to do that yes ma'am senator but I
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:19:28
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 a hundred dollars a pop so um are they paying for that where where is 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 um aoc and and the more we can get quantitative data if we'd like that that um and there but there may be some things
that do have to be asked in a survey format that was not covered in the adequacies survey questionnaire, but that we could, you know, work with you on doing, for sure. Yeah, well, I was flipping
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:20:16
to try to find the, I think it was in
something else about the money. It was a two-page document. One was on the front and back page. I don't know if you could just... Oh, the matrix?
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:20:46
on that's in your binder one e in your binder okay so in this i don't see anything here that dealt with expenses for um referrals to juvenile court what what the districts are paying for uh are are they
funded for the purpose of paying these
expenses these fins fees senator uh just in the
interest of time because i've got additional reports to present to us today could we maybe come up
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:21:20
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 starting in here and maybe they can get that specific information to you because I want to
be respectful of their time and other members. I understand and but I'm new to the committee and you know this
one and a quarter page matrix and other funding 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 that the bureau do an outstanding job of providing additional context should we need that so uh let's go i'd like to have
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:22:05
it that's all i'm saying and i'm sorry that i you know i just i i need to ask
questions to understand what it is i'm dealing with i think
that's outstanding i think the more questions okay thank
you very much all right you're recognized to continue your presentation we're going to finish up um 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 get take a picture of that um they're all sitting back there as well so you can go talk to them afterwards and um
Lori and I are not on this list because we're both retiring, so I wasn't trying to push all the work on other people, but anyway, we'll be glad, and while we're here, we'll also be glad to help research any further questions that you might have. Thank you, Lori.
Thank you, Julie. See no additional questions from members. Members, we will move on to
item F with Secretary Oliva. Secretary Oliva, 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 child care 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 wanna thank you for allowing me to come back and give an update.
And some of this update I think will be helpful. Some of it may be frustrating 'cause 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 a fourth quarter. We were working with our federal counterparts and our congressional delegation to kind of get a better handle on why the formula's 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's kind of one update. 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 other update that I wanted to talk about and 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 about six to eight 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 ask for us 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 ed committee around the 6th 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 going to 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 joint
ed 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 um that we have heard from 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, a lot of wondering, a lot of misunderstanding, and I 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 work group 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 make sure we get this right. It's an unfortunate situation.
We still have a lot of work to do. That started the dialogue. 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.
And so at that October 21st meeting, the early learning commission established that emergency task force and some of the members on the commission participate in the task force. Some asked for different representatives because we want to make sure that it was reflective and included voices from all over the state on the 28th, the office of early childhood hosted the task force 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 October 30th this the the task force 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 were able to have the early learning commission hear the recommendations directly from the task force the early commercial 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 has been kind of just going quick but we received that formal request from the early childhood commission i want to 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 um changing and making some proposals and then just kind of that long-term sustainability so we received that and and basically there's i want to say there's about if i had to chunk it say maybe three major
buckets that um we received from the task force and the early childhood commission so the first thing i want to 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 1st 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 recognized quality and that seemed to be a big deal from the field and it's a big deal for our agency 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 going to go through and look at all their recommendations but they said if we establish rates in 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 scheduled with providers tomorrow to discuss, but we're going to 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, um, 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 later. There's also a lot of conversations around co-pays and making sure that if we do establish co-pays which they all recognize that we need to get into a system and that was part of the the spirit of the grant 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 co-pays are calculated based on the base reimbursement rate and not on the quality
enhancement differential so we agree with that so that way if a program is better it shouldn't have a more negative impact on the parent so we're going to establish that one of the goals that they want to get to 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 under 60 percent of that median threshold i think we agree with it right now it's at 40 that's one of the ones that i think we're going to 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 work hour requirements being re-established at 30 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 policy and I don't know if it's in rule or this program about eliminating families for a 72-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 i don't know why there was that limitation it's just you know we're learning a lot about this program grant we want to serve as many students of families that we can they also recommend our agency's recommendation to maintain the four million dollars in cuts for con different 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's been a lot of really good conversations I think you know we may have kind of hit the panic button on early learning but it was needed and it's it's um 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 our early learning commission needs to keep reviewing so part of those recommendations that we receive 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's seven million dollars more than what we had budgeted right like when we built those original recommendations there's a seven million dollar
kind of gap that we're going to have to monitor between now and the end of this grant cycle to make sure we get 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 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 given some great ideas suggestions and feedback we're committed to doing
this in a transparent manner because we want to get it right but I also just want to remind folks and I think I wrote them down but there's we got to have conversations around Head Start 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 Head Start providers that were at a conference and started talking to them and and they have concerns too about the programs that they're receiving and their federal grants and the changes and the rates that
that they're getting and that's not administered by our agency you know I mean this is like feds to providers and all of these early learning programs and ABC 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 where we're going to ask our early childhood commission to keep this battle rhythm up right keep it going use the 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 going to keep moving forward till we get it right but I think when we look at the recommendations that we receive from the task force and early learning Commission they're really solid 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 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
be happy to answer any questions thank you
secretary senator Sullivan you're recognized for a question thank you so I assume your quality issues are related to educational processes so when they when the early childhood Commission did they submit to you what their outcomes were currently under the former program yeah
so that's a good question and and when when I think when I talk about quality there's a program called better beginnings that's been pretty established in the state and they use different screening like one is the environmental reading scale that collects that data to meets 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 okay so 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 going to start assuming some of the funding that the feds are cutting so i just want to be careful that if the feds reassume that cost that we get to back
out yeah so i don't 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 i don't have the exact amount but i want to say it was around 70 or 80 million dollars the workforce worked under of 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 yeah and I appreciate that and that's a tough effort to make on both sides of that coin But I would just caution 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 or the feds engage more, that we go back and we're not reconfiguring based on what our needs are.
Speaker 166
1:40:00
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. represent painter you recognize thank you mr. chair I just would like to request if we can maybe the department
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:40:11
send us what the secretary just said 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 we can send it we just literally type some notes on the We'd be happy to email them, too, of course.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:40:33
Representative Mayberry. I just personally wanted to say thank you. Thank you for listening to the 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 force, the smaller committee, the work session. Just very, very much appreciate it. Moving forward, I'm glad you're going to continue to monitor. I trust that that's going to take place. 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 LEARNS Act was that it was moving it from DHS to Department of Education because then we're looking at early education as part of the education system so that kids are reading by third grade. So I'm just throwing the idea. I know that we've had a session where there's been a focus on K-12 with the Learns Act.
There was last session a focus on access, you know, higher ed. I'm hoping that maybe there's a similar type of idea going into this next legislative session, which I will not be around for. But this has been something many of us have been kind of trying to get going. We've had some tax cut ideas for businesses that want to support their own workers with child care 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 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 look at the whole thing. I think you've addressed some of the immediate, oh, no, we need to fix this right now. But, you know, I have not talked to Representative Garner.
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 Arkansons so thank you so if if I could respond
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:42:59
I think that's a great idea right like we we've looked a lot of k-12 we looked
Speaker 174
1:43:04
at higher ed and maybe it's part of the early child commission maybe it's a subcommittee um 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 tri-share models and and this is our chance to define quality right like as we're looking at coughs observation tools and the data that leads to professional development and curriculum and standards and and um it's probably a ripe space right like if we're going to 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'd be willing to engage in folks and I know you're saying thank you to us and me but I
can't take the credit it's really the team at the office of early childhood and Chris Barnes and Ashlyn and Stacey Smith and they work nights and weekends to get as much information as we can work with these providers because they really care, and they're committed, and the whole team there is really the ones that, if any commendations need to be given, they're the ones that deserve that credit. And we're just really fortunate to have people out in the field that really care about this space, people at our agency that care about this space, the legislative delegation that
cares about this 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 just keep the conversation going. Thank you.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:44:30
It's amazing what can happen when people come together, even with different ideas, when they start talking and conversing. So thank you. Thank you, Stacey Smith, back there. Vice Chair McKenzie, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a quick,
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
1:44:44
because I missed the beginning part of it. I'll go back and watch it tonight. Yeah, I know.
Yeah. Anytime that you come down here, it's the best part.
um how many closures have there been since I mean as the licensing agency had to 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 have really
Speaker 174
1:45:08
to my knowledge I haven't heard of any closures because of this program no I'm not saying that that hasn't happened right we just may not know about it I've heard about closures and head start programs recently large ones
which is a different grant but some of these grants tie to other grants and i you know i i don't think one
Speaker 174
1:45:26
grant correlates to a closure versus a combination of all kinds of challenges that we're facing because some of our providers may receive participate in sra some may not 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 agency has some data maybe at a future meeting
I can get a much more detailed report and provide that to you because we don't want to hear about closures we want to hear about expand expansions
Representative Brit McKenzie
Unverified
1:46:05
and I don't either and it kind of 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 co-pay currently yes sir that is correct because you know part of the big underlying discussion back to the first point was you know distribution of co-pays or creation of a co-pay system and then a world without the same
level of tiered funding for sra was going to lead it was wasn't correlation was causation was going to lead to closures so i mean and this isn't 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 to a 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 truing that up in real time okay as we get into the next obviously fiscal session we're not going to be able to address this as full as we would a full general session but that what i'm really getting 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 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
Speaker 174
1:47:28
even anything electronic would be yeah no that's that's helpful to 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 rhythm with sharing
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:47:43
that. That's great. Representative Garner, you recognize? Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I, too, just want to thank the department and the staff. They were amazing to work with every one of the teams that we worked with. I also want to thank the providers. They were amazing. They were so smart and so dedicated. They, too, spent nights
and weekends and zoom calls and um representative mckenzie 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 cost um closures more closures especially for those higher level of qualities
um i think will be alleviated many of those things will be alleviated with with some of these recommendations and also the um 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 um to watch those meetings was amazing and it was something that i hope we can do more across the board with government um and i certainly hope we can continue to do that with with our early childhood um 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 yeah and and thank you and especially to you senator english i mean you you were at every meeting right and sometimes those weren't fun meetings to walk into so we we appreciate
Speaker 174
1:50:14
your willingness to to be there and and be knowledgeable and in in a voice especially representing the
legislature that hey we're all in this together and 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 opportunity so let's just keep it going and I agree the providers have been wonderful to work with
seeing no additional questions Secretary Oliva thank you for your time and see no additional business joint education is adjourned Thank you.
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
Speaker 2
Senator Dan Sullivan Chair
Unverified
Speaker 7
Representative Keith Brooks Chair
Unverified
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Representative Brit McKenzie
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Speaker 28
Speaker 26
Speaker 31
Speaker 36
Senator Stephanie Flowers
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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
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Speaker 67
Speaker 140
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Speaker 166
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 174