Education Committee - Senate and House
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Speaker 2
20:00
project we just weren't able to get the district state air and maybe that's a conversation as we move forward and look at the future as projects how do you help those districts because they obviously needed to get that project done thank you thank you represent walkie recognized for a question thank you mr.
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
20:31
chair and thank you guys for being here today so on the school district partnership funding does that cover like the roof replacements for our school districts too
Speaker 2
20:41
it can I think that's where you get into that definition of the warm safe and dry it may not cover like maintenance of a roof like maybe they're just patching some holes but when you get into like replacing an entire school roof because it's 30 or 40 years old or maybe their insurance requires it sometimes you see that as well they can apply for that project because it would be it's not considered maintenance it would be
a renovation to help keep warm safe and dry
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
21:08
okay great so that's what my i have a few questions regarding that and i just wanted to make sure i was on topic um so what does that process look like for a school to apply for it and be approved as being able to apply for it i just trying to figure out what that process
Speaker 2
21:27
would look like yeah well part of the request is um they work with our agency and submit that request and there's there's some conditions and some factors and there's
actually a number where it says it has to be um over 65 of the criteria meant to be eligible And, Greg, I don't know if you want to speak more about kind of that rubric process, but it's pretty established. Yeah, we would look at the facilities
Speaker 18
21:54
conditional index and see if it was at 65% at the end of life. Also, we would look at under
Speaker 20
22:00
Operations Hero, which is what the Secretary I talked about earlier with the maintenance system. Have they been trying to do maintenance on the roof?
Has it been taken care of, so to speak? If it hasn't been taken care of, then we'd have a different conversation about why hasn't it been there, what are the different factors that led to this roof needing to be replaced. So all those conversations go in there to determine if it would be something eligible for the partnership program. But I think what he said on that before is that we try to assist the districts in making sure they are doing that preventative maintenance before they just come through needing an entire roof replacement. Did they just let the roof fall apart before,
or was it something that's just at end of lifetime replace that roof so those are the the questions that
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
22:45
we have to ask so so basically like on slide 17 where you talk about the work order creation and closure um so if they don't submit we'll say tickets if they don't submit in a a certain amount of tickets then they're asked to patch or whatever a roof that may not be repairable not necessarily but that would be
Speaker 20
23:03
one of the things that we'd come back and ask them was is that why didn't you ever submit any tickets or any maintenance into the Operations Hero website?
What's going on with that? If they had something outside of that or if there was something that happened recently, quickly, that they just weren't able to, that's the conversations that our agency would have back and forth with that school district to make sure that there was some kind of maintenance going on there before it
Speaker 18
23:28
happened. But it wouldn't necessarily just have to rely on
Speaker 2
23:33
those tickets. We'd have a conversation with that district. And all I'll say, there's actually been some circumstances where there may be hail damage that wasn't planned on that got factored into the life of the roof because even though they may have had some
insurance or sometimes there's been tornado damage they may have to do an insurance claim but they were already on the list to get the roof redone do we want to spend time repairing it do we want to go back and just say can we expedite this process let's just do the replacement now even though that was going to be done two years ago because that would make more sense. So I think to that
Speaker 5
24:06
question, there's a lot of other factors that get put into that as well.
Speaker 26
24:11
Okay. I'll get back in the queue. I know there's other questions. Thank you.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
24:17
Representative Mayberry, you're recognized for a question. Thank you. And over here, I just
wanted to just publicly thank again Tim Kaine for his work. Back in 2019, we passed a bill, the ADA Compliance Committee, and this was a group that worked to make sure that we are educating our school districts and that in, let's see, February 1st of 2024, that each school district had to turn into their master plan an ADA kind of checklist of things that they are going to fix.
we recognize that this needs to be done and so i'm just kind of following up on all that because that was i guess due february 1st of 2024 and i know it's in you know just because you've said this is going to be fixed doesn't mean it gets fixed right away if you could give some type of update um you know and how if there's someone who wants to see in their own school district uh what things were determined by that person at the school district that needs to be fixed
how they can stay on top of that person to make sure that it does get fixed
Speaker 34
25:35
does that make sense well representative mayberry that's a good question um we took all this from the master plan like you said last year two years ago coming up and there was a lot of them that did have several items that needed to be updated so we have that in the master plan and as they submit in 2026 we hope to see some progress there so there will be our folks will
be able to follow up on those and as you know some of them are high priority and some of them are lower priority and in dealing with cost and feasibility and all those things but i thought overall it was successful i mean we got districts submitting kind of a punch list of of items that need to they need
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
26:20
to look at and address so so is that punch list available can someone request for their school district how how we can see what
Speaker 34
26:29
that is yes ma'am the master plan is is that's
public public record so but i guess is it set aside to
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
26:36
be very clear this is ada compliance or is it just kind of in there with everything else no
Speaker 34
26:41
ma'am there's a separate tab just for the ada section okay so
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
26:45
someone could go to their school district and find that yes
ma'am okay they could request but maybe some dollars to help fix those things would not be available until 2026 if they just kind of help
Speaker 34
26:58
me out well it depends it depends on what it is first of all to to see if it's eligible for partnership projects some of those items won't be but the ones that are i mean
that they could do a partnership project
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
27:11
for okay do you know of any school district that has sort of taken that punch list and has actually fixed those things is that do do we know of that because i think that was the hope that if we bring it to their attention um that it needs to be fixed because we're not talking about brand new buildings brand new buildings usually are always ada compliant they have to follow certain rules we're talking about buildings that were probably built before 2004 um and we want to make sure that they're brought up into compliance so that
people do have access to the bathroom so that they do have access into the building that's an appropriate ramp and all that do you know of a school district that has um made some of those changes based on that i'm just
Speaker 41
27:55
i'm curious i would have to go and look
Speaker 34
27:58
representative to be sure but But I know that in 2026, we'll follow up and see how much progress they've made when they
Speaker 32
28:05
do their master plan. And we'll know how much further down the road they've gotten. Thank you. And thank you for working with me.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
28:11
I know that many people probably think that it's not a very big deal.
But it is. Everybody needs the bathroom. Yes, ma'am. And
there's still bathrooms that are not accessible. So, thank you. Yes, ma'am. Representative Duke, you're
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
28:39
recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for being here today and for
your presentation. My question goes back to when you were talking about the partnership funding and the districts who are not able to come up with the funds on their side of it. I would like to see that list. If you could send that out to the members, I would appreciate it.
But I would also like to know, logic's dictating to me that if they went for a millage increase, likely, and their voters voted it down. And so that generally, the people in that district have a better pulse on what a school needs than we do down here in Little Rock often. So I guess I'm curious, do you, when you get the information that they didn't get the partnership funding, is it categorized of like, okay, they failed, the millage decrease failed, or the increase failed,
which obviously sends a message from the voters one way or the other, which I think is important. So is that categorized, and is that taken, I think, into consideration? I mean, do you use that information when you're looking at some of this stuff in the future? Because that's sending a message, I think, at least in my experience, sometimes districts bite off more than they can chew, and they want maybe more than what they need, and their voters are saying, no, you don't need that much, and so you can get by with less bells and whistles than what you are asking us for, and so my question, and also along with wanting
to have that information, knowing if that information is compiled as far as the millage went down and then also do you guys use that as future information when you're looking at some of these projects to know are they um i think we can all think of facilities that are quite extravagant i mean my son played juco and college basketball and there's many facilities in our state and god bless them if their voters pay for it right but um that high school facilities are way nicer than they were and so if if the voters say no and I think of you as this is why I know this happened
um what do you guys do with that information does that like send off a little alarm bells because people are sending messages that they're tired of their taxes right and so are we receiving that message and do we have a standard when we're looking at this that they're not building the Taj Mahal when they are coming and asking for partnership funding that they're building
Speaker 2
31:05
what they need not what they want sure great question um for just first follow-up question if i could ask really quick and and we can get you the list of districts that have rescinded project requests
how far back do you want us to go like how many years i just want to make sure we get you what you're
Speaker 52
31:22
looking for well that's a really good question um let's go back um let's go back three years. Easy. We can definitely do that. And maybe
Speaker 57
31:28
I should change it. I may have other members go, no, you're
Speaker 59
31:31
going to go back further than that, but we'll go back with three years. I was
Speaker 2
31:35
thinking like five to 10 or so. Well, then great. Go for it. I just want to make sure if you want to like the last 50 years, I was like, I don't want to have to archive some stuff. I just want to make sure we do it. Okay. So we'll like to see if we can do about five to 10 years. Um, and, and then
the the second part of that question is um what what happens right like is it be if a referendum fails do we keep track of that information yes do we keep track of millage rates as they change absolutely um oftentimes uh just because a referendum failed doesn't mean they automatically come off the list right so the district may go back to the voters with a different proposal and We have seen that a lot of times where a community will vote for a different millage request than what was originally sent because maybe, excuse me, maybe they learned something throughout that process as well.
So I think it's an interesting question because the concept, are you building what you need versus what you want, right? And that's why when we look at it, we try to look at that formula as far as are you growing, is it an age facility, is it not safe, is it not warm, is it not dry. Those are the factors we look at, and it's for educational space. So I think, and I don't know if it's always been like that. I'll have to ask the historians, because I think a lot of times when you look at, like, gyms and athletic complexes, maybe that qualified one time in the past.
I don't know. But that's not an eligible expense. So this is for educational spaces for this request. So if a district wanted to fund something extravagant like that, they would have to do that. It wouldn't be part of the partnership project. Greg, you may know. Well, but if you get the
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
33:23
partnership money here, obviously it frees up more money over here, right? So it gives you the ability to build maybe more there. But sometimes if you're smart, right, you combine the two. And I'm not saying just in a day when we had a lot of complaints about taxes, and I think they're fair particularly property taxes I think it's questions
that we need to kind of dig a little bit into and understand what what the impact is coming back from when this when the community says no we don't want the millage increase we don't feel strongly enough about this particular entity and to your point I do think that they sometimes revise and come back with a leaner meaner proposal I do if I may have one other question on these H HVACs and all of those pieces, when they were applying for those, if my memory serves me correctly, a lot of those types of upgrades were covered, facilities they could use those
with some of their ARPA money and all of that money. So I was a little surprised
to see so many of those requests when I would have thought a lot of those would have
Speaker 2
34:28
met with that money. Can you speak to that a little bit? So I think the answer to your question is could you have used ARPA money to upgrade facilities as far as air filters social distancing absolutely but our kids didn't have access to school and couldn't learn how to read and do math so we would always prioritize districts to use
those ARPA flexible dollars to not upgrade facilities but to put teachers in front of students and I hope as a state as we navigated through that that that
Speaker 5
34:54
was our priority as well well it was our
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
34:57
priority so like right we opened up pretty quickly compared to lots of other states and so we were but I also know that was part of the money piece so is there some type of record as far as how they spent that money oh yeah we did they can and did they because there was lots of choices they could make with that money right and so did they did they make the best use that money before they're coming here and asking for this money now too I guess that's my question do
Speaker 2
35:22
we know that yes and we we actually even have um an ESSER tracker that we can send you a link to that shows you what every district spent all of their federal dollars on so if they had upgraded their facilities using their COVID funds they wouldn't need to they wouldn't qualify to upgrade their facilities with these funds because they wouldn't meet the threshold for needing an
Speaker 54
35:45
update it would be too new well my question
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
35:48
more is what did they use that money for versus the the HVAC
because in that time period there was a lot of emphasis as well as we've got to make sure our schools are safe for the kids to be in and we've got to upgrade our HVACs because we're not sure that they're going to have the right quality of air and all the stuff that was going on with that so I'm curious the schools that did not upgrade their HVACs at that time what were they using that money for just you understand what I'm asking for versus why they're asking the HVAC now what did they use it for in that time period as opposed to the HVAC what did they deem as a higher
a priority and it may well be the staffing and those different things I'm just
Speaker 72
36:27
excuse me curious you know what does the number
Speaker 2
36:31
what does the data say on that yeah and we could go through and maybe pull out a snapshot of what the report says but I but I think what you'd find is extra staffing extra bus routes online learning platforms hopefully summer programs high impact tutoring but we we can do it it's hard to make a generalization because every district took a different approach and and even some of the districts that may have started with doing like
maybe they're trying to get more buses to add more rides to have more distancing or students or upgrading their chiller plants the wait time the lead time and the construction costs during that time went up really quick so they they they may have been put on well we're gonna upgrade our chiller plant but by the time we get it like they're saying there was three-year turnaround times like from day one to order parts that those dollars had to be obligated and they may have had to pivot from what they originally started with that plan
year one because they weren't going to be able to do the project to get it obligated and closed out before those dollars sunset and had to reprioritize other initiatives which is where I think you're going to see the staffing the sanitation equipment and those kinds of things so can you get us that some
Speaker 73
37:43
Information on that we happy to appreciate it. Thank you Representative
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
37:56
Allen you're recognized for a question Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here today just a few minutes ago you had a list of random inspections and
My question to you does those random inspections apply to private and charter schools to Yes. They would have to. They're also in Operations
Speaker 20
38:14
Hero, and they cannot get their charter school facilities funding without having those inspections done as well. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Representative Kozar, you recognize? Thank you, Mr.
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
38:31
Chair. Just got a couple of questions. I can stay on the facilities for just a minute.
And I know a while back we were talking about people that would qualify for a facility for a addition or building for what they could. And especially during COVID time, materials went so sky high. And then they couldn't get the partnership money they needed. I think we've kind of hit those points here today. Where do they fall when they have to turn that back? Do they go off the record and have to start all new and applying when they get a chance to try to do this again? They do not hold any position at all, right?
Speaker 84
39:07
okay that's that's all i that's if you shake your
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
39:12
head and say yes they fall off i agree correct that's what we always did before so correct all right uh then my next question is let's go back to security a little bit we talked about security a while ago how much does the department put out to the schools each year for security how much money do we send them and i'm just saying in general as
Speaker 2
39:35
far as i just want to clarify like to help with the hardening
of facilities when you're when you're speaking security or are you talking about um because securities are pretty broad i'll
Speaker 85
39:45
make sure i answer your question right well i'm i'm asking a broad question
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
39:50
how much do we generally spend out to the schools and the schools that you know that could be used for their buildings or for whatever they deem necessary we're not we're not paying for SROs or anything like that, but how much do we send, spend out, send out to the schools in general every
Speaker 67
40:09
year? So I may need Greg to correct me because I get my years confused,
Speaker 2
40:14
but the previous two school years we had a categorical appropriation supported by the legislature. I want to say it was around $50 million each year that we went through specifically for hardening and threat mitigation. I think when you look at the day-to-day operations of a school, I think that's where they have their foundation funding to look at staffing because it could be to add school resource officers. Maybe they want to add school counselors.
Maybe they have deans, behavior interventionists. There's a wide variety of ways that schools would get money. But when I'm thinking about a state appropriation, I think to answer your question is probably about that $50 million categorical because they have flexibility even with some of their federal grants like Title IV, Part A, that they could help support a well-rounded education that's part of school safety. So there's a lot of flexibility there. And I agree. I thought that's what
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
41:13
it was. Are we looking at doing anything different to upgrade security for schools in a way to help them in a better way through the department or through the state that you know about?
Speaker 2
41:25
Yeah, you know, when you talk about kind of those best practices, right, that you want to see every campus adopt, right? I think we have some campuses that may be further along than others, and it's interesting when you get into some communities, especially like with old schools and smaller communities, and some of the challenges that they face, right? is there ever enough money to like really get them everything they need?
Like I've been on school campuses that have a road that go right through the middle of a high school and they're in the bells when they change classes. They have people stand at each end of the road with the roads closed while kids are walking back and forth and it's just an open campus. And I mean the campuses that were designed in the 50s, 60s, and 70s really had that mindset that it was part of a community. And if you're looking at fencing around 100 acres because of an open campus in design, those challenges are a lot different than maybe a school that was built four years ago
that really thought about single point of access and really look at signage. And part of their construction budget included cameras and weapons detection systems and panic buttons. And a lot of that gets factored in. And I think as we plan new facilities and even like some of the requirements around safety would learn is when schools are planning and submitting blueprints they have to get and I forget the institution that signs it off but they what's it called cji looks at those plans to make sure that somebody's making recommendations or putting that lens around safety but I do think
of a lot of our older campuses and our districts have been really creative on how they're adding fencing and single point of access and i don't want to call out districts specifically by name because when you're talking about safety we want to make sure we keep those plans safe well i've always had a very deep interest in school safety and of course
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
43:29
i don't have personal kids there but i do have grandkids there and i think everybody in this room knows someone that's in a school and we always care for our kids and as we've watched across our nations it's not getting any better
but we need to make ours a lot safer than we have now and i think we
i think we've made some good steps mr secretary i think we've got
Speaker 2
43:52
some more steps to go i i agree and that's why um we also do our drills right whether it's severe weather fire active shooter it's important part of our dna because as you go through that experience you may uncover things that you haven't thought of one of the the strategies that we're implementing this school year as we've been doing kind of 'cause you have that hardening threat mitigation, right?
And then you have kind of that ongoing day-to-day procedures is working now that every school district has an identified school safety specialist. We've tasked our school safety team to work like with a co-op in a region where we bring all, let's say there's 15 school safety specialists together for training to ask those questions. And then we all go to a school and walk a campus and everybody walks around with a different set of eyes say what would you make as a recommendation for that school so one it would make good recommendations
to that school but then everybody else can hear what everybody else is thinking about because when we all walk in the room we're all looking for something different and the more that i agree that like you're saying that we can be explicit around our conversations and identifying vulnerabilities that's what we have to do and um i say that all the time to superintendents when i I say safety is our number one priority and if you can't tell me what you've done lately to make your campuses safer then let's have a conversation because every day we should be saying while these
kids are in our care what can we do to keep them safer.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
45:34
Thank you I agree 100 percent. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Representative Beck you recognize for a question. Thank you Mr. Chair. So my question was and i might have misunderstood but earlier on you were saying okay you're you're looking at systems that uh to make sure that they're properly maintained uh and you kind of hung that is would that be part of the approval process for replacing that equipment so
Speaker 20
45:54
correct one of the one of the things we'd look at was in the operations hero where as represent walker was talking about earlier whether tickets that we could go back and look at and see that that district was doing regular maintenance on that hvac were they doing were they doing in roof inspection where what were they doing were there tickets in there showing that that there were some kind of preventative maintenance or maintenance being done on that that uh hvac or whatever they're requesting to be replaced that's just the first there's hold there like i said
there's other circumstances we'd look at that and say you know we didn't see any maintenance on this tell us a bit more why you all of a sudden need this to happen now and then it could be something that you know like a storm come through or something happened then or it could be you know there's whatever factors we're going into it then outside of the the ticket system the operations hero if there's still a need for that that replacement of hvac then they
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
46:50
could qualify for partnership funding so i my question is appreciate that my question is is this so if
if a school district was deemed just not to be doing it we'll use an hba system so you have a major hba system it's not being properly maintained uh and you know that could have been like a previous administration or something like that going on well now the school's kind of in they're in a situation here where you know this thing wasn't maintained or and and now it's got to be replaced and I don't have funds available to help me replace that is there some type of a system
where we would somehow could reset that or something and say yes I mean
Speaker 20
47:31
if the superintendent came and said the last guy wasn't maintaining I got this mess on my hand I need to get it fixed we would qualify them for partnership funding as long as they had their their their wealth index share whatever that was they would qualify okay thank you representative garner you're recognized for a
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
48:00
question. Thank you. No worries. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm down at this end. I just
wanted to clarify your answer from Representative Allen. He asked about charters and private schools. We don't have anything to do with safety for private schools or parochial schools. Correct. No, it was just charter schools. We don't have the ability to?
Speaker 104
48:21
Correct. Okay, thank you. Representative Rye, you
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
48:28
recognized? Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, let me ask you this.
Let's just say it's $8,000 per student for your maintenance and operation of 25 mills. So, in other words, if you have a poor school that's actually, you know, coming up with $2,500 of the $8,000 that's to be spent on average, is that same percentage used on the construction cost? I don't know if I'm following your question right.
Speaker 20
49:06
So, I'll try, and if I get it wrong, just tell me I got it wrong. that's what the wealth index comes in for so for the um the poor the poor school districts that that do qualify for partnership product their wealth index would be higher which means that they wouldn't have to come up with as much capital to get their financial part for the partnership program the richer the school district the more they have to bring in for that project and that's based off the wealth index that we do calculate on for each school
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
49:36
district appreciate you thank you mr. chairman for
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
49:44
let me in represent Walker you recognized so I appreciate y'all's answer from earlier I'll be able to wrap it up pretty quick based off of it so I've been hearing grumbling around the state and that was the reason for a lot of my questions that outside of a natural disaster it only depends by how many tickets that are submitted if you submitted zero tickets there was no other way around it and that is a disservice to small
schools if that was true because a lot of times a superintendent in a small school is also a facilitator manager and if they leave you have somebody new coming in there wasn't training going on around the state that I could find that was showing new people coming in that the ticket system was the only way to do it so it makes me feel better knowing that there is other methods out there um than just the ticket system because i think if a facilitator one of your facilitator inspectors or what facility inspectors come out and deem that it is not replaceable that should
be qualified and so anyway i just i feel better knowing it's not just a ticket system also outside of a natural disaster um but i would like a list if it's possible um of the schools that have been funded for the last three years that have been approved for a roof replacement um that did not send any tickets in and what that approval was for or not for but the the reason that they didn't submit a ticket um what avenue did you take to accept it for other reasons um excluding a natural
disaster i know that's a different pot that's a whole different ballpark um i'm just wanting to know for the facilities that whether it was the end of end of life or whatever it was unrepairable not because of a natural disaster I just want to know a list of schools that that did not send any tickets in it was still approved I thank you I appreciate it
seeing no additional questions from members thank you Mr. Rogers Mr. Kane and Secretary Oliva
we will move now to item e on the agenda i believe that uh stacy smith is also going to join you
at the table to discuss teacher retention and recruitment chairs if it's okay i'd like
Speaker 2
52:08
to ask dr brandy benton to join me because stacy smith is not available at this time that would be okay yes sir if you would please just introduce yourself for
Speaker 114
52:17
the record and you're recognized brandy binton i'm the assistant commissioner of
Speaker 16
52:25
educator effectiveness and licensure so um what we'd like to do today for the members
Speaker 2
52:31
is just kind of give an overview on um where we are with recruitment retention and recognition of educators and how that looks across the state and what I'll do is just if it's okay with the chair just kind of give an overview like a state of the state and then talk
specifically around each of these buckets and I think it'll help open up for a good dialogue. Yes sir go ahead. So the one of the first questions we always get is how many licensed teachers do we have across the the state of Arkansas and in here you can see these are probably the most licenses that we have this isn't an exhaustive list but you can kind of see in descending order where we see the majority of the folks across the state that are licensed there's a lot of educators that are in more than one bucket because you can have more
than one license right you might be certified as a building administrator but also as a elementary education teacher so it's not that you just add all these numbers up to see how many licensed educators we have in the state but note that multiple people have multiple different licenses. But all in all, currently in the state, we have about 42,000 teachers and administrators that carry some kind of license with the Department of Education. And about 34,000 of those active licenses are teachers.
And it's also, I think, important to remember, while some educators may have additional licenses, There are a lot of educators that have a license, but they may not be working or they may even be in another state that applied for a license or maybe they moved and they still kept their license active with Arkansas because maybe they're going to move back one day. So when you're kind of aggregating that entire bucket, it's kind of an interesting snapshot and a way to look at it. But one of the things that we do publish each and every year based on licensure needs is a critical shortage list, a state subject shortage list by license.
And when you look at what's considered high need, that means annually we're going to need to replace about 20% or more of the teachers in those identified subject areas each year. So you can see in the identified area the three highest areas, and I think anybody that works in a school will tell you they do have a challenge, is attracting secondary science teachers, foreign language teachers, and secondary math teachers. So those tend to be a high priority for us that we want to see how we come up with some strategies to reduce those numbers.
When we talk about licenses, one of the things that we did with the support of the legislature last session is implement a strategy where we put every educator on a teacher licensing plan or an additional licensing plan because we believe that our students should have access to qualified educators. across the state you can see different challenges in different parts of the region but you can see the school districts that are high that are high need are kind of in that I'll say salmon shaded
color maybe pinkish color reddish color on my computer and then gold is moderate and in the white non-shaded areas it's considered adequate so you can see in this high need area that they need access to more certified teachers meaning in those red areas about 20% of the teachers annually are going to need to be replaced and when we think about a teacher licensure plan that that is typically like someone that may come to the classroom on a non-traditional route that doesn't qualify for a license we
work individually with that student that educator and put them on a pathway to get to licensures the ALP the additional licensure plan means that they have a a license but they may be teaching out of area so we want to help get them certified i think you see a lot of especially in our secondary schools where a teacher may be asked to teach both math and science they may be licensed in math but need to do some additional work to get licensed in science as well so
Speaker 16
56:47
when we look at where our teachers come from how do how do we get the
Speaker 2
56:51
best of the best and these committees have heard me present before that the number one indicator for student success is the teachers we put in front of those classrooms which is why we want to continually to invest in teacher quality we know that teachers come to us from different pathways and oftentimes we say about half of the teachers come from a traditional pathway half of our teachers come from an alternative path so you can see here and this chart goes back to 2013
that the number of educators that come to classrooms has increased over the last decade or so to where it's almost 40 percent and about 60 percent in a traditional class or traditional path i don't think this is unique to arkansas i think you're going to find that this is pretty much standard across the united states that a lot of people may be career switchers right they've given a lifetime to one career and always had a passion to be in a classroom and may come to us through an alternative path which is wonderful because those educators bring their
life experiences that they can share with our students each and every single day so how do we kind of build that pipeline maybe whether it's a traditional route or that alternative route there's a couple programs that we've invested in as a state that i want to highlight and share and one of the things that's starting to really gain momentum for educators on that traditional license path is the arkansas teaching teacher academy scholarship which was established in learns and um this is this is a great program because anybody graduating say from high school
and wants to go to college to become a teacher and commits to teaching back in arkansas basically every year that you um earn this scholarship if you can meet if you commit to teaching in an arkansas classroom that repayment is forgiven and so anybody that wants to join what i consider to be the greatest profession of all professions there's a pathway to help you do that and And the more we can share that and educate that with our young ones, the better off we are. But in 2024, our first year of that opportunity, we had about 739 candidates in that program.
This past year, 2025, it increased to 1,143. So we're seeing more people take advantage of this scholarship and try to go through our classrooms. And I'm optimistic that next year it's going to be even greater. And the more we can celebrate and elevate the profession, the better off we are. We also have the STEP program, and that's a scholarship. And it's for Arkansas residents that come and decide to teach, and they may be on a traditional path or an alternate learning path.
In one of our areas that's identified as critical shortage area, there's some loan forgiveness opportunities. And then the top program is for educators that want to continue and pursue. Maybe they want to go to graduate school and deepen their profession, maybe get an advanced degree in curriculum and assessment or educational leadership. There's a scholarship for folks to want to stay in that profession, even if they want to move through their career ladder into a different role.
We also do some teacher licensure events all throughout the state. And we promote some programs that we have in place. One we call the MATS and the other one called RPEP. We love great acronyms in education. But MATS is a Master's in Arts and Teaching. And that's for someone that has a bachelor's, maybe in a content area, but wants to get a degree in education. There's a program that helped them get a master's in education.
We currently have about 800 people participating in that program. And then RPEP is similar, and that's through a program called I Teach, and it's a state-supported program, which has just over 700 folks in it. So even when you get to the classroom or come to the profession, there's still professional learning and growth opportunities that stay supported that we know will help keep the pipeline going. And we also have a really active Grow Your Own initiative. We know if we can invest in future candidates to come to the classroom
that are already deeply rooted in a community they tend to stay and do longer and one of the things or stay longer one of the things that we're really proud of is some of our apprenticeship programs in fact arkansas was i think the first state and one of the only states to do a full registered apprenticeship for special education but then we also have recognized through our partners at office of skills development becoming a classroom teacher as a registered apprentice so you can be a working professional like say for example in the special education
registered apprentice like you you may be a parapro that wants to go back and become a teacher this is an apprenticeship opportunity so that you can still be gainfully employed and then maybe take some courses at night or above and beyond to finish that bachelor's degree to earn a license to get a certification so i think it's wonderful that we have a full registered apprenticeship program that many adults participate in and then our certified teaching assistant program we've we've built out there's a lot of our schools that have career pathways kind of in that cte space
programs for future educators and there's a there's a way that high school students can earn some of those industry national recognized certificate certifications so that they can come into the classroom as well when we're looking at retention we like to always kind of take a snapshot and see are we keeping teachers year after year are they moving are they staying are they going and you can see um kind of that snapshot uh year over year and i like to always look at
things before covet and after covet as far as retention rates so when you look at a stayer the dark blue that means that's an educator that stayed not even just in the classroom but just within the same school and you can see that there's a little bit of an increase since 22 23 and even over 23 24 that more teachers are staying at their school but it's still below where we were pre-pandemic levels so we want to make sure that as we look at ways to celebrate our educators and
our teachers we're providing opportunities for them stay in their school but then you see in like the light blue those are called movers those are teachers that may have transferred to a different school within a district so staffing needs change they're still in the classroom they're still within their district and then the kind of peach color there like light pink is a switcher means that they were in a school but they are not in a classroom they may have switched to an administrative role or maybe they're an academic coach they're still working in
the education profession but they may not be in a classroom in a traditional sense as we know it and then Exeter's are people that are no longer either in their profession or they're not teaching that percentage also includes retirees so if folks are retiring they would be factored into that Exeter category one One of the things that I just want to go a little bit deeper on are those switchers and those are the folks that we see moving to a non-teaching role whether they're staying
in their district or maybe moving to a neighboring district. You can see it's been a little bit of spike over time and in 24-25 like this past school year overall is about 3.6% of our teachers left the classroom for an administrative or coaching job which is a one percent increase over the previous year so those are just some some of the trends that that we see um happening throughout districts across the state but when you look at retention rates by district the the range is somewhere between 55 and 95 meaning 55 on the
low end would mean about 45 of the teachers would have to be replaced that means that's a district where 55 percent of the teachers stayed back in that school and within that retention rate and you can see like in the yellow a lot of those average around 65 percent so if you're on the higher retention rate you're not seeing as much turnover in the darker color some some districts are over 95 percent or schools are over 95 percent though this is by district retention rate meaning they stayed in the district all the way down to yellow where it's somewhere between
55 and 65 which is a little bit concerning we have some survey data on well-being and working conditions that's done through the university of arkansas college of education and health professors put together and you can see overall that most teachers report being satisfied being an educator which i think is great is that we're proud of our educators and we want to see that they're proud to be a teacher and when they look at what is their primary source of stress I don't think
it comes as a surprise but managing student behavior is probably the biggest indicator of frustration for teachers I am very curious after this school year to see what that survey looks like as we compare that data year after year especially with the cell phone ban that we've implemented the school year because we've heard from a lot of teachers leading up to that that that was a big barrier of their frustration and managing student behavior was the kids were always
on their devices so hopefully that we see a difference in the feedback we get i just think that's something that we want to monitor because we want to support our teachers and we we need administrators to support those teachers when they're dealing with persistently disruptive students and then when you look at teachers kind of following up on the well-being and working conditions about 13% of the teachers reported that they plan to leave their current school year overall and the major reasons that were
cited number one being lack of support whether it's maybe that's from their administrators or from the school district or from parents they may not feel supported and appreciated so this is good data that we share with principals that we share with superintendents and district leaders to say hey make we need to make sure we're listening to our teachers they feel supportive we're addressing student behavior we're giving them the resources they need because we know that they make a difference and anything we can do to support our teachers is something that we want to support as well and then when you look at other kind of
key policies for helping promote the teaching profession we know we did some significant salary increases moving our starting teacher salary we went from kind of bottom in the nation the top five excuse me overnight we've established teacher merit pay program which I'm going to go into a little bit more detail the teacher apprenticeship programs and the residency programs Arkansas has been down this path for a few years and I really think is leading the nation and in fact we get asked to present to other states or share how we're doing what we're doing
in this space and really proud of that team and then as we're getting into classrooms and supporting teachers we need to give them feedback and access to a coach and make sure that we're helping improving their profession we also have state-supported teacher mentorships for all of our new teachers have access to a mentor for up to their first three years everybody's assigned a mentor. I think about when I was a brand new teacher and had a mentor assigned to me, Ms. Babcock,
my first year teaching, I was teaching third grade, was my partner teacher and made my year go a lot better because whenever I needed ideas or strategies or I wasn't getting to students or needed help talking to parents, she was always that rock and support. And our new teachers need to learn from our veteran teachers. They have the institutional knowledge. In fact, many of our mentors and Veteran teachers have taught multiple generations of children within the same school, and their wealth and expertise is something that is valued and much needed.
But we have about 4,500 new teachers assigned a mentor currently right now. Excuse me. And we also have some professional growth opportunities for those teachers that want to deepen their knowledge and their practice and their toolkit. And we have as a state designations called a lead professional educator or master professional educator designation. And that's something that we also recognize with teacher merit pay that I'll show you on the next slide. And we're seeing enrollment increase year over year.
A lot of folks are going back and saying, we wanna participate in these programs. And we have a lot of research and evidence to support that the teachers that do go through these programs are having a greater impact on student outcomes. So the more we can invest in those professional opportunities, the better off we are. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on teacher merit because we've done specific presentations on teacher merit. But we're pretty excited that we were able to increase the number of teachers that we recognized over previous years.
So we had just over 3,000 educators receive teacher merit or qualify for teacher merit in the first year of implementation. This past year is around 4,200 and you can see by the chart it's impacted all of our school districts and all of our communities. And I still every day have to clarify every teacher is eligible. And when the committee established the conditions, we wanted to make sure it included kindergarten teachers, art teachers, band teachers, chemistry teachers, everybody.
Not just tested subject areas qualify for teacher merit. Anybody that spends more than 70% of their time with students has three years of highly effective evaluations and can qualify, whether it's through our apprenticeship programs, our mentoring programs, our lead teacher designations, our student growth model. There's a pathway to qualify for teacher merit. And Dr. Bent and her team are always working with districts and educators to help them get signed up on that path because we wanna recognize and celebrate
all of the the rewarding designations that we can support. We also have a great partnership with the Milken Educated Family Foundation and we've been very fortunate over the past couple years to to have years where we've had two and sometimes even three educators in a in a state like Arkansas qualify for what I think is one of the most prestigious education awards there is in the nation we're lucky to get one every year and then for the past few years to get two or three
is a big testament to the quality of teachers that we have and those teachers become part of learning networks and they get recognized with some compensation in fact they get a bonus of about twenty five thousand dollars and we're optimistic and hopeful that we'll be able to continue that that positive trend by having some teachers here qualify as well and then we also participate in our annual teacher of the year process, which is a big professional learning growth opportunity. And those teachers become ambassadors for educators and give us ideas
on how we can recruit, retain, and recognize. And they serve on our board and as a liaison and make sure that we have teacher voice represented very well throughout the agency. So I wanted to share some data and give an overview and then open the dialogue to any questions. Representative Garner, you're recognized for a
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:13:07
question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Secretary Oliva. I just have a couple of questions about some of these scholarships. Is there, and I'm going back to the financial support for teachers.
Speaker 67
1:13:19
Yeah, I think that's in the beginning. Sorry, page seven, or the slide seven. Perfect. Thank you. It's
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:13:26
really a general question. So are the teachers that are getting ready to teach in these subjects or that are willing to go, are they given priority or do we know by then for those scholarship money? Oh, like when they apply to be eligible? Yes, yes. Is there any qualification for, I mean, is it?
Speaker 126
1:13:52
Benton knows that. Okay, so the Arkansas Challenge Scholarship, what's our scholarship system called, that ADHE? the lottery. Sam's, thank you. So Sam's is the statewide scholarship application. And when a candidate completes that scholarship, it asks them a series of questions. And one of those has to do, do you intend to be a teacher? And so it automatically is going to match them with that scholarship based on how they respond. And then when their form submission goes to ADHE,
they're able to verify that enrollment and then award that prospective teacher, future teacher,
Speaker 114
1:14:27
that award amount okay and then the teacher academy scholarships and these those
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:14:32
are the teacher academy scholarships okay that's that's what that one is yeah that would be included in that as well and then loan repayment what about that one is are there that's a different process
so um i'm just trying to figure out what if if we're if we're incentivizing folks to
Speaker 2
1:14:53
to go into those professions beforehand i think that's a great question and and it is it's making those
wheels turn about how we can maybe be more explicit in that um because i don't know if folks not qualifying yet because there there wasn't enough dollars to support the program but i think what i'm hearing is if we get to that support how do we prioritize people that are going in those hard to staff subject areas like secondary science and want to teach in a critical designated area of the state that we know has a shortage or has high turnover. So that's good feedback. I kind of
look at it as different buckets like the teacher academy scholarship are for people that are getting ready to go to school and they're going to want to be a teacher and they're going to commit. Now, when we look at teacher merit paid, some of the qualifying conditions is, are you effective, highly effective, teaching in a critical shortage area in a geographical, hard-to-staff location? So there's an incentive for those folks maybe coming out of school to want to go there. But I think we can get more sophisticated.
And then I think for the loan repayment, those are for folks that may be coming to the profession from another degree that is carrying something. But there's also some federal programs in loan forgiveness, like if you teach at a Title I school and some of those other qualifying factors. But I think that's a good question on how do we incorporate prioritizing those areas of need into these programs. I don't know if we've done that, and I'd be happy to take that back to the team. Great. Thank you. And one follow-up?
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:16:36
You reckon this? The other thing was the supporting the teachers with mentorship. Not with mentorships, but the mentor teachers. So those teachers that have – what I've heard is that we've got a lot of folks that have been mentor teachers for years, and now they have to jump through more hoops. And what I want to know is what those hoops are and if we're incentivizing them to do that. are you
Speaker 2
1:17:05
talking about um incentivizing the teacher to want to be a mentor yes the lead
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:17:11
professional yes the lead professional teachers the master's level do they
understand what they need to do and how to do it and i don't i'm just well
Speaker 2
1:17:23
i'll start and then i'll let you go i think the short answer is yes have we made it over complicated probably right because we tend to do that but a lot of those teacher mentoring programs we support through the educational cooperatives and there are some financial dollars to support the cooperatives to do the training right and
there may be some dollars to entice the mentor to participate in the training but as far as what is required to that training unless dr benton knows i i may need to follow up and get a little bit deeper but that's something that we we really are trying to run through our educational cooperatives because they're there right they're there within the districts but there is some financial there's about a 3.2 3.4 million dollar allocation that supports teacher
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:18:12
mentorship okay so the teachers get reimbursed and the cooperatives get reimbursed for some of that
or could get could be yeah i think every i think every
Speaker 135
1:18:20
program is a little bit different and that's why it's hard for me to answer because what's happening in one region of
Speaker 2
1:18:26
state may look different and that may be an opportunity to look at, to do a deeper dive. So for
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:18:31
me to get that information, is that on the website or through the cooperatives? What's the best way for me to get that information? It's
Speaker 126
1:18:36
on the website, on the DESE website, on the educator effectiveness side. We'll send you a link.
Speaker 63
1:18:41
Okay, great. We'll be happy to. Representative Duke, you're recognized.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:18:48
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you guys for this information. I always enjoy hearing
the reviews that you guys have each year. I've got a couple of quick questions. my first one is on page 13 on the retention rates by district you just have here the 20 24 25 year in previous years what did that look like I mean are you seeing big changes or the districts saying relatively the same and then to go along with that part of the question is what are you all doing with that information I know that you said you send that out to the principals and so
the superintendents I guess but from your standpoint if you've got a couple districts that consistently have the high turnover how are you are y'all digging into that to find out is it because of um just having difficulty getting them to go to that area or if there's maybe potentially an issue with administration that may be happening how deep
Speaker 2
1:19:43
do you dig great great question and um we didn't put a comparison chart because we're just doing a high level overview but there there's a full report that we'll share with the committee that
looks at the past few years that our partnership with office of educational policy pulls together that they do annual comparisons year over year so we can get that to you is there a trend though
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:20:05
that you see well i think the
Speaker 2
1:20:08
the trend would pretty much be the ones that are struggling continue to struggle right let's have some honest conversations around why that is i think when we look at this data one of the first things that we had to realize and the legislature took a big
step is when we see jumpers I know it's a new term I just added instead of switchers or levers is people were given leniency on a waiver to teach in a school district that they weren't licensed for and when that time went up they would just go to another district and get a start waiver over again and that time was up they'd go to another district all within probably 25 30 mile radius we have people jumping from district to district which shows up in this data like why
can't i hang on everybody because everybody's getting a three-year waiver and it's a snapshot which is why we were like we've got to get a little bit more sophisticated and invest in those teachers if this is the profession for that teacher and they're going to be in a district why are we forcing them to keep jumping from district to district why can't we get them license so part part of the challenge we see especially in certain regions of the state is we created a system that forced people to jump and now that we've done the teacher licensure plan it's going to be like now the license is with that teacher not with a district so step one
like kind of policy wise i think that's going to be a big step and to help stabilizing these districts because we've we've had teachers that didn't want to leave districts school administrators they didn't want to lose teachers but their waiver time was up right like why can't we get this license with a teacher and not a waiver for the district and two to your question um i think when we look at that climate survey kind of questions around do they do teachers feel supported right like why are they leaving i think when we go in and start asking questions
of superintendents and principals those are the types of conversations that we need to have and um i i say all the time a good teacher will follow a good principal anywhere a good teacher will leave a bad principal overnight and um as we look at this data and help inform our principal pathways part of that is creating those conditions for success so that educators can thrive and um there's still a lot of work to be done in
Speaker 141
1:22:34
that area so i would assume that um you would
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:22:38
also see test correlation with these districts that have the the numbers of retention that's much much lower is that fair or i mean it's a theory i don't know if i
Speaker 143
1:22:49
would validate that without pulling the numbers you could
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:22:51
do you guys ever look to see if there's a correlation with this is the districts that are having and because that's an impact right if you have teachers that are continually moving you know that consistency there is you know you gain experience in doing that third grade classroom in that school with that program year after year rather than switching
to a new school who does a different phonics program or whatever. Agree. So I was just curious what you all do with some of that. Also, when you gather all this information, you talked about pushing it to the principals and superintendents. Do you
Speaker 2
1:23:25
push it to your school board? Or do you rely upon the admin? Probably not to that level. Typically, we share it with the administrators. But you ask that question all the time, and you always reshape my thinking about how are we getting information to school board members and this is this is a great um a great question that
as we we meet with the school boards in those communities we need to have their they need to have a seat at this table as well because they they should be approving those personnel decisions right at the school board level and they should be looking at their data on do they have a lot of switchers do they have a lot of
Speaker 5
1:23:59
movers are they retaining educators what is their satisfaction results as
Speaker 73
1:24:03
well i think that would be helpful for them especially to hold their superintendents accountable
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:24:07
because you get those monthly you know resignations whatever you have but it's a whole different thing when you see a snapshot like that you know just what that is for the year um
my next question would be on when you did these surveys do do you have the numbers for us and how many responded to the surveys we can get
Speaker 2
1:24:26
that this survey was done through um the university of Arkansas's health and education division but I'm sure they have all of that we can get hard numbers that would be great just because I know we had
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:24:36
a survey last year I think that we had a teacher survey on when we were going through advocacy or whatever and it was such a small fraction of teachers that answered I think this is reflective at least from the feedback that I receive I think
it is reflective but I do think it helps to know the pool of people you're surveying whenever you're looking at data like that and I have one final one um on your rate on the um on the teachers and the different reasons why they were leaving I'm trying
Speaker 10
1:25:05
to find that bar graph the sources of stress or the reported reasons
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:25:09
to leave current pre-pandemic rates it's oh that was 11 I just noticed that the trend on those like you've got 9.2 percent on this um on the exiters and you said
that that also includes your retirees. Yes, ma'am. Do you have the breakdown on what that's
Speaker 15
1:25:28
retirees and what people are just actually leaving? I'm sure we can get
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:25:31
that. I don't have that in front of me, but I'm sure we can get that for you. Because I think that paints a different picture too of who's leaving and then who's exiting because that is higher, as you know. I'm not telling you anything you don't know, obviously. But for us to understand why are they leaving, again, I think we got a pretty good handle on, just most of us, our feedback from the teachers and people that we talk to, like I said, I think that survey is pretty reflective.
A lot of it has to do with student behavior issues and discipline and lack thereof or lack of support from admin in dealing with discipline problems and stuff too. But I would like to know how many of them are the retirees. Sometimes our retirees are
Speaker 2
1:26:09
retiring earlier, right, for the same reasons. I've heard that. I mean, teaching is a tough job, but it's a rewarding job. It is. And if we can keep our best teachers in the classroom longer, it's a win for everybody. Well, thank you guys
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:26:23
for this information. I think it's fascinating.
I know I could talk this all day long, but I'm going
Speaker 21
1:26:31
to get out of the queue. I don't even have another question. Can we have
that in the minutes, Chair Brooks? It's
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
1:26:40
on record. Fair enough. Representative Walker, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and congratulations,
Dr. Benton, on your new position. My question is on page 14 with managing student behavior. I see that as also classroom management skills for teachers, where it's more than double all the other fields that are in there.
And I thought a lot of the managing student behavior classroom management skills were taught by our universities with the teaching program. And so it's just concerning that that's a category that is more than double all the other ones. So I guess my question, how do we ever take a hard look at what our universities are doing with the teaching program, how they're training our teachers as they come out into the field? When we have a category that just stands out from all the others that our universities should be
teaching, just do we ever, how hard of a look do we take to figure out if they're training our kids well before they come out into the profession yeah
Speaker 2
1:27:41
so i think that's a great question and i i go back to we got to look at the two kind of pathways maybe initially like if you're going through a teacher like teacher prep program versus that alternative route and what is that support for an alternative route teacher because they may not have been getting like say deliberate practice
and classroom management strategies which is why it's important for those mentors and and as i'm saying this out loud it makes me think too like we probably need to break down like even where those teachers are and i'll turn around because my theory is it's a higher percentage of secondary versus primary grades because i think more primary teachers go the traditional route which is where they may see some classroom management behaviors um it's a good question that's making my wheels spin a little bit here but uh but the quick answer is do we evaluate
these programs yes um is there a reality that I hear from superintendents often is that I hire a teacher from a teacher program and they're not day one ready a thousand percent right you can ask any superintendent or any principal that so is there a disconnect between how we're preparing that candidate to be successful in being day one ready i think so one not even just from a classroom management perspective but a pedagogical perspective on making sure teachers know how to
teach and design good lessons which impacts classroom management too right like when the students are engaged properly so that's forced us to have different conversations and dr benton can probably go in a little bit more deeper on that because when when you look at that historical model for that teacher to the classroom experience and it being where you sit in a classroom and get taught theories is not preparing somebody to be day one ready so we've had to have some very honest
conversations around our teacher programs and say these need to be redesigned and we've made a little bit of steps but we're not all the way there because we need teacher candidates to get supported by our master teachers in a classroom through that teacher in residency or the teacher apprenticeship process so that they are day one ready and stop sitting in a classroom looking about listening about theories that don't rely on practice to help kids that are in front of them each and every single day so we're currently doing which was a requirement of this legislature an audit on the
science of reading where we're going to all the people because and I don't know if it's your office or higher ed but um like in order to teach teaching programs we check off that there's a lot of the criteria that's met I don't want to get too weedy into that but one is we're going into like the professor's classrooms and evaluating their ability to teach the science of reading and that report's coming out and it's going to be alarming for a lot of our institutions that going to get an unsatisfactory ranking right but we need to start having some honest conversations
with these folks because they may not be day one ready and in fact I share a story about one is when we first started doing this the number of deans of schools and it's not all of them I most of them have been very good very cooperative I'm doing a wonderful job but there's a handful that one said that we're not allowed to come and observe their professors and we have to get on the phone with the presidents of these institutions be like no we're we're coming this this is a requirement but we had one that was scheduled where a group of folks like they knew we were
coming and it was at a certain time and our agency working with some partnerships and co-ops everybody's scheduled to go and start calibrating this classroom and the professor showed up 45 minutes late for a reading class and then we wonder why our teachers aren't ready to teach reading right so i think the first answer to your question is are we evaluating these programs yes the second part is do we read they need to redesign teacher education and preparation yeah yeah it's an antiquated model that is filled with theories that don't apply to practice when we know
that if we can get the practice to change um in a classroom that that makes our future candidates better and you're doing a lot of work in this space i don't know if you want to go a little bit deeper i
Speaker 126
1:32:20
hope i'm on the line of your questioning so a couple of years ago my division educator effectiveness developed a framework and a system to evaluate our ed prep programs secretary oliva talked about the science of reading audits but there's a second layer of that
where we have trained site visitors, other educators across the state to visit those EPPs and to, again, observe the professors, but also to go into the schools and observe their candidates and their completers and their teaching. So it's actually kind of a two-pronged approach to how we are evaluating our ed prep programs. One is just a general looking at the programs of study, seeing how well they prepare candidates across a wide number of metrics,
and then the other evaluation is focused on the science of reading and and you know how they're teaching literacy and whether or not those completers are actually prepared to do that and do that well and that includes looking again at their student growth scores of their completers as well um and as the secretary said we're finishing up the evaluations of the remaining epps there are 22 ed prep programs in arkansas there are five programs that are being reviewed this fall in the spring we'll have a complete data set from both of those
sets of evaluations and we'll be able to share back our findings and then use that information in the data that we get from the data to make some informed decisions about what kind of guidance or what kind of requirements we want these ed prep programs to have moving forward and so again that will be released released in the spring at some point
Speaker 2
1:34:03
if you have follow-up, but I have ideas, too, I think, about how we can go deeper. I'd love to talk to you about that maybe for a future session.
Speaker 5
1:34:12
I don't want any spoiler alerts in this committee.
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
1:34:17
I appreciate y'all's detailed explanation on it, and I am happy to hear that you guys are going into the universities because we need to know what's going on. That way, if we get a graph or a chart like this, it shows that one specific thing outweighs all the other areas, then we have the insight to know whether it's our institutions or where the disconnect may be going on. But I do agree that we need – I feel like that's an emphasis
because I know when I go out into school districts or in the community talking to other teachers that are out there, I would say a lot of the complaints or concerns that I hear would pretty much closely follow the percentages that are on this chart. And one of the biggest complaints that I hear is they don't feel like they were prepared for classroom management skills when they go in they're just flying blind and hoping they can figure it out before they get ran out of the profession and and I've been concerned with it for a while but this chart it may it pretty much is what I'm hearing out in the
district so if we're able to figure out how to address that I in my opinion that would help teachers across our state and maybe
Speaker 2
1:35:29
the retention rate well and and I think when we look at like the national research is if if a teacher can make it through their first three to five years they typically stay in that profession right like to your point if if they're just getting thrown in there and they're not adequately supported and prepared they're probably not going to make it
through those first three years and when you look at the sustainability and longevity for teachers stay in the classroom. That's where we really need to double down our investment on those teachers is in that critical time frame. I appreciate
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:36:14
it. Thank you. Representative Mayberry, you're recognized. Thank you. I'm going to go back to page 11, where it has the pre-pandemic rates before COVID after COVID, the stayers, the movers,
the switchers, the exiters, if you don't mind going back to that, because I'm trying to see if I could do a little deeper dive into definitions here you have and the difference between a mover and an Exeter so my question is if a teacher leaves the public school or charter school and goes to teach at a private school where are they listed in this yeah that great question so they would be in the exeter
Speaker 2
1:36:59
button okay or bucket i should say not button bucket so
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:37:04
that and i guess that's kind of my
question because we're looking at you know passing the learns act that would be the 22 the 23 the 24 you know school years are we seeing a lot of are we some
of that increase is that because we have some teachers who are going to teach at private school because of course our private schools are having more students and I would think that means they need more teachers
Speaker 23
1:37:33
yeah um it could be right
like I I think I think you're asking the right question I I don't
Speaker 2
1:37:40
know because we we ask these teachers to do an exit survey i don't know if we collect if they're leaving the district to go to a private school and that may be
Speaker 164
1:37:49
an element we want to add if we don't because i i
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:37:53
think that's a trend that would be important to have to see are they leaving the school system to continue
teaching but teaching in private school or are they just so fed up with the profession that they're getting out completely and i think that's a an interesting thing that you might want to
consider whoever does this next time to add that question there to get a little bit more
Speaker 2
1:38:16
qualifying. I agree I think that's a fair question because it's they're not exiting the profession I think is what you're trying to get down to so we may need to update that survey to reflect like you may not be in your district or charter school but are you staying in a profession in another capacity I don't know if we collect that but we can look at that. Because I think that's
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:38:36
a new trend so thank you very much. Thank you.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:38:40
representative beck thank you mr chair so you've kind of danced around the question or really i guess it's more of a statement i was reading an article about professionals and how long they stay you know it's a new thing now right that professionals do not stay at a job very long as a matter of fact like a couple years and they're out or whatever so i was wondering on the retention I talk is how have you guys looked at that to think are some of these professionals
just like it's a normal thing that that you know professionals will leave a job and quite often I was surprised that quite often they will go to another profession
a whole nother area of that profession that so how much of this retention uh because you're in some cases we're
very close to the overall numbers and the interesting point that they made was the best the brightest were the ones that were jumping the most
Speaker 2
1:39:45
so I thought that was kind of interesting I think there's some research on different generations when they look at kind of career investments I want to say I read somewhere recently probably some of the same articles you're reading that it says like most of the generations in this workforce now over their lifetime will have 14 to 16 different jobs in different fields right like it's not even um bouncing around within a field that their folks aren't afraid to just do something different but maybe that's what when i
think and i think representative maybe we're just kind of getting to this point like maybe folks are leaving, but they're still working in education, which is why I think this is the greatest profession, because even if you wanted to do something different, and in a lot of our communities, the school district's the largest employer, they don't just hire teachers, right? So maybe you are a teacher and you still want to work in schools, but you may become a diesel mechanic, or you may become an electrician, or a computer network technician, or a school administrator or a coach so um my i guess my wonder and i think it's kind of along what you're saying
is are you leaving education all together are you doing a different role in education maybe in a different capacity because i know a lot of folks that might become the school finance director they're they're in finance now right like if you look at their job code but they started as a math teacher you know what i mean and is that considered a career change i don't i don't know there's still education but they're doing completely different work and so maybe there's ways we can get more sophisticated and capture that it's a good question or statement
Representative Wade Andrews
Unverified
1:41:30
represent me andrews thank you mr chair um i just kind of want to bounce off representative walker's question about managing behavior and all that because i too hear from teachers say it can be challenging to address behaviors in the classroom. And I just kind of want to know what are some solutions and what are you all kind of looking at to fix those problems? But also I really want to know in kind of back story here,
I know children, students act out in the classroom for different reasons, whether it's socioeconomic or bad home life or they're hungry, they're bored, or they want to cause mischief, or whatever it may be. How many schools are still using corporal punishment? How many are using detention? How many say, all right, is that a whooping you or give you D-Haul? We'll go make you pick up trash or mop the floor. What schools are you using for punishment?
Speaker 2
1:42:36
Well, that's a good question with a lot of different answers, And I'm trying to wrap my head around how we could pull that because I think some of the examples that you cited for interventions, we probably got a little bit of everything going across the
Representative Wade Andrews
Unverified
1:42:53
entire state. For some kids, you know, three licks in the paddle and send them back in the classroom and they're taken care of. Some need to sit down with therapists. Correct. So how do we teach our teachers to be able to manage the whole spectrum properly without overwhelming them?
Speaker 67
1:43:10
- Yeah, good question, and I guess when you're looking at classroom
Speaker 2
1:43:18
management, and you've kind of alluded to, you gotta get to the antecedent of the behavior, like why is the kid is acting up? And when you look at kind of that student study team approach, there could be a myriad of answers, whether it's tied to home life, whether it's tied to cognitive issues, whether it's tied to different parts of the environment within a school, right?
Like, why do some kids react to some teachers and not others? Like, there's a lot that goes into that plan. But what we need to make sure is that, one, we've got to hold parents accountable for their children's behavior. And at some point we've lost our way and said that everything is the school's fault. And I know schools have a lot of challenges. We need administrators to know that they're going to be supported. No student has the right to disrupt the learning of themselves and others while hurting people.
And when I hear about the frustration from teachers not feeling supported, we've got teachers or students that are being violent against educators and there's no consequences and they're showing back up in the classroom. Well, I think that's ridiculous. And I think that anybody that's being violent in a school needs to have that student study team assembled and that student be put in an environment where they're gonna be supported and not hurt themselves or others. And it really starts with that belief,
but we also have to hold parents accountable and make sure that they're doing their part to make sure that this
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:45:08
student's being successful at school as well. - Thank you. - Representative Gonzales-Worthin, you're recognized. um thank you for taking our questions and i look forward to um to visiting with you on a couple of different topics related to teacher shortage areas um one is representative garner mentioned
earlier about um looking at incentivizing possibly or what are we doing in terms of trying to um possibly incentivize teachers that might have the desire to become a science teacher one day a math teacher um I'm a former science teacher um that was uh something and I'll I'll go into that here in just a little bit but um what one of the things that I've noticed um in in teaching is and working with all grade levels is that we have we have a lot of um elementary middle school
junior high kids who absolutely love science or math and they're involved with um east or robotics or um they're in a in a in the chess club they're in the i mean they're in kind of math science driven that's kind of where they're thinking but i wonder um what we might do or if that might be a place early on for possible recruitment of those students and putting that
seed in place have you ever thought about becoming a teacher in the future you know you have some kids who have the propensity of they love helping another student learn math the teacher has explained it three times the student doesn't get it but their friend can give it to them like this and they've got it I don't know it's just something that i'm that i'm thinking about i see it a lot um there's kids that would be i mean that to me i think we're i don't know what what do you think about that in terms of i i love it i think that's
Speaker 2
1:47:06
the innovation that we need to see happening in our schools and and we need to let folks know that we don't have to maintain the status quo and if we can find innovative ways to tailor that personalized learning experience for those students then that's really what this is about and and what you're talking about is is relevancy right when when kids can see what they're learning relates to the world around them whether that leads to a future industry or career or whether it's back to the classroom that that's what gets kids excited that gives them hope that gives them
curiosity and that's what is the spark behind learning and I think too like where we want to be more innovative and creative and we talk about licensing and all of these different traditional pathways non-traditional pathways but some of those specialized content areas like you're talking about like high school science like you know if you want to find an AP physics teacher in certain parts of the state that's really hard to do right so how do we maybe regionalize that support look at virtual options we haven't talked about AI and what generative information and AI instruction
looks like but there's schools across the nation that's talking about how do we incorporate that to tailor that experience and I don't know if we know all those answers yet but those are conversations that were that we're having I think there's some school districts that are being creative and when they think of a teacher to teach a specialized contract they use like an adjunct model like like that you may have seen at a state college or a university where it's where you go to the local industry that's in town that has a resident physics doing some kind of engineering
product and say hey i will need you you know 178 days a year seven and a half hours a day but if you can come two or three days a week for an hour would your company work with us to send you there and then we can send kids there and let's build a relationship so our kids are learning from the industry and the industry also wants to get back to the pipeline because they want to see their professions grow so I think what you're talking about is how do we incentivize innovation and
that's part of why we're having this conversation because I think there's just a lot of opportunities to to to do
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:49:36
just that okay my follow I have one follow-up and and that's related to slide number two I was looking at the number of teachers in life in particular license areas and I do have a bit of a concern with one with an area English for speakers of other languages the ESL in this case it would
be the endorsement we do have a lot of teachers 11,041 teachers who hold an ESL endorsement which is absolutely wonderful however we have 43,000 English learners statewide and 70,000 language minority students and then you start adding you add 7,500 English learners with disabilities and then 225 English learners who are also gifted and so I'm just that has me a
little bit i don't think we have enough um esl endorsed teachers but at the same time i don't know um what what could we do to help increase that because i think right now it's still pretty much voluntary to get an esl endorsement you know there's a lot of teachers will receive one go to do the extra coursework and practice exam etc when they see that half their kids are English learners, you know, there's definitely a need.
But what can we do to help increase that with our numbers given, you know, statewide?
Speaker 67
1:51:12
I think that's a great question. And I think to kind of layer on top
Speaker 2
1:51:18
of the complexity of the point you make is that while there may be 11,000 teachers endorsed or licensed to teach ESOL, that means it's on their license but they may not be working in that area as well right so like license doesn't it doesn't necessarily equate to job placement so we may have 11 000 licensed
esalt teachers but only 500 of them actually 500 teachers working in esalt right so i think the the first part of the answer your question is how do we get a snapshot of who's teaching these programs and what are the courses and then maybe we need to consider certain requirements for teachers to have specific training if they're working with different level of students in this program um I don't know if we've gotten that sophisticated yet but that that could be something
that we'd love to have a conversation with you about because there's some best practices in other states um I don't know if we need to reinvent something new but there
Speaker 183
1:52:17
may be a way to build upon what we have and make it a
little stronger okay thank you see no additional questions dr benton thank you for your time and secretary oliva thank you as well
uh secretary if you would just hang there for just a moment i think there's just a couple additional questions from members uh members without objection we have one more quick presentation from miss kenya flores
about a partnership with the school of the blind but i'm going to jump over that and go to other business i believe there was maybe one question relative to any updates on our discussion last week about child care vouchers so if there's a specific question or maybe members just wanted to see if there's additional information that can
Speaker 2
1:53:02
be provided at this time yeah so um since the last time we met we we talked about starting the sliding scale payment program with parents so We've been working with providers on that
and pausing the reimbursement rates. We all know that the federal government shut down. So there's not really a whole lot of updates about future year funding or extending current funding until we get that continuing resolution across the finish line. And we can work with our folks, our representatives from the Office of Health Services. But we have an early learning coalition or committee that meets, I want to say quarterly.
We're going to ask them to do a meeting next week. We're going to pull in representatives across the state. Next week we're pulling some data and information so that we can share with them everything that we have, see if they have any ideas for long-term sustainability of this program.
Would you be able to take a couple questions? Representative Vaught.
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:54:04
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Do we know, have we had facilities that's had to close down? And if we have, how many have already had to close their doors? Yeah, I
Speaker 135
1:54:13
haven't heard of any, and I don't know if we're tracking that,
but I can find out for you. I'd be
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:54:19
happy to. And then your meeting next week, will it be a
Speaker 2
1:54:22
live meeting or will it be a Zoom? It'll be a publicly noticed meeting. I don't know if we've coordinated where in the logistics, but it'll be
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:54:29
a publicly noticed meeting. And is there a way that we can get an invitation to that so that we
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:54:39
can come and listen? We're happy to. - Thank you. - Representative Mayberry. - Thank you. I had asked the question last week about a rule change and an official rule change or whatever, and you had made the statement that it's federal dollars.
And I guess, maybe I didn't ask the question well enough at the time, but
when we use federal dollars, there is an approval process, whether it's through us or someone else, federally, that would look at that. And I was told that you have to have some type of report
federally filed within 60 days if you make changes to a program.
Am I understanding that right or just still help me gather? Because I can't imagine that the federal government would say, here's all this money and do whatever you want with it and change it whenever you want and all that. And we have significantly changed, not obviously there's a dollar amount, but just the way that the program is being funded instead of on these tiers of, you know, level three, four, five, six, getting different amounts to a flat rate.
Speaker 16
1:55:52
Sure. So I'm not sure what rule or process you're referring to. I
Speaker 2
1:55:56
can investigate or follow up with you. Okay. But what I'll state again today, what I've stated before with the legislature, is the current rate system is unsustainable. This program will not exist by Christmas. We are using reserves right now making payments that we can't afford to do. And if the government doesn't open up and we get a next quarter payment, I'm going to be back here in two to three weeks to tell you there's no more program.
So what did we do as an agency when we looked at that rate spend? We knew that that wasn't going to happen. We put together a strategy to slow this down to sustain the program. Nobody likes that strategy. Everybody's complaining about it. We put a pause on that strategy, say we're going to work with stakeholders, and maybe they can help give us a better strategy. But it's an unsustainable program. And if we can come up with better ideas, if the legislature wants to help support, we're willing to do that.
But what I'm telling you is we don't have $6 to $8 million a month to maintain the status quo. And that is unsustainable. And every week that goes by is $2 to $3 million that we don't have additionally coming
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:57:09
into that pot of money. And I understand that, and that point has been made very clear. I'm not arguing that point. I guess I'm just making sure that we're crossing our T's and dotting our I's. Because I can't, I'm just kind of baffled with how you could make such a substantial change in just the way it's being funded without some type of approval process.
I mean, I've dealt a little bit more on the health
care side. And if we change Medicaid, even though it may not be a state plan or whatever, you have to go through CMS and you can't do it until you get that approval. and I just want to make sure that we're
not, you know, thank you. I think it's a fair question.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:57:56
Representative Garner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Secretary. I just have a question a little bit more, wanting a little bit more detail on the coalition meeting.
Speaker 2
1:58:05
Who's on that coalition? I don't have the list in front of me, but we can set up. I forget how all the appointees are happening, But it's an established coalition. So is the Early Childhood Commission part? Is that what I'm talking about?
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:58:17
Be a part of that? I might be calling it the wrong
Speaker 5
1:58:22
name. I'm sorry. I'm calling it the wrong name. The Early Childhood Commission. That's who we're going to try to get to meet with us next week.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:58:29
I apologize. And has that notice gone out? And I dismissed it? We haven't scheduled the meeting.
Speaker 2
1:58:35
You asked what the update is. Like I literally met with our team this morning, said we need to pull these reports. Let's get the commission in next week. Well, we've got to probably find a bigger space if we're going to invite all of our friends and get that noticed. And I'm hearing from, like, Representative Vaught that maybe we want to stream it. Those are things we've got to figure out. But our intention is to pull that group together by
Speaker 5
1:58:55
next week. The commission meetings are usually streamed, I think. Okay. At least Zoom is available. We'll follow that process. Thank you.
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
1:59:07
Senator Sullivan. Thank you. In general, are you allowed to spend money that hasn't been appropriated? In other words, if there's no money in the budget, you're limited in your ability to shift money around to pay for programs.
Speaker 166
1:59:22
Would that be true? Within reason, yes, I would
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
1:59:24
say that that's true. I mean, that's just within reason is a reasonable answer. Right. You can't spend the money that hasn't been appropriated. And if there's zero in the budget, there's zero in the budget. Can you figure out ways to work around that? Yeah. But generally speaking, we didn't appropriate the money,
and right now there's zero in the budget.
Thank you. See no additional questions. Thank you, Secretary Oliva. Members, final thing on our agenda, item F, presentation of the pilot program with Ms. Kenya Flores. Ms. Flores, if you would, please join us at the table. And when you get here, we can go ahead and introduce yourself, and then you're recognized. Thank you for being here with us Kenya and we look forward to hearing from you.
Speaker 198
2:00:33
Thank you. Kenya Flores, Manager of Government Relations at Learning Ally. Can you all hear me okay? Yes, ma'am. Okay,
Speaker 200
2:00:42
great. Good afternoon. It's an honor to be here in Little Rock this afternoon with all of you, and I thank you in advance for your time and attention today. Like all of you, I am committed to helping improve literacy outcomes. By way of introduction, I am Kenya Flores, and I have the pleasure of serving as Manager of Government Relations at Learning Ally, a non-profit education technology organization. Learning
Speaker 198
2:01:04
Ally was founded right after World War
II. Our founder, Anne McDonald, wanted blinded veterans to be able to take
Speaker 200
2:01:10
advantage of educational opportunities presented to them after the passage of the GI Bill. She began recording books in the basement of the New York Public Library. What was once recording for the blind has evolved to become Learning Ally today. I will share more about our work in a moment, but I'd like to share a little bit of my lived experience with you before getting to that. My story exemplifies what is possible
when students are provided with necessary support in the classroom. I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I had a fairly normal upbringing except for one characteristic. I have been blind since birth and my parents did not know how to raise a blind child. I was and still am the only blind person in my family. I often tell people blindness itself is not the challenge. It is a low expectation society has for people with disabilities as well as lack of accessibility. However, I am blessed to have had access to educational opportunities and the necessary
accommodations I needed as a blind person in order to level the playing field and allow me to participate in mainstream education just like my sighted peers in both K-12 schools and at Furman University. While I had many incredible educators throughout my educational journey, I had many who believed accessibility was optional. However, I have had yet to encounter a challenge I did not face head-on. As a result, I am now fortunate to have a meaningful job that
allows me to make a positive impact in the lives of thousands of students and I am able to contribute to the U.S. economy just like anyone else. However, my story could have turned out much differently without access to accommodations such as the Learning Ally audiobook solution. At Learning Ally, we believe that listening is vital to learning. From the youngest age, children learn by listening and then by engaging in meaningful conversations by equipping early and struggling
learners with our ebooks we allow them to access curriculum literature and popular titles that help them expand learning for millions of students the audiobook solution is an accommodation available on any device capable of connecting to the internet or downloading the Learning Ally audiobook application. However, internet access is not necessary once books are downloaded,
which is really critical for students located in rural areas. The audiobook solution is an interactive solution that contains human-narrated books highlighting capabilities in an embedded dictionary. The educator is able to monitor the books on students' bookshelves as well as follow their progress throughout the school year. Any student with a learning deficit such as dyslexia can benefit from the audiobook solution. It is not meant to substitute the focus on structured
literacy instruction. However, it is meant to serve as a supplemental accommodation as students build their foundational reading skills found in Scarborough's Reading Rope. It is particularly useful in enhancing students' comprehension. Because reading is fundamental, lack of comprehension affects students in all academic content areas. Additionally, audiobooks help with vocabulary growth, fluency, and comprehension of more complex syntax. Today, we continue Anne's legacy
to break down the barriers that deny countless individuals the opportunity to learn, to grow, and to achieve their full potential. We are so incredibly grateful to be a partner to the Arkansas Department of Education for the 2025-2026 school year. Secretary Oliva, with the support of Senator Davis, has committed to providing the audiobook solution to blind and visually impaired students across arkansas who attend mainstream schools as a way of honoring our founder we
continue to provide the audiobook solution to all u.s schools for the blind at no cost to them our north star is that every student regardless of learning difference is able to graduate and pursue higher education or a workforce pathway similarly to the learns act our goals are to strengthen literacy outcomes, increase educator access, support teachers, and empower
families. I sincerely thank you for your time and attention today, and I thank you for your efforts to lead the way in regards to literacy reform in Arkansas. We look forward to continue to being an ally to the state of Arkansas. Thank you, and I'm happy to answer
Speaker 198
2:06:13
any questions. Thank you, Ms. Flores. Wonderful to hear
about the work that's taking place for visually impaired students all over the state and in your work in that, are there questions for members? Representative Mayberry, you're recognized. I'm sorry, just a real
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:06:27
quick question. Can you tell me what you are reading from, how that was put together?
Speaker 198
2:06:36
Explain a little bit to us. Yeah, so this
Speaker 200
2:06:42
is just a booklet. It has hard copy Braille, and I just wrote up a document. um, last week and, um, had it produced in braille just because that's my preferred way of reading. Um, and, um, like instead of using electronic braille, because you can only read like one line
at a time typically. Um, so it's just a hard copy form of what you would see on a printed screen or if I printed this out and I'm happy to like
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:07:19
pass it around if anyone is interested. Did you type it or did you verbally say it and
Speaker 200
2:07:25
then it printed it? I'm just curious. No. So I typed it on a regular laptop using a screen reader, which is basically a robot that talks to me in my ear and reads out everything that I'm typing. And then I read through it using a Braille display,
which is a machine that can connect to a laptop via a USB cable. And then I can read the Braille on it so I proofread that and then it's something called embossing so instead of printing just visualize the same process of printing a document but instead it's a very loud machine called an embosser and it produces braille on paper and it puts it in that spiral no you have to do that separately okay but I
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:08:09
just like having it in a booklet yeah
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
2:08:17
I love learning and thought you could tell us how you brought the information to us. Thank you so much. And I believe,
Ms. Flores, I would imagine that several members might be interested to see that after the committee meeting adjourns. It's fascinating and I love that, again, that there's so many options are available for students to learn as well. So seeing no additional questions, thank you so much for your time and your presentation. We appreciate it very much. Members, as we close out, a reminder, tomorrow we'll be meeting at 10 a.m. in Mariana at Lee County High School.
The agenda is available online. Sorry, at the elementary school. I apologize. And a strong elementary school in Mariana tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. And then several tours to follow. And I look
forward to a great day there. And see no additional business before the committee. Committee is adjourned. Thank you.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration of a Motion to Approve the September 2, 2025, and the September 3, 2025, Meeting Minutes [Exhibits B1-B2]
C. Consideration for Adoption of Interim Study Proposal (ISP) [Exhibit C1-C2]
D. Presentation of Partnership Program for Academic Facilities and Transportation
E. Presentation of Teacher Recruitment and Retention Efforts
F. Presentation of Pilot Program with ADE in Partnership with the Arkansas School for the Blind - Kenia Flores, Manager of Government Relations, Learning Ally
G. Other Business
H. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Speaker 2
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
Speaker 18
Speaker 20
Speaker 5
Speaker 26
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Speaker 34
Speaker 41
Speaker 32
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
Speaker 52
Speaker 57
Speaker 59
Speaker 54
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Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
Speaker 84
Speaker 85
Speaker 67
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 104
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Representative Keith Brooks Chair
Unverified
Speaker 114
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Speaker 23
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Representative Wade Andrews
Unverified
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
Speaker 183
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
Speaker 166
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Speaker 200
Speaker 207