Education Committee - Senate and House

er r she's a quorum good afternoon members jointucation will come to order we're going to start the meeting off if you would stand and join us in prayer uhpresentative MacGruder, I'm going to recognize you if y'all would keeppresentative Carolyn Brown in your prayer she's having a medical procedure today so let's remember Thank you Representative members we're moving to item B on the agenda. I need a motion to approve the August3,2026 August 26,2026 meeting minutes have a second all in favor say aye the motion to carries moving on we're gonna wait on number C I'm gonna take just a quick moment of personal privilege if I can members here at the outset so today is I guess probably the last time that we'll meet together and joint education because we have concluded our business from the standpoint of of adequacy there'll be maybe a one or two early childhood subcommittees on the house side but probably not be not a lot beyond that so that would mean that today would be my amazing colleagues en ator English's last day to sit up here as chair of Senate Education and if y'all know Sen English she is extremely passionate about education for the kids in the state of Arkansas not just kids but adults and everybody in between and she's done an outstanding job it's an honor to serve next to her and so we have a a house citation for you senator that I'm gonna read and it says citation from the house for the honornorable Jane English and and Senate obviously y'all have the lads to do one if you want to as well but this is this is I didn't have the power to to create a senate citation so from from the House of Representatives Senator Jane English Arkansas Senate District 13 which includes parts of North LittleRock, northern Pulaski County was sworn in the Arkansas state senate in January of 2013 will be retiring from her position on December31st,2026 and Senator English served two terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 2009 through the end of 201el before 10 years as a state senator she's the chair of the Senate Education Committee a member of the senate city county and local affairs the joint performance review the senate efficiencyittee the joint budgetgetittee, the Arkansas Legislative Council and the legislative joint auditing committee. During the ninetyfifth general assembly she sponsored legislation to make school business more transparent by requiring school boards to allow public comments at every meeting to publish the school meeting's agenda and publish a scoreboard names and email addresses on the school websiteshrout her tenure she has made it a priority of hers to improve vocational and career education by rest ru c t ur ing job training working with local businesses to ensure schools are providing the training they need and access to training in the fields in most demand by Arkansas businesses and Senator English is known for her commitment to Arkansas veterans and was a part of the cosu coalition that successfully supported the location of a new veteran's nursing home in North LittleRock. She served as the executive director of the Fort Chaffee Publicnsrust from a 1984 to1997. the executive director of the Arkansas Manufacturers Association the Arkansas Workforce Investment Bo ard a cabinet position under former governor Mike Huckabee and in 2005 she served as an economics and workforce advisor to former lieutenant governor Winthrop P.Rockefeller. In the House of Representatives of the ninetyfifth General Assembly of the state of Arkansas expresses great pride in acknowledging Senator Jane English for extensive years of dedicated service to the state and the constituents she has represented now therefore pursuant to the motion of the House of Representatives this5th day of October 2026. please join me in in recognizingent English. thank you so very much we don't realize how fast time goes by but education workforce training and all that helping all of our citizens to be more than they ever thought they could be has been a major passion of mine all this time. I hope to keep continue working in that same vein but I have enjoyed every single minute I have been in the in the legislature wonderful wonderful people all of us trying to do good things but I thank you very much Keith thank you you're welcome Senator Johnson do you have words to say abouten English chairman thank you Mr chairman I'd like to add to that and you did a great job of of her illustrating her public service I want to mention something some of y'all might not know I first got to know Senator English when she was an employee of what we then called AIdC now AEdC and she was tremendously instrumental in helping us gain some a whole lot of Arkansas jobs not the least of which senator Wallace of the steel mills in Mississippi County and the things she did especially prepping our workforce for the success we've had so she was a great public servant before she entered the legislature and I just wanna thank you for bringing that Mr Chairman and senator English it's been an honor to be your friend for this I won't say how many years but a lot more than just our time in the legislature and and and thank you Mr chairman and thank all of you p re s ent ative Cozart Thank you Mr chairir. Senator English, I just want to thank you for the three terms that I got to serve sitting along beside you as the House chair and you led extremely extremely well every meeting that we've had and for your dedication to career education I I don't know anybody that's ever put the work that you've put into that. I just want to thank you it's been an honor to serve alongside you serving the house with you and then watch you in the senate and what you do we're gonna miss you there's no one big enough to fill those shoes yet so they've got a lot of work to do to come in and and take your place and they'll never take your place. I'll just tell you that thank you for what you've done for the state of Arkansas and the education in Arkansas. Thank you Representative cozart and Senator Johnson and I will say just from a personal standpoint uhenator English has has been an outstanding joy to work with. there are there are a few people I think who who have the energy that she has continually she runs rings around most of us and so I don't I don't think there's ever a time where I I text her or email her where it's not responded to in about 1el seconds and and if you don't call her back she's gonna keep calling you until you do and so she's she's pretty outstanding at what she does and so it's a a great loss for the state of Arkansas in terms of of your service but we know that you still have much opportunity to to continue to serve the people in your community so we sincerely appreciate you thank you members for that for allowing me to do that so we're going to move on to yes ma'am we're going to move on to item C in the on the agenda presentation on student cyber threatats someone to recognize Mr.ri Olsen to come to the table.membs you've got a hard copy of this in front of you As we think about one of our most important jobs members it's obviously student safety is is the primary thing that we do and we oftentimes think about physical safety from the four walls to metal detectors to drones to vape monitors and all types of things in this world and I was presented with some of the work that that Mr Olson and his organization's doing to keep students safe on the technology side of things and and frankly this is nothing more than an opportunity I think for us to have our eyes open to some of the threats that are out there and see some of the challenges that we may not normally be aware of so with that Mr Olson I will recognize you for your presentation if you would please just introduce yourself for the record. can you hear me? OK thanks Keith thanks everybody for taking time with me today greatly appreciated just quickly start off with who we are and and who I'm representing so if you could Mrolson move that mic just a little bit closer to you please sir start starting off a little bit about who I am so I I run to digital safety companies the mediarust is roughly 21 years old I call that the corporate side our clients are amazon and Microsoft and Disney Corporation Walmart littlet company based in Arkansas. Our job is to work with them to help reduce digital harm targeting people and I'm going to get into the difference between cybersecurity which protects machines and the idea of digital safety or reducing harm targeting people as as we run through this today separately a separate company which focuses on directly protecting people versus working with big tech to help them reduce harm called proxxyare we install in senior communities in schools in boys and girls clubs so that we can become a synthetic child in Arkansas the synthetic grandmother excuse me living in a in in a senior community in Virginia the internet knows us the internet curates our experiences that know you and target you capability is the biggest driver of digital harm targeting our kids targeting all our vulnerable in in our states so proxxor works with states it works with senior living communities it works with cities and then with churches and boys and girls clubs around the country so digital harm is growing faster than enforcement I think is is keeps with mentioning core job is making sure that our children are safe Americans spend 8 to15 hours per day online these are things that all of you know. unfortunately crime has moved there as well so yes there's still lots of crime on the street there's lots of things we have to worry about outside of the internet but if you look at sheer volume of attacks and where bad actors are successful it has moved online policing and protecting people has not been able to move as fast when we become a child in Arkansas and I'm gonna run through some data we we are in the school in Arkansas and I can I can show you examples of what we see here 39 % of each attempted crime that we see is running in one individual location meaning it's targeting one geographic or one individual person you can't look at this as a blanket problem you can't just go say hey let's make theet safe it's targeting us locally it's targeting us individually that creates a huge huge problem for law enforcement Less than 1% of digital crime is ever pursued. so roughly 10% of digital crime is reported that's based on FBI and FTC information 1% of that is able to be pursued by local prosecutors or or police it's a300 billion dollars US problem right so financial crime as part of digital crime is absolutely massive and when you think about the way that we've been approaching the problem over the last 1015 years as it's been really starting to grow what we're doing is not working I'm gonna run through a whole bunch of different things that we do today and some scenarios and and ways to think about other things to do but sextortion right a new type of problem that we have to deal with since the advent of the internet is up 248% year over year so that's from 2024 into 2025 the suicide rate is up40% nationally since 2000 right the common denominator here iset exposure internet harms so a couple problems to to share with you to start problem one is defining digital harm and this is really confusing. there's a lot to be thinking about if you look at the metas settlement or if you've looked at it other states there's settlements with companies like obloxx the primary driver of of digital problems that have resolved or addressed there are mental health and social media addiction these are big problems these are things that we have to worry about but they aren't even the biggest problems right so the framing of how we're dealing with social media today from a legislative and then from a legal perspective focuses on those two problems we look at it in from a larger scale so grooming in sextortion that's digital harm ug s alcohol and vaping right these are digital harms today so even though vaping is bigger than the internet how are kids initially exposed? how can kids buy vaping products and have them shipped to their house that's happening on the internet sexualization so there's an age verification law in Arkansas actually Arkansas was a leader in getting age verification on adult content out we're going to talk about that a little bit more but that's part of the problem human trafficking is a digital problem. Kids are freely walking out of their homes and getting into the white van right no longer is it pulling up on the side of the curb grabbing the kid and running off. We have kids that are willing to walk outside and leave so mental health social media these are problems right but digital harm can't be defined as those two things it's much much bigger I'm here today to talk about kids this this PowerPoint goes into seniors a little bit just to touch on that we know that senior digital crime is a massive problem. I won't run through all of the different ways that they're being robbed of their livelihoods of their confidence the ability for them to be productive citizens but what you want to know is that seven years ago 80% of prime targeting seniors started with the caregiver today 85% starts online and the way that we're tackling that problem as a society isn't changing in line with how we need to be addressing it. OK, so problem two knowing that digital crime and digital harm is this big list of societal problems right not always associated with digital but all part of digital how are we going to address this? and so right now when we look at the ways that government is moving towards helping people. it revolves around adding more school resource officers adding more mental health help right so more mental health resources educating kids right those are the three primary drivers those are typically happening after kids are already victims and so what I want to show you today are examples of things that are happening examples of things that you can see and offer some thoughts about what you might be able to do with that in addition to helping the victim after they'd be harmed so first really high level some confusing words like the cybersecurity industry and the privacy industry together roughly $1 trillion in revenue the primary objective for cyber is to protect your laptop or your phone. it is not to protect the child using it right so we don't want to confuse cybersecurity and protecting networks machines and data with actually reducing harm privacy as an industry is a compliance tool for corporations right so privacy is used to check lots of boxes so that the company doesn't get sued when people's data is being used. that's unfortunately where privacy has come to and so what you don't want to think is that these companies don't have our data and when I say these companies it's just about everybody right surrounding us in digital privacy doesn't prevent the internet from knowing who we are. the big problem in legislation isn't that there is legislation the legislation is good right? age verification on adult content is a good thing the problem is in enforcement. right we're gonna get to that and then victim victim and mental health support is good but it's too late. I think the way to put all of this in into context is as we've added resources for all of these things over the years. take a look at the graph the the yellow is the resources spent on privacy mental health and cybersecurity the blue is the increase in digital harm in context of dollars right so it's not causal but we kind of have an inverse relationship on spend for what we're traditionally working on versus the outcomes that we're all seeking to achieve. OK so we're in an Arkansas school. I'm gonna take a few minutes to just run through some examples most of you are are thinking about these things or talking about things when you talk about digital safety and child safety what I want to make sure you're thinking is this is all in context of the internet, the internet targeting children children's exposure to these problems when they're online so schools do a lot to protect kids and that's great right they're using web filters that's very positive monitoring children if they talk about things like suicide the teachers and the administrators are able to see that these are all very very positive. they're educating kids on digital safety the problem is you can't block the internet. Kids know how to get around filters but it's also the filter the the bad actors know how to get around the filters as well and so they're targeting kids we see things past these filters right so this is the exposure that kids are getting targeted with so sexual and violent content right Children don't just go looking for sexual content that they're actually targeted with it right violenceolence is a normal part of how they experience the internet. they see it very differently than the way we see it tobacco vaping and drug promotion the only people on the internet it's not the only people that the predominant people on the internet who see vaping and I'm gonna get to gambling here in a moment and gambling advertising our seventh to 11th grade boys. which means if you're not 1/7 grade boy you don't realize that they're being targeted to buy vaping products on the internet right so the idea if you become them you can start to see these problems and so big issues like the rise in gambling addiction with Arkansas boys, right something that's top of mind for parents top of mind for legislatures the way that this is happening is through the internety being 1/7 grade boy you can see who's targeting them you can see who's running this gambling content and then go after it right so the current solutions that we have today aren't necessarily meeting the objective and there's lots more that we can do so to to jump into to a bit deeper so vaping and drug addiction when we turn on in the school it takes roughly5 minutes for us to start seeing vaping ads when we act as a young boy. so it's almost instantaneous right the internet knows right away who we are right we're looking like that and it's sending us all sorts of bad things so this matters for all of the reasons you're thinking about we're trying to reduce addiction we don't want lifetime addiction to tobacco before a child hits the age of 15. It's normalizing substance abuse because they're exposed to it all day it's right in front of them it creates the pathway to purchase so you can buy have it shipped to your house just comes in a nice innocuous package the parents don't even know it's coming right they don't have to go to the7-Eleven or go down the street where someone's gonnaidd them so the opportunity here is myriad right so first these are if it's if it's tobacco this is a controlled substance right there are laws it's illegal to sell drugs to kids and so the suggestion is to actually enforce that law watchtch how children are being targeted with vaping content, understand how it's being delivered and pushed back just like you would in a physical store. reducing reducing opportunity for underage purchase is in the long view in the long run gonna help reduce the overall harm. adult content access and sexualization I won't run through all of the mental health problems that come from early access to pornography for for Arkansas children you have a law on the books today it is illegal for adult content companies to present to people in Arkansas without requiring age verification there's roughly4 million scaled adult content websites and apps in the world when we monitor from arkansas the top500 70 % don't respect the law so the change in the idea of having a law that's going to take care of the problem now the biggest companies the biggest porn companies are meeting the objective or else they're going to get sued. how are we going to get resources out there to actually enforce the current law because the spirit of it is to reduce access to kids and instead they're being targeted and going to the places that openly flaunt that law. so there's a better way to do this we've got to think about how to actively engage the internet and protect kids cloaking right so this is a technical word in Arkansas schools what we see is that teachers are s are sent content and advertising that doesn't have any problem right it's in in this particular example there's an ad for shoes so if you're an administrator or a teacher you see buy your shoes here if you're a child you see drugs vaping andcBD you can see this type of activity right so if you go after the problem you're able to actually witness how kids are targeted versus how administrators are targeted and push back on the companies that are allowing this to happen to help reduce harm targeting kids gambling so I've had a number of meetings around LittleRock today.ambling is is a topic everyone is jumping on so let me let me frame this for you real quick and and how this is working the advent of the internet in sportsook betting has exploded underage addiction to gambling. right that's something all of us know The response from governments and this is not just an arkansas response but it's true here too is to require that the online sports book have a relationship with the terrestrial casino or sports book so in Arkansas my understanding is there are three primary casino sports books if you want to run online you must register with the state join up with one of them that's great so for the companies that actually respected the law you have oversight and you have tax revenue when we become a child in Arkansas we don't see the companies who are registered we see all of the other companies most of the companies targeting your kids are not registered so there isn't a correlation to what the good companies are doing and then the reality of what's happening with your kids here so they're joining unregistered companies and so three things happen which provide three opportunities right so one they're being addicted to gambling early. right we can start to arrest that if we enforce current law you're not getting tax revenue. unregistered gambling companies don't pay you taxes they're based in places like Curacao and Costa Rica they aren't concerned that you have a law because people aren't going after them. right there is no detection as a child there's no opportunity right to go after them and stop them from running so the third opportunity here is to get in front of the problem by aligning with your casinos here in the state because they are completely aligned with you because they're losing revenue as well. right so when you think about the problem being tactical education to tell kids don't gamble so much when you're young, right probably a helpful thing to do but it's not the answer that we need we have to get tactical so then moving through let me 11 last example grooming and deception that leads to sextortion so again this is something that you can do something about right?tecting children is number one priority educating kids on sextortion is not enough. this is growing like crazy so this particular example this is a Minecraft cheat code site so if any of you have kids that are on Minecraft or play video games they're always looking for cheat codes to get past certain levels right so it's very interesting to them this type of content they're targeted they move to the cheat code website this is actually a grooming site for sex extortion and human trafficking so what happens is they give them one and then they entice them for more this is happening in Arkansas right now as we speak they then are moved to find them on their social media platforms where they engage them in a conversation next thing you know they're extorted. so this is the kind of lure that you can see and so becoming a child understanding how the internet is engaging with them but then reaching out to take this down is critical for child safety. but this particular example then led to a social big large social media platform where our digital persona was able to be found by the same actor that engaged with them on the cheat code website and that moved towards harm to to help understand things like the current settlement what social media companies are doing is reducing the hours so can't access social media after 10 p.m. you can only be on a particular social media platform for two hours. Once we're moving down this type of cycle it's 85 seconds 85 seconds to go from a happy kid who may be somebody strange is talking to you and you've engaged with them a little bit to being pulled down the rabbit hole of being sextorted and massive problems ensue. OK so we we are out just kind of sharing this information because we want people to be thinking I think there's a real opportunity with how big this topic has become to change behavior right to think about how are we going to actually tactically engage the internet if an essential service is to make our kids safe I think looking at the internet is a place where we would take tactical action is absolutely critical so right now there's the after the after harm engagement is victim services and mental health support and these are good things right but they're not enough ve s t ig ation and prosecution Today law enforcement requires a victim in order to take action that's not going to work in digital. there's not enough resources to go after even a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the but also we don't need to wait for victims. there are digital solutions to these problems to scale it up and move so before harm is predominantly education we don't have a correlation yet to education actually reducing harm d uc ation isn't a bad thing but it's not meeting the objective and so what I don't want you to do is to say we're increasing mental health and we're increasing education so we're good to go that's not gonna to reduce the harm it's not going to hit the metric that you all want to hit. so becoming the victim understanding that the actual tactical level what's happening to them is possible this is the internet there's AI. right these things are possible and then moving that back into the digital ecosystem to actually take down crime that's a required mechanism that we've got to start to do as a society just real quick I'll I'll end here so we've we've run pilots like this invirginia and we're we're scaling that happens to be where I'm from we have very good interaction with many many big tact digital media and ad tech companies receiving the notifications that we're sending so we're in a different time today they're willing to cooperate and participate with you we have a77% takedown rate for harms that we see targeting children and what that means is if you see a vaping ad and you know where it's coming from and you tell the social media company or the big tech company that they're running that they will shut it off today. a couple of years ago they might not have but the world is changing in large part because a lot of the work that you and your governor andagGs are are doing so so good work in seniors it's it's a little simpler because it's almost all financial so there's a really easy ROI but a tiny fraction of spend towards this can have big big reductions in digital harm so our first year in Virginia by detecting and taking down crime we saved20.1 million dollars right that's verified by the FBI and the FTC's dollar calculators today we're paced at35 million it's a 207xx notcent207x ROI on spend so I'm gonna leave it at that open for for any questions but thank you again for for hearing me out today members we have some questions for Mr. Olson. I will start with Representative Duke you recognized thank you Mr Chair. thank you for the presentation it was very informative just a couple of just very basic questions on this you mentioned that you were in a school in Arkansas are you just in one school and what school are you in? we are in one school and I'm gonna just not bring any attention to their name so if I can you know hold that it's it's a it's a private school ok and then is are you in any other schools besides Virginia or is yes we're we're in schools in other states so we're we're in Texas and Arizona and and a few other yes ok can you give me kind of like an idea of just like because I I get this as an emerging business I guess for a description lack of better description can you give it like an idea of like how in those other how many schools and work are you doing in other states like percentage wise, number wise and for how long this is new so in in Virginia which is the longest we've been in schools that's a year and we are in6 and we're talking to a school right now that wants to you know put one in each school district so that would be more in in the 100 but we are talking about implementing that so this is this relatively new and but you said also Texas and Arizona? Yeah. do you have rough idea of how many schools you're in there? handfuls. Handfuls because that's all I have for right now I just was trying to get kind of an idea but I think I really do appreciate your presentation. I think there's obviously we know we have issues there and this is very helpful thank you. meeks you recognized est test there we am. OK. all right thank you. So I chair our technology committee so that just a few quick questions so number one you brought up one of the concerns that I've had and I don't know if there's a good answer so I'd just be interested in your take on it. Arkansas law is obviously stop at Arkansas's borders and our federal law stop it you know our country's borders and so we're dealing with bad actors that are located outside the United States. I have no expectation that they're going to honor or respect our our laws and so I'm wondering I I guess kind of expound on that idea. how do we stop the bad actors that are in Europe, Canada, Mexico you you name it even China. OK so so we're how much time do you have? so so I think the the first step is what is what is in digital what's the last touch point to the child right and so if they're on a social media platform that's the last touch point that's the connection to the it may not be a bad actor but it's an online gambling company that is perfectly happy to be doing business in Arkansas whether they're supposed to be or not right we'll we'll frame it that way the first step is to push back on that digital infrastructure that is that last mile touching kids right so that is a mechanism that can happen so today in a school that uses a web filtering and kind of child monitoring solution right so you're talking to companies that do that they're trying to block the internet and that's kind of the beginning and the end of that process it's not enough because it's a never ending cycle of what's coming in so bringing that back understanding attribution of of delivery is critical to this function it may be warehoused on a US company cloud system right so it may be on AWs or azure if it is you're sending signals to the infrastructure to say this company is violating Arkansas law we actually automate that message delivery right and they're gonna be pretty happy to explain to their customer who's based in you know Uzbekistan or or France that they shouldn't be doing that right so you start the ball rolling that way. I think in in things like gambling you're gonna want to make decisions over time on who do you want to invite in because once you've invited them in many will be happy to join you and actually register right to do business in the state you start to collect tax funds that can sponsor your addiction right in mental health that's good but there's not a lot of in in Arkansas you're not gonna have a lot of response from a company based in Ciraca and so what we're doing is we're building increased infrastructure towards moving and changing society's relationship with the internet and so many of the things that we're talking about are going to have instant immediate impact some of this is a longer view goal of changing how we deal with we are victims of the internet and we need to stop acting that way right we can take a lot more ownership than we are of actually making ourselves safer that does that help we're we're integrated into the the data sharing with Interpol with the NCA in the UK or in the FB deconflict department right so we we can we can move the data to the right places but that doesn't fix all of the problems you're you're talking about so just just so I understand your technology so you're not actually acting as a web filter per se you're acting as a user and you're trying to get them to pick on you're you're trying to get that them to make you the victim and then once you see the issue you report it so that it gets resolved you're not actually trying to block it from getting to the child you're you're you're right you're you're looking for the holes and then when the hole when it gets through the hole you're asking the companies to plug the hole we work alongside the web filters are awesome. I don't want to come over and need it right so we give them incremental information but we then also go take action to to take care of the crime or the you know the harm itself to take it down at the root. We share that information with local law enforcement if it's this extortion handle that's given to law enforcement right because they're the ones who need to go move on that so yes and so cyber these systems are designed to protect machines they're used to protect machines and children right and there's gaps every time something's blocked on a web filter the first signal goes to the criminal trying they see that they're blocked and they modify and right that that's the internet wackack emmo you that's how it works so you're trying to be the victim in the school before a kid is the victim in the school we are the victim before they become it that's that's the goal. OK right awesome thank you. r p son Gonzalezorthy you're recognized for a question thank you chair and this might have already been answered so you operate sort of like undercover so to speak and then what happens to the bad actors. I mean I know you're taking them down but what keeps them from returning so this is a really hard problem the the goal is that they're arrested right no matter where they are that's the goal we this is in the United States this is kind of burgeoning right it's it's becoming as we speak the federal government is going after it you've got strikeforce and and Jaanine Piro you know looking out at transnational criminals and organizing and cooperating with governments outside of the US to actually do takedowns the the key low hanging fruit is to identify the signals digitally have that information go to the big tech companies who know theidd of the delivery of that content. so this is the call it the buyer the person who's trying to get access to your kids thatidd belongs to a proper noun that only they know. this is you right we're we're doing this but this would be you bringing crime right up to the point where they have to cooperate but you have today the world is moving more and more big tech and social media cooperation with global law enforcement to go after the problem because you're all watching right and so I think now is the time to pounce. Is your local law enforcement gonna get immediate gratification by seeing you know some people incambodia getting arrested tomorrow, probably not but you're leading it could happen right but you're leading up to that it's your local crime data that is the key to getting those actors in these other countries and that's that's part of why this is so difficult. Rere Siduke he recognized and thank you again Mr Chair just another quick question I think how are the districts that you are already in in some of those other how did they connect with you? Did they mean we know that these are issues that schools are dealing with, especially the kids getting around the filters and all those different things that are happening at schools. How how did they connect with you? or with this company? how did they find out about you? now they so we helped the Tim Tebow Foundation so when you see those ads on television we don't want to overstate writer take credit for that but we're connected into the networks where there's big scaled goals to reduce harm targeting kids right and some is human trafficking so right so introductions around the horn on those types of of things we initially implemented with a Republican AG in Virginia and he introduced us to lots of RepublicanagGs but then he didn't win and now there's a Democrat Ag and they're very excited about it and so it's pulling on those threads and getting introductions around what what's also changed is and it's amazing because we've been doing this 21 years in the last two years if you go to a big I'm not suggesting you should but a big global anti scam how do we fix this problem conference where you've got big tech and banks right and then the people talking about it federal and state governments are present right so AGanta and AG Brown from Utah were both present in San Francisco a month ago and so there's a lot more access for us for people like us towards governments than there used to be but I think the the answer is it's a lot of shoe leather right that's the that's the answer and the districts are just finding their own district dollars to contract with you guys right now how all these are working it's itly it runs the gamut but the answer to your question is yes. there are federal grants that we're trying to figure out are these gonna work for this but we're we're working through all of that now so it's just seeing districts that are trying to be proactive in issues that they're seeing that have also made contact with you guys or through some way or other. OK thank you Heson Walker you recognized for a question. Thank you, Mister Chair. my question's I'm just gonna use the Virginia slide if that's OKok. so it shows a 93cent success rate which I think is pretty good and when you're dealing with cybersecurity but why only ive schools with that high of at success rates I'm assuming there's a large entry barrier or something that's in place whether it's lack of funds the expertise to implement and within a school I'm just curious with what you've seen there it's it's a great question so so and this goes back to the being new, right? so for me to I have a company that's 21 years old I have other companies that you know I don't run anymore and then and then this is this is the baby new company, right so we would have gotten started with one they said5. great right and so the goal now is to expand into more this is a really interesting stat it it's good to bring it up this is shooting fish in a barrel it's not hard right so now we do this for a living we have infrastructure that allows us to do these things but it's minutes you become the seventh grade boy and you're targeted with vaping. it it's just bang right and so I think the easier to find things we're sending back and they're getting shut down right it's it's very positive as we get further and further out down the line where we've taken down a lot of the low hanging fruit it does get harder I'm not sure you know how this number's gonna gonna remain here but that's gonna be out out of a much smaller set of harm targeting kids and seniors in in the Representment Garner you recognized for question thank you, Mister Chair back here we've kind of talked a little bit about this but I just want to know the logistics so a a a school contacts you or the state department whoever contacts you and then what so yeah then we FedEx a device to the IT director I don't have my cellphone on me often a raspberry i or some if you know that it looks like a cellphone. they plug that in outside of the core DMZ we don't want to be anywhere near child. there's no PII right in what we do and so we're we look like a student that just connected to the wii so they're kind of plugging it into the router that's there wii that everybody connects to around the school it's a safe place there's no access you can't go in and get students from there right? so we try to keep it in in the safest we want to look exactly like a kid, right? they plug that in takes about 15 minutes that handshakes with our systems and we're we have machines in 122 countries but we run this out of mostlyvirginia right so that's where we're based we have a lot of capacity there it's like the gates of Mordor right on one side are green blinking lights and on the other side is all the bad stuff on the internet it shakes hands with that it's live right and that's all the school has to do so we try to make it really really really simple if if they want to get involved we have sex extortion case studies that we send to the school resource officers the people who do digital safety it's amazing it shows trigger points and it's the real world thing that's happening there right and they can give that to kids we have schools that are asking us how do kids get involved we have senior communities head of the seniors residents get involved if kids wanna see you know what it is we'll figure out ways to make that happen I think it might get very interesting having school students sending the notifications to the tech companies to say please stop targeting me with this stuff right that might go somewhere but I think the the actual setup itself we're we're doing all of the work centrally the school becomes a node right so we look like we're sitting there so it's is the cost for the physical piece of equipment and then a license or the cost is for we are then rendering the internet from there right and so the cost is bandwidth and storage and data analysis and and that the the device is inexpensive. can you give us an idea of the cost for rate card so this is if you get one is $25,000 per year for the location it scales down right so if you want to do lots of places it it goes down from there we have a separate way to talk to states about cost per student or cost per 2000 students or something like that as well that I think probably fits more into how the school looks at cost just a general idea is what I was looking for anyway so that's that's great yeah thank you very much. Representative Vaught you get your question asked are there additional questions from the committee see a nun and Mister Olson thank you for your time you members staff is going to pass out the adequacy recommendations draft and then we will have a brief discussion on that so let's give them just a couple of minutes to get those passed out to the committee please. And if nonmembers of the committee want a copy there may be extras I'm not sure um'm looking for somebody to give me a I don't see there may be some there are extra copies so if they're yeah if nom members want copies of it, obviously only committee members will vote on it but there are extra copies should nonmembers want to look at them believe everybody has one now so let's just go through just kind of a high level overview of what the committee recommendations are and I want to thank the committee for their work. I want to thank Blr for the hard work as you know this process is extremely exhaustive and it takes not just a couple of months, not just a couple people but it takes an entire team to put together not just the data that we work off of but the process for recommendations and so I really want to thankblr for being very conscientious as well as the committee for providing recommendations for us to review and then to to decide on a joint recommendation this will be a joint recommendation joint senate house recommendation just a couple foundational discussion points about where we've been and where we're going so when you look back at the history of the matrix we've got obviously it comes out of the lakeview decision in 2003 and the idea of the matrix was in fiscal year 2005 when we look historically at what the numbers have been we have a roughly about a one an average 1.89% increase year over year has been the historic average when you put all the years together one of our goals obviously is to to remain strong with the recommendations that we make as a committee and to provide as much as consistency as possible for schools as they plan for for the future. some of the things that we have heard and you've got you've got a sheet there that looks at what the historical changes have been over time since fiscal year 2005 if you want to review that hopefully my math is right I believe it was right at 1.89%. obviously the last couple of years are are higher in in and since COVID we've seen a little bit higher which is bumped the average up. So consistently the things that we heard were surrounding special education special needs things like dy dyslexia, high cost occurrence students on the the nonfunding side of things consistently we heard about paraprofessionals and and where those where those fell and so just from a a generalized overview of what the recommendations are on the nonfunding side you'll see that we've we've zeroed out the let me pull this up we've zeroed out the the line items for classified salary staff salary and we've combined those so that's that combined into the line I'm for supervisor and other aides what that's done is it's taken some of those that were outside of the matrix that were pretty difficult to track there's no change at the dollars or no decrease in the dollars but we're difficult for the bureau of Legislative Research to actually track what was being spent on those and so combining that category allows the bureau to better track those the spend on those so we can have better data moving forward. So and then when we look at the health insurance recommendations that were required by law to make a recommendation on the health insurance side of it as you remember from the last general session, we pulled the health insurance contribution out of the per pupil spend and so that is being sent directly to EBd and so the recommendation is going to be whatever the EBD recommendation is is is that we concur with that and we will make adjustment technical adjustments to the adequac y bill or the adequacy law in the upcoming session about that since we no longer have included that in the per people amount and then we get to the part that everybody is interested in obviously which is going to be the baseline funding recommendation again as I said when we look historically we've we've been in that 1.89 or so percent range of increase we wanted to remain consistent with that my goal is always to to remain at or above where we've been at historically and so the first year recommendation is a 2.51% per pupil increase to $8,239. year two is a 2.34% that year two number represents the the cost of living the coal index average for the four years and so we want to remain consistent with that so that's you know that's probably the the the most notable part so 8239 is the number for fiscal year $288,431 is the number for fiscal year 29. and the other substantive change again based upon the things that we've heard from feedback from administrators and from the recommendations that were sent in by committee members is relative to the special needs funding pretty broad there but we obviously know that we've passed legislation a number of years ago relative to dyslexia intervention that's a a significant focus for us as a state as it should be and the primary focus is on K through3 and so this year we're adding an additional categorical the reason we add categoricals is so that we have a better focus on exactly where those funds are being spent and so last year we had maybe off by a student or two but I believe he had 25,974 students receiving dyslexia intervention services in K through3 again that being a primary focus for us and so this categorical is focusing on that very specifically so we're gonna add a $1000 categorical per student. so per student in that K through3 population that's receiving dyslexia intervention services so that's roughly $26 million of of new spend in year one then bumped up through the cola in year two and then the other supplemental that we have in addition is going to be going to be the high cost occurrence student so last year there was roughly according to the bureau about $14 million that was left to districts to fund for a high cost occurrence student after set asides medicaid reimbursement and other set of offsets that were there left about $14 million and so we're going to create a supplemental to make that fund whole to ensure that that cost is met for districts so that's about another roughly based upon last year's dollars about $14 million and so that represents roughly40 million or so in new dedicated specific special needs funding in fiscal year 28 and in fiscal year 29. so that is those are the that's a highle overview of it and I believe we have separate motions from the Senate the House I'll recognize Senator English if you want to call on a motion for the senate Do I hear a motion to accept the recommendations Senator Da thank you madam chairir. I move that the senateittee on Education approved the final 2026 adequacy study report including the recommendations made today in the handout proposed recommendations for adequacy fy 28 and Fy29. you hear a 2nd 2nd all in favor all post thank you very much motion is passed and yes we will have discussion on the motion on on the house side so I understand there's there's a desire for that so a wood recognizepresentative a recognizedpresentative furman. Representative furman you recognize for emotion on the house side thank you Mr Chair I move that the House Committee on Education approved the final 2026 adequacy study report including the recommendations made today in the handout proposed recommendations for adequacy fy 28 and Fy29. there's discussion on the motion uhpresentative meeks I'll recognize you for discussion. thank you Mr Chairman the one number that I didn't hear is the what is the total spend based upon these recommendations we've got the per pupil amount but we don't have what that translates into total to the state budget that's not normally been a part of the recommendation but I will recognize uhjasmine do we have the data on that readily available? Jasmine, if you would recognize our introduce yourself for the record and then you recognize to answer that question. Jasmin ray bureau of legislative Research. so this is an estimatepresentative meeks because it's obviously based off AdM we don't know what the AdM will be for fy 28 and29 so this is taking what the AdM was in the published state aid for 2026 using that number it goes from I don't have its I have3.69 for fy billion for Fy27 to3.79 in Fy28 and then to3. 88 billion in Fy29 but I can provide the whole numbers again those are estimates though OK and that that that's why I was interested is what the what the estimate was there that's perfect thank you Repson mayberry you're recognized for discussion thank you. I'm really kind of lost in trying to figure out the process that that we're in because I felt that we would be having more of a discussion and now we turned all the information in and I really have no idea what anybody else turned in so I'm trying to understand who who came up with this information and said ok we're going to analyze all this and and this is what it is like who who is that committee so the historical practice in joint education' has been for the committee to provide recommendations. again that's been generally sparse over the years but the committee provides recommendations and the committee leadership meets with with the bureau of legislative Legislative Research and puts together all those recommendations and and looks for trends and then decides what what appear to be the most prevalent trends and the most consistent recommendations and then bases the full committee recommendations on that and so that's what you saw with this you saw a pretty consistent trend with a a strong funding recommendation for a yearo year over year base funding standpoint I would say the majority of the recommendations talked about cola increases and so cola again with the most recent estimates from doctorctor Silva was 2.34% over years and so you saw a stronger than than typically recommended cole increase year one and then match it in year two and then the others were around high cost occurrence and just like this sin where the most consistent that we saw and do we ever get an opportunity to as legislators maybe see what other people had, I man I I I just really felt like that's kind of a little bit more of what this meeting would allow us to do and then would give us time to process that before we actually voted on it. so we're just getting this information. I haven't even had time to really process all of it and now I'm being asked to approve it and I'm just wondering if there's a way to delay it a little bit so we can have a little bit more discussion. Sure I appreciate that. So historical practice has has been this which is is is not to provide other member recommendations and and and then to vote on it as a committee so we're we're following what the historical practice has been in this committee as long as we've done this. I I guess I I can can I ask for a little bit more explanation so I I am very thankful of if you read my comments, I was concerned about the dexi dyslexia funding I was concerned about special needs high cost and special education teachers it's kind of primarily where I focus so I'm glad to see that there's some increases here but I'm I'm still a little perplexed it says special needs high cost occurrences increasing funding by 14 million for fiscal year 28 and the information I'm going back on on what I shared and I'm just gonna read it so I'm not missing something let's see in the 2325 school year there was a36% increase in claims under special education high cost occurrences from 1605 to2,180. the total eligible claims amount of claims rose from46.9 million to65.6 million with only 17.5 million available and 25 to pay those claims. Districts had to use other resources to pay those expenses um30.1 million was the maximum amount of reimbursements based on the formula so the increase of at least30 million is at minimum is what's needed and I'm seeing that's er that it's only 14 million to cover the cost so we still are not covering that that high cost with the 14 million. so the information that we got from the department was after offsets and so there's a number of different offsets such as Medicaid reimbursement and some other offenses that the the amount after offsets was about 14 million in this most recent fiscal year and so that's that's what was was part of the recommendations obviously the committee can choose to adopt recommendations or not adopt recommendations, you know from from my perspective and I believe from the perspective of other members that have were a part of the process this is these are very strong recommendations that again have not been a part of what our funding approach has been in the past and you know I I talk with uhpresentative cozart on a a fairly regular basis about some of the ideas he's had about modernizing the funding model and as you look at potential for a a more of a spending model that might give give credence to tiered special needs or some other really broad categoricals and that might be where we're going in the future the current adequacy framework doesn't allow for that based upon how how it is. However, I I'm certainly supportive of of whatpresentativeozart has been doing to to modernize the way that we approach this entire process. but for this year that's what the recommendation is I just wish there there was a little bit more time for us to have greater discussion. that that's all. Again, I'm very happy to see a lot of the things that are in here are I really am I just wish that we had a little bit more overall discussion cause I don't think this committee has had that chance to have those discussions so if I vote no against it that's the reason why it's not that I'm voting no on the incentives that are in and thank you for that again the committee had the opportunity to to provide our recommendations and then we we tried to take the the balance of those recommendations to come up with a joint one. Representativemcgruder you're recognized for a question thank you Mr chairir thank you for the hard work that we've put in understanding getting the information. I do have some concerns or some questions my first question goes to a fiscal year 2027 where there will be a decline in the funding approximately 1.53% trying to get a better understanding of that I do know in 2028 there'll be an increase in 2029 there'll be an increase but how do we come up with this equation to decrease the funding so we're currently in fiscal year 2027. so fiscal year 2027 if you'll remember back to the 2025 general session. we had the adequacy recommendations and it is an average of 2.48% increase year over year for each of the years in the current biennium that we're in right now however because we took the healthcare contribution out for fiscal year 27 and it's being directly contributed from the department to EBD that's why it shows a decrease there's not an actual decrease in per ppupil funding it's just the removal of the health insurance so that's again that's a physical the you're to win right now and I do like how we're outlining the salaries here in the matrixx but I do have a a question with some of the new information that we've received about some of these school districts and especially to help outblr I don't see the superintendent funding in here either in I know we've had some concerns about how superintendents are operating so did I miss that portion specific to superintendents salary for the principles and educators and the secretary but I don't see anything in regards to the superintendentsjasmine which line item is that central office yes sorry so that's within central office Representative Duke you recognized for a question thank you Mr Chair. thank you for your hard work on this and the committee as a whole I guess mine is not so much on the matrix itself but I guess I would say on the process here is we spent a lot of time coming up here and looking through listening to all the different reports and listening to the informationblr gave us and reading through it and and submitting this stuff and I would prefer to have more time to look at it than just the handout and then come in here and have the motion and the vote. I'm not a super big fan of that happening that quickly although I mean I don't know that I have issue with with the you know a lot of the recommendations I I mean I agree with I think that they're on on point but I guess I would say for a future I I think the intent here was for at least in my opinion to have some discussion about this and I would agree I would like to hear the other members I don't know that to hear all the recommendations butu I do think I make better decisions whenever I hear the feedback from other members many that have been here like yourself and andpresentative cozart and and Senator English and Senator Davis that have been here for quite a long time and have done this and I can learn and glean from the decisions and the reasonings of why they maybe be made some of the recommendations that they made that will make me better in making decisions in the future if the Lord wills for me to return and so I guess I just say would say for future reference for myself personally I would appreciate either getting this information a little bit ahead of time or maybe having a premeeting or something that we can do I don't know what that would look like to be able to have a little bit more conversation after we make the recommendations or maybe make the recommendations as the group together. I mean I don't know what that looks like but it happened very quick in here we read through this really quickly and it takes a little bit to absorb, you know what we did here. So I'm not saying that I'm going to vote against that because I think that that is problematic for just our schools and just moving forward but I just want that to be noted that I would like to see a little bit a little bit more opportunity to talk about the recommendations after we've made them. So thank you Mr Chair and I appreciate that that feedback so you know from my perspective I think it's important to understand that everyone's recommendations their own personal recommendation and and should other members want to access recommendation that your colleagues have made you certainly have the latitude to ask them for what their recommendations were it's not been committee practice to pass the full recommendations of each individual member out to everyone else or to the public because frankly not everybody gives recommendations and that you know I don't want to publicly shame or out members who may for whatever reason not give a recommendation and then you know they they have to deal with that and I know everybody on this committee does a tremendous amount of work and so I will leave it up to the individual member if they want to share their recommendations with their colleagues that's up to them but but everyone may not choose to do that because it's possible their their recommendations may not be in line with what their local superin t end ent asks them to do they may have had a different perspective so I I definitely appreciate the the feedback but again just from from the practices committee as as far as from an efficiency standpoint and and the overall approach I think we continue to do it effectively and and I wanna always go back to the fact that that these recommendations they're not just strong they're amongst the strongest his committee's ever made in the history of of this adequacy of the adequacy study including giving a strong credence to the concern over over special needs funding with with significant funding there so I'm proud of the work that we've done and again if members want to share want to share their own individual recommendations and they're more than happy to do that you can follow up sir thank you and I definitely do not want to that to appear and my apologies if it did of any kind of criticism of the decisions that you guys made as you compiled these I just and I understand not wanting to send all of them out you know this is what Representative Duke put into her recommendations completely understand that but having that opportunity as a committee for those who want to discuss it and have a little bit more of a deep discussion on it I think would just be beneficial again I'm just one member that gets to make that but also this committee looks a little bit different than it did when we first did adequacy and we were required to do that and the makeup looks different and so would logic would dictect to me that there were probably some changes on how members would want to navigate it again it may just be me but I do think that it would be helpful for those that want to discuss it a little bit more in depth in the future to be able to see even if it's just this part here right like even it's not everybody's recommendations but if it's just the summary and what y'all's what the what the leadership's recommendations are for us to have a little bit more time and opportunity to look through it I think would be helpful but I do again appreciate I think it's a strong recommendation and I'm not opposed to it by any means but just some food for thought maybe in the future on how we could maybe hit in the middle somewhere so we can balance both of that for the needs of the entire committee of course part of it it's a statutory process as well that this is due to the governor required by November the first and so just from a scheduling standpoint we want to make sure that we are doing our work expeditiously so that everybody sees these and can prepare effectively. Representative garner I I too just want to echo the concern about not having time to see the recommendations and to and to have some discussion but my question is is there an opportunity to get a digital copy of this piece of information and is there is there a spreadsheet or something that doesn't have anybody's names on it but is there a spreadsheet of the rec the recommendations and how they came in I too feel like we make better decisions when everybody's at the table and I would like to hear those from the other side of the aisle and from those who have taught forever and those are brand new and it doesn't matter to me that names are on there but I would love to see the spreadsheet that you went by to to gather that information if that's available. I believe there is a an electronic document for these recommendations that are in front of you today. I don't know about the remaining portion of it again you know from the standpoint of the process if I can just speak to the process so the process is you know it's not perfect in every in every way no processes it it's what we've done historically I think it's been done well and effectively the old adage of of you know, too many cooks in the kitchen I'm thankful that we have a lot of people who provided recommendations this time in the past that's not been the case so we had a a a good bit more data to take off of but just from a practical reality if we got 28 of us in a room with joint house and senate edd and said all right here's mine here's mine and we had 28 different recommendations we might in a few years come to a place of agreement on what actually gets in put in place and so just from a process perspective we have to come to a point where we say this is what is the most common denominator that we see as a committee and this is what we're going to move forward with and again I'm I'm very proud of the recommendations that we've that have been put out there because they are very good for especially when you look historically in in the investments that we're making my own personal knowledge. I I I agree I think this is the first time in a long time that I felt like we've really had some input so or or guided input I think we've had input but but this this process I think has been better than it has been the whole eight years I've been here. So I agree with that but I'm just saying that I would love to have that information as much information as possible to look at after after the fact so that so that I can see how everybody else was feeling thank you and I'll have staff send out a an electronic copy of the recommendations that are in front of you.son meeks well thank you Mr Chairman. So as the senior member of the committee and this being my very last time to have input on this just a reminder this is actually this is not the end of the discussion. This is just the recommendation so that the appropriations and all that can be developed ready for session. So as we get into session this committee is still going to be able to be able to massage this and change this and work on this this is just the first step in finalizing that process for session so you know those that are concerned about he, I still have ideas and input continue to make that available. This this again this is not the last step of this process this is just the first step in finalizing things getting it ready for for sessions so for whatever that's worth Mr Chairman that's outstandings representative meeks and I would expect that from the senior member of the house of Representatives so thank you for for bringing clarity in and and that point is is accurate you know I'll I'll run an adequacy bill hopefully sooner rather than later in the 96 general assembly and we'll have the opportunity to vote that up or down. I hope that we will vote yes on it because again I believe that we've come to a place of extremely strong recommendations for our public schools in the state of Arkansas historically better frankly than we've done in the past and in a very positive way and I think it continues to show our commitments of upkeeping students first seeing no additional discussion on the motion we have we have a motion by Representative Furman all in favor say aye all opposed motion passes seeing no additional business to come before joint education this committee is adjourned