Education Committee - Senate
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Transcript
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Bills discussed (25)
| Bill | Title | Sponsor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
|
SB618
Act 731
· 6 mentions in chapter, agenda, transcript
Matched: “SB618 Irvin TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS STUDENT DUE PROCESS AND PROTECT…”
|
TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS STUDENT DUE PROCESS AND PROTECTION ACT. | Irvin | Notification that SB618 is now Act 731 |
|
SB619
Act 919
· 4 mentions in chapter, transcript
Matched: “SB619 Irvin CONCERNING THE FORMATION OF AN ISOLATED SCHOOL DISTRI…”
|
CONCERNING THE FORMATION OF AN ISOLATED SCHOOL DISTRICT. | Irvin | Notification that SB619 is now Act 919 |
|
SB604
Act 730
· 3 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “SB604 B. Davis TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE REGARDING…”
|
TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE REGARDING THE COURSE CHOICE PROGRAM. | B. Davis | Notification that SB604 is now Act 730 |
|
HB1495
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “HB1495 Hawk CONCERNING THE TRANSFER OF A STUDENT'S PERMANENT SCHOO…”
|
CONCERNING THE TRANSFER OF A STUDENT'S PERMANENT SCHOOL RECORD. | Hawk | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1646
Act 917
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…ERNING THE TRANSFER OF A STUDENT'S PERMANENT SCHOOL RECORD. HB1646 McGrew TO REQUIRE CERTAIN MATERIALS TO BE STORED IN LOCKED…”
|
TO REQUIRE CERTAIN MATERIALS TO BE STORED IN LOCKED COMPARTMENTS WITHIN A DESIGNATED AREA. | McGrew | Notification that HB1646 is now Act 917 |
|
HB1684
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “HB1684 McAlindon TO CREATE THE PARENTS AND TEACHERS HELPING STUDEN…”
|
TO CREATE THE PARENTS AND TEACHERS HELPING STUDENTS SUCCEED (PATHS) ACT. | McAlindon | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1786
Act 826
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “AGENDA (Revised 4/4/25 @ 7:40 AM) Added HB1786 to Regular Agenda Senate Committee on Education Monday, Apr…”
|
TO PROVIDE ELIGIBILITY FOR A TUITION BENEFIT TO SOLDIERS AND AIRMEN OF THE ARKANSAS NATIONAL … | Brooks | Notification that HB1786 is now Act 826 |
|
HB1810
Act 796
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…BE STORED IN LOCKED COMPARTMENTS WITHIN A DESIGNATED AREA. HB1810 Joey Carr TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE CONCERNI…”
|
TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE CONCERNING THE ARKANSAS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND AND … | Joey Carr | Notification that HB1810 is now Act 796 |
|
HB1812
Act 918
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…estrictions designating areas as 'Members and Staff Only'. HB1812 Gramlich TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT AND ACCO…”
|
TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT; TO CREATE AN EXCEPTION TO ATTENDANCE … | Gramlich | Notification that HB1812 is now Act 918 |
|
HB1833
Act 806
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…TEST; AND TO AMEND THE SCORE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE GED TEST. HB1833 M. Shepherd TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE ADMISSIONS AT T…”
|
TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE ADMISSIONS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS COLLEGE OF MEDICINE. | M. Shepherd | Notification that HB1833 is now Act 806 |
|
SB149
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…in CONCERNING THE FORMATION OF AN ISOLATED SCHOOL DISTRICT. SB149 J. English TO AMEND PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING AMOUNTS UNDER THE…”
|
TO AMEND PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING AMOUNTS UNDER THE PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING ACT OF 2003. | J. English | Died in House at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB436
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…avis Sen. Jim Dotson REGULAR AGENDA Number Sponsor Subtitle SB436 A. Clark TO AMEND THE ABILITY OF A STUDENT WHO TRANSFERS UN…”
|
TO AMEND THE ABILITY OF A STUDENT WHO TRANSFERS UNDER THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE ACT … | A. Clark | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB451
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…UNDING AMOUNTS UNDER THE PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING ACT OF 2003. SB451 Hester TO REQUIRE THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES AND THE…”
|
TO REQUIRE THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES AND THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO ESTABLISH REGIONAL … | Hester | Died in Senate at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB482
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “SB482 K. Hammer TO REPEAL THE ARKANSAS OPPORTUNITY PUBLIC SCHOOL…”
|
TO REPEAL THE ARKANSAS OPPORTUNITY PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE ACT; TO AMEND THE LAW RELATING TO … | K. Hammer | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB528
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “SB528 Gilmore TO ADDRESS THE POWERS AND DUTIES OF THE OFFICE OF S…”
|
TO ADDRESS THE POWERS AND DUTIES OF THE OFFICE OF SKILLS DEVELOPMENT AND THE CAREER … | Gilmore | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB607
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “SB607 Crowell TO ESTABLISH THE REQUIREMENTS FOR A PUBLIC SCHOOL D…”
|
TO ESTABLISH THE REQUIREMENTS FOR A PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT THAT INITIATES AND MAINTAINS A FOUR-DAY … | Crowell | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB624
Act 732
· 2 mentions in agenda, chapter
Matched: “…EDUCATION OF CERTAIN STUDENTS; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY. SB624 B. Davis TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS OPPORTUNITY PUBLIC SCHOOL CH…”
|
TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS OPPORTUNITY PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE ACT; TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE … | B. Davis | Notification that SB624 is now Act 732 |
|
SB625
Act 920
· 2 mentions in chapter, agenda
Matched: “SB625 B. Davis TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE CONCERNIN…”
|
TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE CONCERNING THE ARKANSAS CHILDREN'S EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM ACCOUNT PROGRAM; … | B. Davis | Notification that SB625 is now Act 920 |
|
HB1180
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…RT CARD TO INCLUDE A STUDENT'S CURRENT READING GRADE LEVEL. HB1180 Bentley TO CREATE THE BABY OLIVIA ACT. SB216 J. Dotson TO A…”
|
TO CREATE THE BABY OLIVIA ACT. | Bentley | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
HB1370
· 1 mention in chapter
Matched: “HB1370 J. Mayberry CONCERNING MAKING UP MISSED SCHOOL DAYS; AND TO…”
|
CONCERNING MAKING UP MISSED SCHOOL DAYS; AND TO REQUIRE A PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT TO INCLUDE … | J. Mayberry | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB205
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…C SCHOOL TO ADOPT A POLICY FOR ONE OR MORE STUDENT MENTORS. SB205 A. Clark TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS OPPORTUNITY PUBLIC SCHOOL CH…”
|
TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS OPPORTUNITY PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE ACT; AND TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL … | A. Clark | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB215
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…LOYMENT TAX ACT TO WAIVE THE "REASONABLE ASSURANCE" CLAUSE. SB215 J. Bryant TO AMEND THE PERMISSIBLE USES FOR REAL ESTATE DON…”
|
TO AMEND THE PERMISSIBLE USES FOR REAL ESTATE DONATED BY A PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT; AND … | J. Bryant | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB266
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…NING POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS. SB266 J. Dotson TO AUTHORIZE A PUBLIC SCHOOL TO ADOPT A POLICY FO…”
|
TO AUTHORIZE A PUBLIC SCHOOL TO ADOPT A POLICY FOR ONE OR MORE STUDENT MENTORS. | J. Dotson | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SB438
· 1 mention in chapter
Matched: “SB438 A. Clark TO PERMANENTLY BAN FROM COACHING A COACH OR AN ATH…”
|
TO PERMANENTLY BAN FROM COACHING A COACH OR AN ATHLETICS PERSONNEL MEMBER WHO RECRUITS A … | A. Clark | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
|
SCR3
· 1 mention in agenda
Matched: “…ES AND UNIVERSITIES. DEFERRED BILLS Number Sponsor Subtitle SCR3 J. Scott TO URGE THE ARKANSAS CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION TO P…”
|
TO URGE THE ARKANSAS CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION TO PROPOSE AN AMENDMENT TO THE FEDERAL UNEMPLOYMENT TAX … | J. Scott | Died in Senate Committee at Sine Die adjournment. |
Machine transcript
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- October 2, 2026
Senator Jane English
Unverified
0:07
Welcome to Senate Education. This is going to be a busy day. We have a number of things on our schedule today. Let's see, is Alan Clark Hill? You
Speaker 5
0:20
know, uh, Kim Hammer here? No. Uh See. OK Senator Urban. Oh
Senator Jane English
Unverified
0:39
She has Senate Bill 618 and Senate Bill 619 You know
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
0:49
identify yourself, you will be recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the
committee. I'll begin with 618. This is to um I'm Senator Missy Irvin, District 24. Good morning. Senate Bill 618 is to amend the Arkansas student due process and Protection Act, um, if you'll recall, I passed and wrote this legislation a couple of years
ago to create the student due process and Protection Act for any uh student on the campus of higher education that may be undergoing any type of an investigation based on student conduct, um, I worked with the University of Arkansas Systems, Melissa Rust is here, um, and we just needed to advise, uh, to revise this to where they have 7 days after a student organization that that an appeal shall be filed within
7 days versus the 25. The reason why is because if it's at 25, it could extend into the next session. next semester. And so we want to be able to get these investigations and these appeals wrapped up in a more timely manner. And so the the main change is to change the 25 down to 7 days for the appeals to be filed. Um, what was very important to me in order to change that day, uh, time from 25 to 7 is to make sure that these students are
advised that they may retain secret representation by an attorney from the onset of an investigation, and that's critical to making sure that their due process, uh, and their constitutional right is protected and so that the institution will advise them to seek representation by an attorney. at the onset of an investigation so limiting this appeal time down uh should not be problematic for them, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Other questions from the committee.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
2:47
Senator Flowers. Well, Senator Irvin, how, how long of a process is it from
the initial complaint. Or the start of the investigation. Yes, ma'am,
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
3:11
uh hearing? Well, it, it, it can last up to probably 4 or 56 months.
Depending on the length of the investigation and the hearings that are involved
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
3:26
and the student would receive notice. That they have a right to seek. Representation or an attorney. At the initiation of
the investigation. Yes, ma'am. And I, I, I would think that that
would be in writing. doesn't say Yes, ma'am. They would have this
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
3:53
in writing, uh, that would be consistent with the rest of the student due process Act that's not listed here, but it would
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
4:03
be in writing. And what they be given notice of what the subject matter is, says that there'll be. Advised That they're the subject of an investigation. Yes. With
that include what it is they're being investigated for. Yes, ma'am, it would.
And our rules gonna come out
of this legislation. That would That would Hey Specifically Writing. And also What the allegations are. Yes, ma'am. I'll have Melissa
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
4:47
Rust come and make assurances because I absolutely agree with you, Senator Flowers, and so, uh, yes, it all needs to be in writing.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
5:00
Understand my question, I want to know how is this going to work is vision of higher ed or the university, what happens?
Speaker 49
5:14
Uh, how it rules Sure. Promulgated. Sure, Melissa Rost with the University of Arkansas system. Senator Flowers a couple of years ago, Senator Ervin approached myself and some others about wanting to address and better advise students when there are allegations of
misconduct that could result in suspension or expulsion, you know, from an institution and so for the last two years, this law has been in place and there are, there are rules and policies at each campus to address this particular law and the specific piece that Senator Ervin is bringing to you today. It's just an issue that we noticed that came up over the last couple of years that we wanted to make sure, um, you know, was addressed and, and,
and to give you a sense of this, the fire or the foundation, excuse me, for individual rights and education, this law mirrors fires policy in large. facts and so the 7 days is consistent with that model policy as well, but each campus has each campus has policies to implement this particular piece of legislation. So I, I would think then that
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
6:32
they would try to comply with all due process rights. Of an individual
Speaker 49
6:37
absolutely, especially when you are considering that someone is being accused of some action or misconduct that could result in a fairly serious sanction that the policies do provide appropriate due process for both the person that has filed the complaint as well as the individual that's been accused of misconduct. Thank you.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
7:02
Thank you. Any further questions from the committee?
Is there anybody in the audience who would like to speak for or against the bill. Not hearing, seeing any what is the
will of the committee Second. The discussion on the motion. All in favor, all opposed. Thank you very much. I think you have an amendment to
619. Yes, ma'am, I do sign in it right and Christian
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
7:47
Kirsten will have to get you to sign that. Thank you members. This is um Senate
Bill 619 and um the amendment The amendment further flushes out some of the details of how exactly uh this legislation, uh,
would need to be worked. So we worked over the weekend on this amendment, um, and so I would just ask for the amendment to be adopted and then I'll explain the bill as amended. OK Do I say emotion 2. All in favor. Thank you. All opposed? Go ahead. Thank you, thank you again,
Senator MC Irvin, District 24. Good morning. Uh, members of the committee, we worked last week on this piece of legislation and what this legislation would do would allow for an isolated school district to be formed. This has been an ongoing challenge. Since annexation and Act 60, about 2021 years ago. This legislature and this government has embraced educational freedom.
Meaning that we are focused on what is in the best interest of the student? And the best ability for them to get a good education in the state of Arkansas. We have encouraged homeschooling. We have encouraged micros schools. We have encouraged choice and freedom for students and their parents. This legislation is absolutely follows that philosophy. What this legislation would do
is to allow these small isolated schools, the ability to stand on their own 2 ft. It's the ability for these small schools. To be fully functioning. And to be able to survive outside of the school district that they were annexed into. Oftentimes there's a lot of conflict between a larger campus and some of these smaller rural isolated districts. And that conflict has created a lot of heartache and heartburn for communities, and I would
argue, particularly from somebody like me and others that are sitting at this table that represent very rural areas of the state of Arkansas that a school is a cornerstone of a community. You have a thriving network of engagement and community interest around those schools. I'm gonna talk to you two of this, this would affect 7 schools in the state of Arkansas. Umpire Kingston is one of those. I'm gonna talk about the two that I represent that
are in my district. Jasper is one of the most isolated rural schools in the state of Arkansas. try driving there. It's tough. Rules special, Timbo. These are very small, isolated schools. I want to talk to you about two young men that graduated from real special school in a class of 6. I only had 6 kids in their graduating class, Dylan and Dustin Stewart. These two young men, and yes they have fabulous
parents, but these two young men Graduated from this very small rural school. One works for Arkansas Telephone Company in Clinton, Arkansas is now the preacher at his church that he grew up in. In rushing The other one is a shelter insurance agent in Mountain View and is an entrepreneur. And several small businesses. These two young men are community leaders. They are entrepreneurs. They are
small business owners. They are developers. They are community leaders. They are engaged in policy at the broadband level cause I've worked so closely with Dylan Stewart and Arkansas telephone company through Clinton and all the broadband legislation and all the broadband effort that we have put forward, Dylan's been right in the fight with us on the forefront of every one of those policy battles for getting rural broadband out into the state of Arkansas through O Cercy County and Van Buren County and Stone County. That
young man graduated from rule special school. He's in the fight. He cares about the state of Arkansas and he's in the fight with us and he understands policy better than anybody that I've, that I've met in a long time and he graduated from rural special school. His big brother Dustin is shelter insurance agent, incredible young man, incredible family member family husband, but he's engaged in his community. He's fighting for his community and
economic development of his county where he was raised. Why would we shut a school down like that. Why would the state of Arkansas not provide a policy path to allow those small schools to operate and to function and to stand on their own 2 ft. It follows in the vein of everything that we have done for educational freedom on the behalf of these students, what's best for them, educating them. Making them feel like this sense
of community for their community and their state. That's what this bill is doing. We were very careful in the way that we wrote this legislation and we worked on it all weekend, which is why it's amended, and we will continue to work with the Department of Education if any changes need to be made because I know time is is short, but there's in in 24 hours we had 11,000 people sign the petition in the state of Arkansas in support of this legislation. All around the state of Arkansas
and all these different areas. 24 hours, 1000 people on that. I think we're now up to 1600 people that have signed this petition. Representative Stephen Walker's here. He's my house sponsor on this bill. Let me tell you about Stephen. Stephen grew up in Izard County. Small, small, small little area. It used to be in my district, graduated from Izzard County Consolidated School. Where is Stephen Walker right now? He's sitting at the table with us. He's a state representative.
He graduated from Izard County Consolidated School. If that's not a testimony to the value of these small schools. I don't know what is. And so this legislation has been formed. I think it's absolutely necessary, and I know there's people here that speak for it. I, I, I respect everybody on this committee. You're very good policy thinkers. I've spoken to Secretary Oliva about this bill. Uh, I, I will work with him and the department every step of the
way, but let these small isolated schools stand on their own 2 ft, let them work hard to keep their schools. in their communities and help educate those kids. That's what we're asking for with this bill, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Are there questions Senator Bryant, thank you,
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
15:16
Madam Chair. Um, could you walk me through how this isolated school currently functions and we, I
think the question will lead to is Isolated school districts and the amount of funding required. On such a small whenever they're attached to something bigger, they can have more access to funding, so just address that for me. Yes,
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
15:36
so we, we did create this bill to where it would be revenue neutral for the state because they're already being funded. So they, these schools do receive isolated funding because of where they're located. Some, depending on the formula, receive isolated enhanced transportation funding as well.
Um, so this bill has tried to walk the line of separating these schools out from their current district. There's a process by which they would do that in the bill, um, but that isolated funding would stay with the isolated school, um, and so It would also give the ability for them to determine their own village as well, so they would be separated out from the school district and then they would be able to determine their own
village that they would need to determine in order to, to basically get the funding for themselves, uh, from that perspective, but they would still receive the foundational funding from the state of Arkansas, which they currently receive now, and they would currently uh receive the isolated funding. That they currently receive from the state of Arkansas as well. Senator Flowers.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
17:03
So that from what you just said, that would result in your So that
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
17:10
from what you just said, that would result in you your more funding. Is that right? No, no, it's, it's it, the only, the only issue as to where they would get more funding would be if that if they would create their own village. So if their millage was different from the existing school district that they're in, that would be, but from the state level we've written the legislation to where it's the same funding that they they currently get from the state of Arkansas, not more.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
17:35
The current funding that the school district that they are associated and included in now. Receive 4. That particular area or isolated. Yeah, full section. Yes, the way, the way that
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
17:51
we find through the foundation funding is by student. So we, we fund foundation funding based on student and so that amount of depending on their student population, if it's 6 students, they get under
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
18:05
Senator English's bill about $8000 some dollars for. Yes, and that's
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
18:11
his that was his graduating class. There's more than 6 students at the school, but
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
18:17
uh I would imagine in an isolated area you can have fewer
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
18:22
students. Yes, ma'am, you would have fewer students. Yes,
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
18:25
you would be sufficient for That school district that formed. To have the Educators, the teachers that are
necessary in all other services that might be necessary. to those students. And we
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
18:42
do have the superintendent from the Mountain View School District here, uh, that could probably better answer your questions, I'd
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
18:49
like that and then I see in the amendment. It pretty much Uh, cuts out the requirement. For forming these isolated school districts.
said that was at next or consolidated with another school district, so you're taking that out and you just saying petition. But voters in the area 350 at least. are no less than 51% of the registered. Voters that are within that boundary
of the isolated district. So I just want to know why would you take out?
Annexed our consolidated. I have these schools been annexed or consolidated. Many, many years ago on Act 60, I believe it
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
19:49
was Act 60. Why would you
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
19:52
take it out then if they've been annexed or consolidated. Well well, that's
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
19:56
the point of the bill. They were annexed to consolidate it. Many times because of that legislation that was passed many years ago. This gives them the
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
20:12
option of being able to de-annex themselves.
But I mean your original said The schools that are in those boundaries that could form an isolated school district. Had to be. have had to be have been consolidated or annexed. So still there.
The, the result of annexation are consolidation. I don't understand why you took that out.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
20:50
Because that's the point of the bill. They, they don't want to be part of that school district anymore. It gives this is giving them a
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
21:00
pathway to leave that school district understand that part, but I'm
just So any district in the future going forward. Not necessarily having been annexed or consolidated can
petition to be an isolated school district. If you got 350 registered voters or at least 51%
of the voters in that district, so we setting up. Uh,
pattern for more small school districts to be put in place,
it seems like that to me. Uh, no, ma'am. I,
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
21:40
I don't believe that we are, um, And I
There's some other folks here that could probably answer your question to hear from them on, on the, yes, ma'am. Madam Chair, do you mind if I bring up Miss Renee Carr? That'd be fine. Thank
you. Who is she bringing up? Renee Carr, she's She was with me
Senator Jane English
Unverified
22:09
identify herself, I guess. You identify yourself, you'll be
Speaker 97
22:11
recognized. I'm Renee Carr, a community member from the rural Special school up. I can't hear you, I
think your question deals with the amendment that you're wondering why language. Uh, our intent was to that this is limited to only um existing isolated school districts with K-12 campuses, um, and how do
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
22:37
you figure it's only limited to existing That's
Speaker 97
22:43
what the language says about um an isolated school
district, we began with 56 back in 2004. Now we're down to 11, only 11 schools that are have K-12 still qualify, are still open with K-12s. So this bill is limited to those. Those schools Well,
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
23:10
this bill deals with Lad
schools. Taking out the word district in
the amendment, so we're only dealing with isolated school and I guess I, I don't know if it's defined. Is it defined in our law, what an
Speaker 97
23:32
isolated school is? Yes, and, and there are only um what is it? Well, there were criteria that the schools had to meet back in the beginning. It had to do with the um Distance of or at least the unpaid um bus routes.
And uh student density and various um things that were set about. I mean this, this dates back to Archford's day. Is there a
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
24:01
statute that defines isolated schools. Yes, thank you. I'll see if I can.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
24:12
Thank you, Mr. Rush. Yes, um, I'm, I call it. Thank you, Mr. Rush. Uh, yes, um. Isolated school district means a
school district, um, that means any four of the following 5 criteria. Number 1, there's a distance of 12 miles or more by hard surfaced highway from the high school of the district to the nearest adjacent high school in an adjoining district 2, the density ratio of transported students is less than 3 students per square mile of an area. 3, the total area of the district is 95 square miles or greater. 4 less than 50% of bus route miles is on hard surface roads
and 5, there are geographic barriers such as lakes, rivers, and mountain ranges that would impede travel to schools that otherwise would be appropriate for consolidation, cooperative programs and shared services. That is in uh code uh as amended by Acts at in 2005. section of the code, I don't see the first part. It's 20-6. 01A. 6
Uh, hold on just a 2nd. Uh, hold on just a
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
25:32
second. 66-20-601A of the code. And, and that definition is for isolated school districts are isolated schools. schools.
Speaker 114
25:42
Isolated, it says isolated school district. So That's what
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
25:49
an isolated school district is your amendment. Deletes
I in in this page one line 28 where you pretty much start. You're deleting. The word district and you just say an isolated school. May be formed. Yes. an isolated
school may detached. I'm sorry. From a resulting or receiving district. that should not isolated submits
a petition, so isolated school. Yes, ma'am, um it's the same thing as an isolated school district that's contemplated in this definition from that statute you just read from. It may
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
26:42
have been just a a misprint of the amendment. Well, you
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
26:48
deleted the district a couple of times in your amendment. From your, your flowers,
Speaker 124
26:54
one place it's deleted because it refers to prior year, um,
Speaker 97
27:03
ADM that would be used for funding and in which case the prior year it would not have been an isolated district. So I think though it covers it well. I'm reading the amendment here and isolated school may detach. There are only 11. Of
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
27:22
those isolated schools that is isolated school that term defined in the code as opposed to what's defined for isolated school districts.
I think it's a difference and to me, Depending on what you think of an isolated school, I can think of several isolated schools in my district that are have
the distance in terms of mileage between where where uh high school is like uh I mean So I'm just saying, I mean, I, I can think of. Humphrey kids.
Go either to Dwit or Stuttgart. Uh You got down southeast. There are
going to Dumas. I think Lincoln
Speaker 97
28:23
County, right, and some of those you mentioned like Imphrey were, were one of those were on that list. What Humphrey, that you mentioned was on the original isolated school list, don't have a they've been
closed and that's the situation that's happened of these 56 original isolated schools. Cheryl,
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
28:45
like a whole bunch of schools down there in Southeast Arkansas, but what I'm saying is The terms that you
use here. When you strike. The word district when you refer to isolated schools. Well, we're talking about a different
animal to me because it's not just that you struck it on page one when
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
29:18
you start. Yes, ma'am. No, but also on Because, because it actually would not be a district. I mean it's, it's a school, it's a
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
29:27
standalone that's my point. The code defines what an isolated
school district is. It doesn't define what an isolated school is. I haven't heard that definition and so when you're striking that word district, you strike it on page 2, line 1,
it's stricken. So here we go, uh, just isolated school applies under this section, and then you got it deleted on page 3, line 2. Yes, ma'am. District is deleted. So, and then page 3 line 15.
you delete school districts. Page 3 line 15 school district, so you
were just talking about. To release ownership of the isolated. School The release ownership of the isolated school. So it seems like something is missing here. So that
At least I don't understand what Would constitute an isolated school
that could petition. To form an isolated school district. Do you understand what
I'm saying? I, I just think Because Depending on
what you consider isolated school without going back to this list of isolated
schools that were Mentioned in the isolated school districts.
Speaker 124
31:16
You don't have a definition. I don't see one. I don't know if anyone
Speaker 97
31:25
would be here from ADE to clarify this, but it's my understanding that um the isolated status was determined. It's not like people can come in and qualify for the original isolated funding currently, um, as an isolated school that those schools were defined and listed
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
31:49
um as isolated schools. Uh, the other, the other reason. too behind what we're trying to do is that I understand what you're trying to do,
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
31:57
but I'm just saying what's going to prevent going forward, school districts. That feel isolated, uh, based on some
of the criteria that you mentioned for that's in the statute for an isolated school district from Petitioning to be separated and we'll have more and more schools.
That have these smaller student populations that really the consolidation Acts back in 2003, 2004, that's
what they were designed for. To have a
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
32:35
certain population. Yeah, we've also passed legislation though that would allow, I think it was Senator Payton's legislation, uh, that, that this body passed in 2 years ago, 4 years ago, 2 years ago that that eliminates that population.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
32:53
I'm just trying to understand. You know, and not
put in place in our code, things that confuse. I, I understand, I understand what you're saying. I think
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
33:06
I understand what you're saying. The, but this, this is the ability for an isolated school to be an isolated school and stand on their own 2 ft. It's not that they're going to then
form an additional district, we, we don't, this isn't a formation of new school districts. This is, this is allowing for a school to separate itself out from the district and stand on their own 2 ft, which would be
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
33:40
a new school district. I mean, It it would be a new school district they can have vote for millet. They form their own board of directors, I mean, so I don't see how you can say that, but the other thing is Um
With You keep mentioning these isolated schools
that came up under older law. And that was because of annexation. And Consolidation, but you take
that language out in your amendment. So Like I said, it seems like it
needs to be narrowed to what is considered an isolated school. Because you've taken out the word district. And so you, you see.
To be focused on a particular area. Whether by uh the we're focused on
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
34:45
the schools that qualify for the isolated funding, which currently there are only 11. I just don't think this bill.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
34:59
does just that. So if there is somebody from the department, they ought to be able to answer.
They'll come to the table. Nobody in here OK, well, I would like to hear from
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
35:23
the Department of Ed. Uh. Thank you, Madam Chair. I my question actually kind of has to do with um Page 2
Uh, the section there on lines 6 through 20, where it talks about the terms of the board of directors and uh. There is another House Bill 1724 that's going through that realigns the board of directors to 4 6-year terms that that House bill I just looked it up and it is It had a Senate amendment. It's in the House Education
Committee, so it's more than likely I would assume going to make it back through the house into the governor's desk. So assuming that becomes law, this would kind of Conflict as far as a different type of of way you elect school boards, school district boards of directors for isolated districts rather than the rest of them, so I would just suggest um I mean That's If we make it through this process today and you make it
down to the house, um, and that House bill gets to the governor's desk,
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
36:37
make amendment to align them. So yeah, what's
the House bill number 124. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a problem to
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
36:46
align whatever that happens to be and And then just as as far as the the discussion that we're talking about on page one line 27, uh, well, I I think I Understand what Senator Flowers was talking about as far as your
district, especially with the amendment strikes out districts in several places, so you are talking about an individual school. But that individual school would be forming an isolated district. Yeah, that's correct. So in essence, the definition would go with
isolated district of the isolated district, correct? That's correct. OK, thank you. You.
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
37:33
Senator Davis, thank you, Madam Chair. Senator Dodson asked one of my questions about the school board elections. I think it'd be good to align with that, but generally I, I agree with what you're trying to do here. I think it is fair and and does make sense for those 11 schools that are left if they choose to do so. Do we know anything on cost like if this will cost the state if all 11 schools decided to do it
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
37:58
with the additional costs will be. I, I don't have that information, but again if the
department's here, I don't know if they can make some estimation. I think we wrote the legislation to make sure it was revenue neutral. And that's the intention of us. It's to make sure that this is revenue neutral. We're not asking the state for any more or additional funding, the superintendent of the Mountain View School District is here and maybe could better answer that question if I thank you. All right.
Speaker 167
38:35
Um, Mark Rush, current superintendent of the Mountain View School District. Uh, we have, if I could explain our situation. We have a very unique School district and that the consolidation Act of 2003 to 2004. Forced schools. Under the population of 350 students. To either consolidate. Or administratively annex.
With another district in order to stay open. The Mountain View School District. Administratively. Annexed The schools of real special. And Timbo. Both of those schools operate as even today. As a part of our district as separate entities. They have their own. K-12 campuses. They have their own athletic teams, very good athletic teams.
I might mention very, very good academics, real special is one of the most. Highly rewarded or awarded. Districts academically in the state, year in and year out. Uh, those districts operate under our umbrella, but they are totally separate entities. If that makes sense, they have their own bus routes. Again, they have their own um
Athletic teams, they have their own extracurriculars, uh, but they do operate under our umbrella with me as a superintendent, excuse me. And an assistant superintendent. Um, both of those schools again have about a population of 200 students. Uh, historically, we have operated very well. But we are Facing some financial decisions.
I'll just be totally honest. Uh, the Mountain View School District. We operate 3 K-12 campuses in one county. With the 2nd lowest or lowest now. Milli rate in the state at 28.91. We cannot continue to operate the way we have. With that millage right? We have tried repeatedly, I
don't know how many times in the past. This is my first year as a superintendent of the district, my 6th year with the district total. But we have tried repeatedly. To Have mileage increases. And they have repeatedly for whatever reason, been voted down. Due to the economics. The world and I'm sure you're all feeling it. We're gonna have to make some tough decisions.
And the educational reorganization Act, and I'm going to give you my opinion. Of 2003 and 2004 cut a lot of throats because of a number. I was working at a class A school at the time. This is my 35th year in education. I was working in the Concord School District at the time. The number I remember it well. The number.
was 500 students at the time that would have cut Concord. Another great outstanding Class A school. It eventually fell to 350. But we had to annex a neighboring district at that time, the Wilburn School District because they didn't have 350 students. Now I can understand personally again, this is my opinion. Personally, if you have under 350.
And you're failing. You're not meeting the criteria. That's laid out by the state. Then I can understand closing a school. But not based on a number of students. There are, there are class 6A 5A, 6A schools in the in the state. That perform way below what real
special and Timbo and Concord and Wilburn. are performing at And they're not going to close. It's not going to happen because they have Beating the number. And again, personally, this is my opinion. You shouldn't close the school. You wouldn't close a business. And you shouldn't close the school. Simply based on a number we had
2 of those schools in our district that are performing above and beyond. They have never been in fiscal distress. They have never been an academic distress, but because of economics and our millage and our failure to raise a village. We are Facing A cold hard truth. of possibly having to shut down two campus this that do not deserve to be shut down.
Again, this is my thirty-fifth year in education. I've spent 1/3 of it, and I know Representative Carr here, he and I had some battles on the baseball field back in the day. He comes from he works I assume he still works at one of those schools. Uh So he, he and Representative Walker. Know what I'm speaking of. I am passionate for education.
I've given my life to education and I'm passionate. For small school education because I know it works and if you've never had the opportunity to work in a small school, then you don't know what you're missing. And again, I'm passionate about this. But I'm also Superintendent who besides having number one. To Provide a safe
And quality education to the kids. I have to be a good steward. Of the district's money. And we're facing some cold hard facts, uh, if we try to continue to operate 3 K-12 campuses in Stone County, so I hope that answered some of your questions. The these districts, these schools. And I think there's some terminology here. The schools
operated as their own independent districts and when we academically annex them, they basically kept their districts. They run bus routes. Within their former district. Which is now operating under the Mountain View school umbrella. Timbo runs 5. School bus routes in Stone County. Under the umbrella. Of the Mountain View School
District. We are unique. We are very unique district. But we also are a very Successful district when it comes to academics when it comes to extracurriculars and bottom line when it comes to serving kids. So I will be happy to. Try and answer any questions that you have, but again, this is something I'm very passionate about.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
47:04
Thank you, Senator Flowers. Thank you. I appreciate your testimony and you know,
Uh, I heard you say It's Basically about economics that you want this to go forward. Yes,
Speaker 167
47:25
ma'am. And so now it's basically about and I don't. On to cross anybody, but it's basically about the kids, districts that the same thing
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
47:35
with what happened in my district where they chopped up all the schools and took them under state control and they got worse and then they had
to uh just get rid of them. Consolidate, dissolve. Yes, ma'am. We had good students too. Yes,
ma'am. And but for this legislature and the state of Arkansas changing up uh how you determine whether a student's assessment and their
performance going forward is going to be good or not. That's what happened. That's my take, but my point is what you were mentioning about. The economics of it and the village and failing to get a higher millage so you have a vote. that is comprised of voters from the whole area, the rural, whatever and Mountain View, all
boats on those and they're stuck. They don't want to raise the millage ma'am. So
I'm just wondering how do you think then, is it gonna be any better. If If
they're under your umbrella now at Mountain Mountain View Mountain View. Then how are they
going to be able to sustain their existence. I, I don't, I don't see this when we annexed. The Mountain View School
Speaker 167
49:11
District basically in this is my understanding of what happened 20 years ago because like I say, I was in another district, uh, they agreed. To accept and somebody who knows better can correct me. Uh, they agreed to accept what was the lowest village rate among the three districts. If I was told right. Who is they? The powers that be at the time of the Mountain View School District, Tambo School District, and Special.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
49:48
As an annexed. District. Did Timbo and rural Special have their own millage
at that time. Has it disappeared? All 3
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
50:04
or 9 and so even if an isolated school petitions and is granted the status of an
isolated school district. Yes ma'am. They won't have a village. Initially, Correct. So how are they going to exist except
Speaker 167
50:30
through State funding they will, as I understand the bill is written, and I have not seen the amendment yet, but as the bill was written, they would establish number one, a milage rate in their own district. Uh, which could be whatever the voters of that area agree on.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
50:47
And and vote for and vote for and also about if you mentioned too while you're talking about school
property since it's all under mountain Mountain View
Speaker 167
51:01
now what are they supposed to do with facilities that is written into the bill as I understand it, the Mountain View School District would agree to turn over. Everything, property, including computers, books, desk,
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
51:19
technology, buses that have been if they had kept the language. About annexed or consolidated school districts, so now you got an amendment. Does the amendment
contemplate What happened in the past in terms of consolidation and annexation in
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
51:38
school property. No, no, the, the bill outlines that on page 3. facilities and property. Um, Alan's 12 through 32, uh, this
is a this bill provides a process for these schools to leave their current school district. And we, and we've established that with both the legislation and the amendment flushing that out for how that is supposed to occur in the process. The facilities in the property as it's written on page 3. is how that would be transferred from the current school district to the new one, and it
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
52:15
also includes the debt on the facilities. So again,
You know your area. This is the
superintendent. Yes, ma'am. Do you really think Timbo and rural Special will be able to To handle school debt on these buildings? Have they built new, new Facilities
Speaker 167
52:40
has been, I can't remember Judge Stacey Abe is here and he is from Timbo and he could not tell us when the last construction on the timbo campus was, but let me just tell you, Senator
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
52:55
Flowers, these communities love their schools. They will dig in for schools in
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
52:59
Arkansas too, but for the state's interference. Well, I, I'm trying to provide a
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
53:04
pathway for these schools to stand on their own 2 ft in these communities to stand on their own 2 ft. We've ran the numbers and those campuses, according to Mister Rogers in the Department of Education are very, very efficient with the funding that they receive just from the state, and we had those numbers.
I ran the numbers myself with Mister Rogers. They are run very, very efficiently rule special just raised, I can't remember how what was the amount of money $300,000 to redo their gym all on their own. They raised $250,000 within Couple of weeks' time, couple of weeks' time to redo their gym, but they have the
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
53:50
ability. I'm sorry, but they won't raise a millage, but my point is this,
and maybe since I see the Department of Ed, they were in the room, uh, to talk about. Uh, what I asked before about dropping The term district. And allowing by petition for isolated schools. To form and isolate it school district. Senator
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
54:18
Flowers, I don't mean to interrupt you, but Senator Dotson was 100% correct. If you read the amendment, the
amendment amends from line 28 down, isolated school district in line 27 remains. Therefore, if isolated school district formation remains in the bill under line 27, then the isolated school district that's in existing state statute code definition applies. Do that line and everything below it. Senator Dodson was correct. I disagree with that
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
54:50
line 27 is only a title, isolated School District.
Hyphen formation and then where you had your amendment starts on line 21, 28 on page one, it says You delete what you had in here, you had an isolated school district may be formed, but here your amendment says an isolated school may detach from a resulting or receiving district if the isolated school submits a petition. So to me, and it uh maybe I'm being too picky here, but one word does make a difference. Somebody said that
at the well the other day, but I think it does make a difference here, and I'm wondering how many more uh district. Are we going to see popping up that
Speaker 167
55:43
uh petition to become isolated. district flowers as I understand it. Today currently there are only Senator Irvin read the definition of isolated school district and there's only 11
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
55:53
districts. You said that several times and I don't hear anything from the Department of Education.
Speaker 210
56:03
Let me ask you, Senator Brian had a question just for clarity
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
56:07
from the department just for clarity, we're not deleting lines 29 below. We're just inserting all the dialogue of the new amendment. I
understand that but we're leaving all the other district language in the bill. It just pushes it
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
56:21
below the amendment. No, if you look on her page 2, line 1, she deletes the word district, page
3, line 2, delete district. Why can't the the Department of Education Come to the table. I think they will, Courtney.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
56:36
Over there gapping about it. Good luck. He would identify yourself, you will be recognized. Jacob Lear
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
56:58
Department of Education. Well, Madam Chair, I guess I need to repeat my question. He's standing in the room but he doesn't know what I asked. So I'm asking about the
language of the bill. I suppose you've read the
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
57:15
amendment this morning. Her concern is the lot that we're trying to understand I'm Her concern is the lot that
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
57:26
we're trying to understand to school districts can be considered an isolated cleaned up
the language that can petition to become an isolated school district. Do
Speaker 231
57:42
Is that better? OK, sorry, I might have had
Speaker 235
57:45
it backwards. So to my understanding, there really isn't a difference
Speaker 236
57:50
between a definition between an isolated school and an isolated school district. We do have some qualifying conditions under what an isolated district can receive for special assistance. In Arkansas code and it's basically 5 different criteria. One is distance.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
58:08
She mentioned all those in 620-6018, but what
I'm asking is that language when you delete the word district from isolated school
may form by petition is still intact. It's deleted all the reference to
the former annexation and consolidation. How can you say that that definition that you were just referring to. For isolated school districts. Is the same as for isolated school, which is the focus of this particular bill.
Speaker 235
58:44
So I, I think From my understanding, the intent is that they want to create
Speaker 236
58:49
that opportunity or that definition for for if there is an isolated school district and then there's a school that
Speaker 235
58:56
wants to be designated as an isolated school. That's what the spirit of the antenna is trying to do is my
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
59:02
spirit, it might be the intent, but that's not this
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
59:06
language. No, no, the language, the language again, if you go back to what Senator Dotson said on line 27, isolated school district formation. That's the
title, correct, but part of an isolated school district means that there are schools inside of a district. That's your opinion. It's not that's what the language is very clear about that. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Sir Davis, did you
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
59:26
have a question? You did. Brian. Oh, sorry. Well, I was just gonna
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
59:36
make a motion at the proper time. I was just gonna make a motion at the proper time. That
Senator Jane English
Unverified
59:48
I think we have a couple of folks to speak for for the bill. Um, Melissa Sutton. You identify yourself to be
recognized. Hello, my name is Melissa Sutton, and I am alumni
Melissa Sutton
Unverified
1:00:19
in PTO member of Timmbo schools as well as a parent of a current student that's in this small school located in Stone County, um, my class, my graduating class was 13. She mentioned, you know, destinistics and Tim Bosco along with another small school in our county real special was forced to consolidate with Mountain View School District when I was just a junior in high school in 2004. So despite both schools opposing the consolidation and not being financially necessary. We were merged with Mountain View. And so while we were grateful that we were able to keep our campus
open, we soon realized that we lost control over our finances and this consolidation created tension between the smaller campuses and Mountain View School, um, doing, due to the smaller campuses being overlooked and underestimated, um, despite our financial situation being stable, we have been fighting to keep our campuses open, especially since it was mentioned this year in the school board meeting by a couple of board. members who feel that it's necessary to close Timbo this year and then Fox are real special the next year. Both schools as has been mentioned,
has good enrollment with good testing. We have no financial issues. The reasons or excuses that was given has been disregarded the validity and credibility of our small schools as if we were below par. The truth of the matter is Timbo School in real Special have had students graduate and further their education, resulting in numerous successful and fulfilling careers. We should not be underestimated due to our size. We matter. Our students matter, our schools are the lifeline of our communities. You take our schools away and our communities will die out, and
you take away the schools and our children will suffer. You take away our schools and you'll rip the heart out of our community, so please pass this bill to keep our school open and to restore control over our finances. Thank you today. Thank you very much. Questions from the committee. We have another uh Linda Kitchens.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:02:25
I I will. He'll identify yourself. You'll be
Linda Kitchens
Unverified
1:02:32
recognized. My name, excuse me, my name is Linda Kitchens, and I am from umpire. Uh, which Ah, I'm just gonna say a few things to let you know about how we are working to keep our school and our community. I can echo all of this that how important it is for our community to have a school. But I want to just let you know that at one time umpire was
paying 63 meals to keep their school. In 2003, that magic. 350 number came into being and we were forced to close. We were financially sound. We were academically sound. As a matter of fact, Even today we are doing a wonderful job. Uh, in 2023. We were awarded as the number one school.
In high Ella growth. We were number 5. In high math growth. We were the #2 most improved public elementary school. We were #3 most approved public high school. Last year, 2024. We were rated the best overall growth scores in math and Ella and we were rated by School
Digger.com this past year as the number 10 public school in the state of Arkansas. We have fought hard to keep our school. We were told in 2023 in September that our school was going to be closed. The board had voted to close the school. It was not unanimous. We came to the Department of Education, state Board of Education.
For a hearing in December of 23. It was voted to let us keep our school. We have We have made many attempts. To break away, we were told when 350 number went away. We were told we could not break away, we could not become independent. It was not a choice. Now,
This bill gives us the opportunity to do exactly that. It gives us the opportunity To take control. Of our school and our community. It gives us the opportunity to investigate the possibility. Can we become an independent district again. Can we have local control. Of our school. Can we
Um, Sobbing because their school is leaving. Can we keep students who are unsure about what their educational future is. Will they know where they're going? Will they know what kind of atmosphere they're going to be forced into. We're just asking you to give us the opportunity to How control and protect
The most precious resource. In our communities and that is our children. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:06:16
You have, 00 yes, Senator Murdoch. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:06:23
you for your testimony. As I understood the the the superintendent when he spoke. The economic issue is really centered around the lack of being able to get the community
to pass the village. What's to make you or make us feel like if you did these Pull outs if you will, or isolate pullouts that that same community within vote to establish proper villages to help finance those situations when you have chosen, according to the testimony, not to do it continuously for the Total mountain View School District as it sits.
But you'll do it for, if I understand you correctly, you would do it for, and I don't remember the name of those towns, but those one or two towns that would pull out, you would do it for those, but you won't do it for all as you currently situated and if the care is for the children. And not for something else, whatever that may be, even independence, I don't know, but if the car is for the children and you're refusing as a community. To pass a village to enrich, enhance, to better educate the
children. Why is that? What's the thinking there?
Linda Kitchens
Unverified
1:07:45
Help me understand. Well, I can't speak for them. I said umpire was paying 63 meals to keep our school. We were able
Speaker 272
1:07:54
to lower it to 58. And when standards. Excuse me, that's not my question. My question is she's not part
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:08:02
of the Stone County School District. I'm part of the Howard. I'm from Howard County, umpire.
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:08:11
K-12. OK, so. So these districts has been brought under Mountain View. Not umpire. Not empire. We're part of
Cato River. They're part of Costart River. Yes, right, so but but but they want to be, they, they won't, so they are not part
Speaker 271
1:08:33
now of this. I think you need to address to the, yes, I'm sorry, I can't address that because I'm not I'm trying to understand
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:08:42
umpires under Cassatot River, so they're in a different part of the state of Arkansas, but the bill would still allow them to do this too. Oh, this is just another another in
Linda Kitchens
Unverified
1:08:53
the state of Arkansas. I'm another isolated school with a district that's asking to be allowed independence. Go ahead. I, I
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:09:00
apologize, but Mr. Rush may be able to speak to specifically your question, uh, Senator Murdoch, and we also have our Stone County judge here that could also speak to that, um, I, I think and I will attempt to
answer your question. I think it's because those communities want to see the money spent there at their schools. And so they're, you know, and, and there's there's tension. I live there in Stone County and so there's tension between the bigger campus, you know, and they have a football program, but Timmbo doesn't and Rule Special doesn't, and so, you know, which is fine. Let these people support their school and then let these people support their school or this part this group support their school
because they're all unique and they're very different and so I think it, it creates a problem when you have an undefined, uh, path forward on a village. I've been there. The school districts in the in the past under the the previous leadership and administration of Mountain View School District, not Mr. Rush cause he's brand new, but you didn't have a clear defined goal or path or a purpose for a millage increase. It wasn't clearly defined, and
so the voters didn't support it because, uh, you know, the people at Ru Special or at Timbo would say, Why would I vote for a mileage increase when you're just gonna continue to threaten to close our campus. And that's what's happened before, so they're not going to vote for a mileage increase and go, yeah, we'll increase the mileage, but you're still going to close our campus, so what do we vote for a mileage increase for. Does that make sense? I hear what you're
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:10:41
saying. Let me not put you into that fight because I think in a sitting position that you sit in, it would be very dangerous for you
to get into this conversation either way. So I'm gonna leave you out of that. I understand what you're saying. I think it's There's lots of complexities in what we're trying to do for a single situation that's very important. I hear what you're doing. I hear what you're saying, but there's so many other isolated situations that we can bring before the body, and we have not like you've done so and so the complexity of this is. Existing districts, the facilities as you go forward so
that existing district have to
release the facilities, those facilities may be cold, maybe it's not in your situation, but in another situation maybe. Code used by Someone that's trying to pull out and someone that's staying, so there's there's lots of complexities whenever we pass legislation to to fix one
situation, so to speak. I understand the intent, but I just think there is some
convolution in trying to execute this because we can't just take it and just apply it, it's
gonna go throughout those 11 situations and depending on how you interpret this, maybe others depending on your interpretation of. as Senator Flowers has brought out that will become maybe a legal matter, but certainly I just see a lot of I see the intent, but I see complexities and
executing this legislation, I understand. I think
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:12:17
there's complexities in every piece of legislation. I'm just right, right, I'm talking
about this one, and yes, this is from Mountain View School District generated it, but she's from Cassatot River School District. I understand that now. I understand that's supportive of the legislation that it would apply for for those isolated schools and Miss Carr, uh, who was in here previously, she worked with a rural community alliance, and so she's very familiar with all these different schools across the state, so I, I really do feel like the legislation is not specific just as the Stone County Mountain View School District, but that we really did try to take into consideration
the very particular nature of all of these schools like, uh, like hers, uh, in, in the way that we wrote the legislation. We did our very
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:13:04
best. I certainly intent. Thank you. Are there
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:13:11
further questions from the committee. Tender Davis Thank you,
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:13:16
Madam Chair. Senator Ervin, I think we all agree with what you're trying to do and um would you just be willing to
make sure between now and when it, if it makes it over to the house to make sure that everything is defined as it should be to ensure that it's a district so that they can be funded properly and just make sure everything, I mean, I, we just are out of time. I know in session and this is how it goes, but just working with them to ensure it's correct on the house and and then it can
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:13:47
come back to us and it's amended form. Absolutely. I, I give the committee my assurances. I've spoke with Secretary Oliva this morning. He can shake his head, and but we spoke about this this
morning. Um, it is late in the session, but I have every intent to make sure that this legislation is
Speaker 301
1:14:04
buttoned up tight. Thank you, Madam Chair. Are there any other people here to speak for the
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:14:11
Stone County judge. Um, but, but if the if the committee wants to pass the bill out with those assurances, I'm happy to, we're happy to close
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:14:19
right now. If this, if the Stone County judges, um, willing to relinquish his or her time then with. Yeah, I'd be great with that. Yeah,
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:14:31
he's, he's here in support of the bill. And with that I can
close. But motion to pass. As amended Yes. Are there any discussion on the motion? All in
favor all oppose. Thank you, Pastor Bill. Thank you so
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:14:56
much, members of the committee. OK, Senator Davis.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:15:02
It's part to back. Um. 604 Huh?
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:15:55
If you will identify yourself, you will be recognized. Thank
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:15:58
you, Brianne Davis, State Senate District 25, um, presenting Senate Bill 604, and I'd like that to ask someone from the department to be up here.
Speaker 313
1:16:26
Good morning, Courtney Salas Ford, Department of Education. OK, just pull
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:16:33
your microphone closer to you. Thank you. Um,
this is to amend the course Choice program. We are making some changes to the program established by Learns just to make sure that um it operates and fulfills the intent of the program. So we've amended the definition of course provider to distinguish between public schools and other providers for the purposes of the program. We're also clarifying that the
Arkansas School for Math, Sciences and the Arts may participate and then also just clarifying that public schools may participate but are not required to participate if they have an A, B, or C school rating. We amend the definition of eligible student. We allow AD uh to promulgate rules to bring the program to full implementation in the 2627 school year, um, And then we set we set a more practical process for when and
how payments will be made by ADE instead of reasonable cap on the amount of a course at 8% of foundation funding. Um, and there's some details in there on that, you know, 50% at the beginning when they're enrolled and then the additional 50% once the course is completed. I'm happy to take any questions. The questions from the committee. Senator Murdoch.
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:17:58
Yes, thank you, Madam Chair, Senator. The exclusions. That you have here. The the
exclusions that you have. Let's talk about the districts, uh, talk a little bit more about the program and how it relates to those that you are excluding and why you're excluding those that you're excluding. Um, so Senator, the
Speaker 320
1:18:26
intent of the course Choice program was to
Speaker 321
1:18:29
make more quality options available for students in either a failing school district, so a D or an F school district to be able to take a course from a private provider who makes that course available or from another public school who might make that course available, um, and so in a, in a private provider, we want to make sure that they are meeting our academic standards and that they are, um, you know, again, providing a good quality option. So if it's a public school, we want to make sure that it is of quality as well and so D and F school districts would be
prevented from offering courses to students because if they're already in a DNF school district, we don't want them just taking courses at another DNF school district. We want to give them an option at a higher performing school. All right, let
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:19:13
me make sure I understand that again. I heard what you said that maybe I didn't. If you're excluding them from being able to Do
what you're saying, then how do they allow them to be able to do what you're saying.
Speaker 321
1:19:27
That's OK. I probably didn't explain it well enough, so a student in a DNF school district
could take a course at an A, B, or C school district, but a student at a D or F school district could not take a course from another DRF school district because the the point of the program is to give them a higher quality option than what they're getting, and so they would only be able to take a course at a district that was at a higher grade than what they're at, not at just DRF
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:19:57
school district, but if I, if I'm understanding you correctly, if the DRF school district.
Consulted with or contracted with a quality um provider, if you will, to provide that not only would it enhance their. Um, presentation, if you will, of a DRF district providing something of a higher quality it would bring their standards up. What it seems to be doing in my view. Possibly it's separating
segregating or isolating the DRF school from that the good from the bad and not allowing the in this term context, the bad to elevate itself by contracting with a quality. Eligible Provider. So why even exclude? Why not just make the standard the standard for whomever provides it. So therefore all school districts can utilize this program. And
As long as the provider is a provider that meets the standards. So
Speaker 321
1:21:10
they are not precluded from contracting with any private provider to provide courses to their students in their school district. They could do that anyway without course choice. What they couldn't do is let's just, uh, I'm, I'm not saying that they have a school district. I'm gonna pick on Karen because she's here. Let's just pretend that the Bryant School District was an F. She could go out and contract with a private provider to provide math, to calculus, to anyone in her school district outside of
course choice. What she can't do is contract. With a private provider to offer that service to kids outside of her district.
Speaker 320
1:21:45
That's what this does, but she could offer
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:21:48
it to anyone in her district that's what you just said, if it's, if it's I just think it's segregates totally because what you're saying is you can just deal with chores. Whereas other program, the other school the A or B or A or B
school, I think, or maybe AB for sure. The kids from the bad school
Speaker 320
1:22:17
can go there. And get serviced they could go
Speaker 323
1:22:20
to another public school that is offering a program that's A, B or C, or they could go to a private
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:22:26
provider. They can't go to another school that's what I'm, what I'm debating and what I'm pushing back against is that reciprocal relationship because of what I think iron does to iron.
So bringing that to that failing district and to allow if those students don't choose to come to that failing
district that has the provider. Then that that raises that environment that does a lot of positives to your DRF school. That sometime environmental. Sometimes they don't ever get that. In their situation, so what I'm saying is, from my view, and we I was probably looking at not necessarily you, but you're
explaining something that's been presented. I'm just looking at it different for opportunity to raise the bar versus segregation or separation. That's the way I'm saying, and I guess I think it's really something for her to explain because it's her bill, not necessarily AD. It's not AD that I know of. It's not your bill, right? Well, I don't want
Speaker 320
1:23:30
to argue semantics, but as, as a lawyer and I did assist with writing the bill, what I would say is that in your situation they wouldn't be taking the
Speaker 321
1:23:41
course from the F school they would be taking it from the private provider, and so I don't believe that that's prohibited
Speaker 275
1:23:48
under this language. Oh, so go ahead. Help me.
Speaker 235
1:23:53
Jacob will leave at the Department of Education. Senator Mary, I think we're saying the same thing. So if you're at a deer and at school, right, and parents are looking for high quality choices like we're looking for math, that deer at school can contract with a neighboring district and contract with a private provider, meet the needs of
their kids at that school with that DRS school cannot be is contracting as a private provider to a neighboring district because they're they're already showing that they don't have the capacity to make sure they're. the needs, so what you're asking for is what the intent of this is to do. If that DRF school has the
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
1:24:29
provider though they come there. OK. That's correct. Thank you. Senator Flowers.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:24:46
Couple of things I, I need some clarity on. About these grading systems, A, B, C, DF you can stay at the table if you would, Mr. Oliva. Do we
still have that? I remember maybe it was last year or something we did away sometime after COVID, we said we're not gonna. All right, great schools by A, B, C, DF. Sure, so we do still have school
Speaker 235
1:25:17
grades now they're in the is it based on? It's based on the great so historically it's been on the state's standardized primarily on the standardized achievement test, the previous accountability system also has some other measures and factors in there now. It's going to
Speaker 236
1:25:34
be based on the Atlas assessment, the Arkansas Teaching and learning assessment. So if it's gonna
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:25:42
be. Then there is no basis for determining the A, B, C, D.
I guess you have an E. If school district. Our school Right now is there yes, every
Speaker 235
1:25:56
school in this state has a school grade. We transitioned to a new assessment system because it was on? The one, the grades
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:26:03
that the school I just give a little bit of a historical timeline. Well, if I'm, I'm trying to understand
this, and if you allow me to ask my questions and then you
provide me with the answers. I would appreciate it. It would help me understand. So schools have grades right now. That would be this bill would
subject these schools to. What is it based on now. Primarily
Speaker 236
1:26:37
on student test performance, but there's other indicators that's called the stu student quality success indicators that factors in a bunch of myriad different components that may include
average ACT score, the number of students taking advanced coursework, attendance, graduation rates. There's, it depends on your configuration of the school, elementary schools are weighted different than middle and high school, so that's why when you, when you talk about what's in a school grade, it depends on the configuration of the school in the different buckets, we transitioned from an ACT aspire, a
Speaker 235
1:27:12
college rating assessment over the past two years because that company doesn't provide an assessment anymore and move towards a criterion reference assessment
called the Arkansas Teaching, Learning and Assessment System. After that's fully implemented, it'll be primarily measured on our students achieving at grade level in science, reading, and math, are they meeting their learning targets in science, reading and math. How are the lowest quartile or low performing students doing, are they hitting their individualized learning targets in graduation rates and are we offering accelerated
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:27:45
opportunities. So can, can a school can this system that is
in place now that determines grades for schools. I guess schools and also school districts, just individual schools they determine grades for. The current
Speaker 236
1:28:02
system now is individual schools. That's correct.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:28:06
So within that system that's set up. Can like a
School Providing kindergarten through 3rd grade or 4th grade.
Can they be different? Can, can you, you named all these things like in an
Speaker 235
1:28:28
elementary school configuration, like say a typical K5 Can, can you, you named all these things like in an elementary school
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:28:34
configuration, like say a typical K-5, they all
Speaker 235
1:28:36
the same, the grade how it's calculated, yes, but every con every school district gets cause some have K8, some have K 6s, some have K4s, but primarily like when you think of an elementary school, how that's configured in the grade is calculated would be consistently applied across the state. So
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:28:52
it's not necessarily Consistent Based on Great that are in a school. Is that what you're
Speaker 236
1:29:03
saying? No, that's what you're saying. I know what I'm saying configurations of a school district aren't
Speaker 235
1:29:09
standard. School districts have control. Yes, some schools that are K-12, so K-12 school, how that grade is going to calculate, they have graduation rates in it. In elementary school is not going to have graduation rates because
they serve K5, so depending on when how you define elementary, middle, high school is going to depend on the cells of students. It's going to be
Speaker 236
1:29:31
primarily achievement levels and learning gains. in those schools.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:29:35
And Also These D and F schools. Are they
Mostly under or all of them under state control. No, I would say
Speaker 235
1:29:50
in fact the majority of them are not under state control. I
think we have 4 districts that are under state authority out of 230. How many DNF schools do we have? Well, we have 120 literacy coaches deployed to every single one of them in the state. I don't have that exact number off the top of my head, but I would say. I, I, I don't even want to, to guess, but if, if I had to say a number, maybe 80 BNF schools, maybe
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:30:18
more. ADD and F schools out of how many total schools just over 1000.
I want to say thank you, uh Miss Ford Sallas for calling me back
over the break. You didn't. Um I'm concerned about this. I'm trying to understand on page 5 it starts talking about the funding. I think it's page 5. And uh each uh you got language scratched out. I can't tell whether one of
these schools that's providing this course. Is It says the on 10 it says the per course amount for a public school district or an open enrollment public charter schools shall be the amount of foundation funding generated by including an eligible student in the public school districts are open enrollment public charter schools average daily membership for one or more courses. Explain to me what that means when you got a paragraph right before that that uh talks about 8% of
the per pupil and then below that you're talking about. something else, each eligible student shall be included in the average daily membership of the public school district in which the eligible student is enrolled full time for the purpose
of generating foundation funding. What, what is this? What would the funding level be? Uh
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:31:49
send flowers, that's just standard what we do for any student that's taking a course or, you know, wanted to participate in extracurricular at a different school district.
If they're taking 8 courses in a day, that that's what that percentage works out to. Like I said, it's what we do for other school districts if you take, if you're a homeschool student and you take a class at a public school, then that public school gets a percentage of that funding
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:32:21
as divided up for the classes. that soon, then
then it says how come then it says online page 5 line 30, all this other language is
stricken starting at 26. And you insert. Each eligible student shall be included in the average daily membership. Da da da da. I have the public school for the purpose of generating foundation funding under 62023005, I guess that's your bill, Senator English. That's for the
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:32:53
receiving school district, the school district that is taking that student in to ensure that that student is
averaged into their um ADM, so they get the funding for that student
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:33:11
for that class. And they also And so that would be the percentage. I'm, I'm confused with this language, whether it's
a percent and you get to count. That student as the as part of your average daily membership. And but you only get a percentage, 8%. Of the foundation funding per
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:33:34
course, is that right? So the 8% is for a private provider, the
18 is for a public, a public school, which is how we handle all the other classes
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:33:46
that a student may take. is something new? Is the 8% to private. New is it the other
Speaker 320
1:33:55
way around? So previously it said for course providers that they would get um 1/6 of 90%, um, which we felt
Speaker 321
1:34:05
was more confusing, so we just did 8%. We thought that that would be more clear than 1/6 of 90, um. The foundation funding amount changes every year and so you can't just put a dollar amount in there if you want to account for the fact that foundation funding increases, so as as Senator Davis said, we usually either do it in percentages or um fractions and so 8% is about the equivalent of 16 and so whether you're a private provider or a public school, you're getting about the same
amount. It's just the way we fund public schools is very complicated and very different, and And so it's easier for them to count a student in their ADM to get the funding, a private provider we pay directly at the 8% amount, but it's about the same amount. I I, I,
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:34:57
I'm still having a hard time with this, you know, and when you talk about D and F schools not being able to offer
that math course or whatever the subject matter is to a student who's looking for something and then they the the D and F schools don't they receive referrals and recommendations and mandates from the state Department of Ed to have a particular provider to help. them with that course? Do they? Well, this,
the students. I want to know from these people at the Department of Ed.
Speaker 344
1:35:37
I, I just wanna make sure I understand the
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:35:41
question fully. Do the references, recommendations, even mandates. To these schools that are D or F graded. You
tell them where to go to get a provider to help them with their students' achievement. But you don't want Them Those who they've contracted with these vendors.
Speaker 236
1:36:08
To come to that school. You encourage it. That's correct. That's what we want. We want to
Speaker 235
1:36:18
make sure kids, regardless of their zip code and what school they have are attending have every access to achieve
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:36:24
the highest quality of instruction that they can
receive. So but a D and F. Oh Cannot offer this course. To a school that's not AB.
Not D or F or just not
Speaker 235
1:36:42
DNF. A DNS school cannot be A private provider to a neighboring school saying that they have it figured out. DNS school can provide the courses, can contract with neighboring districts, can bring in private providers, they can let students go to other places. They can bring that resources to the school. They themselves cannot be a private provider to other districts because they have not yet mastered it. Well, the, the vendor.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:37:11
Or the provider that's contracted by the
DRF school. Can they?
Draw Those Students from D and F schools to that provider within that DNF school. That's the preferred method, yes.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:37:32
funding flow? What would that student from the DNF that's going to the other
DNF school that has a private provider. There Would they get to to claim these students per course in the average daily attendance of. What, what this is prescribing is if, if you have a student I mean I love
Speaker 334
1:37:55
how you ask questions and then we can't answer them. Well, you could
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:38:03
ask me to clarify my question or something, but answer my question. If a students had a DRS school.
Speaker 235
1:38:13
And that school contracts with a provider that offer specific course at that school. That school would pay the rate prescribed in this law to the provider
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:38:26
for those services. And that part. But if a student from one DNF school. wants to get uh instruction from The provider At the other D and F school, how
would the funding flow to the private provider. Only per course to the private providers. You don't get to. The average daily attendance. That's only for a
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:38:55
school district that is offering the course. That's if the school district is offering the course. Well It just seems
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:39:03
to me the courses at the school, the school must be offering it through a vendor if. I mean you can call it what you want, but It's being provided at that
school, so I don't understand why they can't claim
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:39:18
average deal. Well, because it's a virtual or online learning environment, so they're learning it through a private provider that's offering the course, not actually there. Now if a school is offering it there on site, then that would go to the school, but that's where we're precluding DNF schools from being able to offer those courses because they're DNF schools, they shouldn't be offering courses to kids in other school districts when they themselves are failing.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:39:46
According to some tests that keeps changing. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah,
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:39:51
a test that is designed to meet the standards and curriculum that our kids are being taught was designed for Arkansas specifically with a lot of work from people across the state to ensure that what is being tested. is what our students are learning in the classroom. That was the point of the Atlas test. Thank you. Are there further questions from the committee.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:40:17
Nobody in the audience to speak for or against the bill. What is the will of the committee? Motion do pass. Saturn. Is there a discussion on the motion? All in favor, all opposed. Thank you very much. Past your bill, Senator Hester.
Yes. You have Senate Bill 451. Yes, thank you,
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
1:41:00
members. Senate 51. This is a This is an issue that all of
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:41:06
our school districts are dealing with. It's an increasingly uh uh violent population of students. even if that may not be a large school district, the fact that it's increasing is concerning, the burden that it's
putting on our teachers is More than concerning, uh, and we simply have to have a solution this allows cooperation or it requires cooperation between uh DHS and Department of Education and and uh creating regional behavior or health programs. To deal with these students that are substantially likely to cause injury to the student, to
other students, or to staff. Put them on a program to get the help and services they need to get back in the classroom. But, uh, but most importantly it provides relief for our school districts who are doing their best to educate the students there are and to spend their time, effort, and energy, focus on educating students rather than protecting themselves and chaos in the classroom. And what, what this bill does
primarily like it just requires a cooperation of of Over the next year before January 1st of 2026, having a game plan moving forward an actual process for school districts to be able to get these kids the help they need and most importantly out of the classroom where there're a danger to themselves, other students and staff until that they are, until
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
1:42:44
they are prepared to come back to class. So I'm happy to answer any questions. Senator Flowers.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:42:59
morning, Senator Hester. Good morning. You know, I'm a little concerned about your bill. You know, when you think about the child behavior. And then you
look at the individuals with disability education Act, which I see you have it mentioned here at least one time in the bill on page 5. I don't see it. Beyond that, but uh You know Children with disabilities and
you make some reference and say that's not exclusive. This is not exclusive, but at the same time there are
certain. Procedures are process that should be followed under the individuals with disability education Act. For children that have disabilities that are recognized by that act. And some of it, it's due process. And you talk
about, it talks about. Placing these children after
evaluation, of course, proper evaluation, which I don't know your bill covers to my satisfaction, what type of evaluation these children are gonna have that present some kind of behavior issue. But least restrictive
environment. Putting them all in one box. That concerns me. You
know, and then If a child
is with a disability under the IDEA. They should have an
IEP, an individualized education plan. And with that, If they exhibit some behavior? That's uh, as
you say, likely to cause injury to the student, other students or staff. They have rights to due process. And,
and that this is, this is
very concerning to me because of that.
That I see a conflict. And and it would be very difficult to comply with the individuals with disability Education Act. Uh, for those reasons, in particular the least restrictive and then uh IEP, where does that fall in place, and then you
want to have the juvenile detention center I've
worked in the juvenile courts representing these children. And um, you know, they've been used as a tool, the detention facility as a tool for children with behavior issues without even looking to see if they have a disability, let alone the IEP. That's concerning to me and then you want to take. What I
understood it to be was
the local school district in which the facility detention facility is situated. They run
the school. But now you want the juvenile. Detention center Which is Operated by the sheriff's department to run the school. In the detention center and is it some of the juvenile detention center will be its own school district. So we'll have juvenile detention
school districts. Is that what we're Looking at here. That's, that's a question. OK. That's one of them, but if you can address, I know I said a lot there, but I'm concerned about the conflict with
the individuals with disability education Anderson, I don't feel like
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:46:52
this is a conflict because we are not saying we're not going to educate those students. We're finding a new environment that hopefully gets them the care that they that they need. What we are concerned with the students that are, I guess say
substantially likely to cause injury to themselves, to staff, or to other students. Look, I I understand your concern. I'm concerned. I could have landed, I could have lined this room up this morning. I didn't bring them in with teachers who have been violently abused. I could load you up with emails from pictures with teachers their entire faces beat in, and there's nowhere to send these
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:47:27
kids. Well the children been tested? Have they been evaluated because what my experience has been many
of these children, when they show signs initially of having some behavioral issue, never get evaluated. And to me it seems like you should straightway send that town for evaluation, proper evaluation, and then that doesn't you go around the individuals with disability act. You talk about just likely to cause injury to that student or other students or the staff.
If even under the IDEA, the way I understood. Unless you use a weapon, a deadly weapon, a knife, a gun or something like that. You know, even
Speaker 384
1:48:17
that, that's the exact answer unless these kids
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:48:20
bring a gun or a weapon, they can bash their teacher's face in, and it doesn't qualify their back in class 40 days later. That's, that is the problem we're dealing with because no, no threat to their life. So they can bite, they can punch our teachers, they can kick them, they can push them over, they can totally control the
classroom and there's nothing that we can do. They're back in the class 40 days later. It's not acceptable. It's not acceptable to the, my guess is. A vast majority bipartisan schools, our teachers are anyway, it's just, it's not acceptable anymore. We have to find something to do to have control of our classrooms to protect our teachers and to protect students. I appreciate your
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:48:59
sentiment. But at the same time, I appreciate the individuals with disability Education Act.
And it has certain prescriptions for dealing with children that have issues, disabilities that are recognized under that act. And the behavior even for a child that's got under an IEP. I can't see how you can just get around the individuals with disability education that
and prescribed something that's much uh doesn't rise to the same
level of severity. If you talk about uh substantially likely to cause injury. What is that substantially likely to cause who's going to be the judge that a child that uh says something, or blurts out something because they're angry or because they had a bad day. Our night At their home Somebody said something to them that they're just repeating like kids do.
And you're going to consider that something substantially likely to cause injury? They haven't done anything. But said something, you're
gonna put them in a isolated school just because They said something that you don't like. What is that? Jacob Oliva,
Speaker 235
1:50:36
Department of Education. Um, couple, couple things I
Speaker 236
1:50:40
think that you asked Senator Flowers one. This bill isn't going to automatically make placement decisions. What it's doing is it's formalizing a partnership between the school district, the division of Human Services and the Department of Education to make sure that we can properly establish behavioral
Speaker 235
1:50:58
health crisis response teams to put the experts in a room to talk about whatever situation they're looking to navigate and make sure that we're putting the right services in place. Nothing
Speaker 236
1:51:11
in this bill would supersede the individual disability. Abilities Education Act. So if a student has disabilities and is exhibiting these behaviors, they would still do a manifestation determination they may have a behavior intervention plan, but they cannot do a change of placement without going through the individualized education plan process. What this is doing
Speaker 235
1:51:32
is making sure that if a student is some acting out behaviors through a continuum of behaviors that could be escalated or
de-escalated, does the school district and the teacher and everybody has the right resources in place to make sure that we can provide an adequate support system for that
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:51:57
child. I understand what you're saying, but when you have language on page 2. That at the beginning
at line one a behavioral health program shell. Respond to the request from the within 48 hours and then worked
with the referring school to develop. A behavioral health management plan. where, where does the evaluation come? I
mean, is that part of this process, or are you going to have rules that say, well, first
let's send him over to uh her over to the evaluator. That can Properly and appropriately.
evaluate that child and determine with that child has a disability. Is that gonna happen? So I think the
Speaker 235
1:52:56
short answer to that question is yes, that that's why this team is going to be brought together and typically when we find a child in need of service, we find families in need of services, so we're going to make sure that we have all the partners we call it the three-legged stool between the division of Human Services, the Department of Education, and the school district to come
together and analyze what is happening with this child that they're having these extreme, and we're talking about the extreme egregious behavior. behaviors where they're becoming violent or they're becoming a threat to themselves or others to not only do behavioral threat identification and de-escalation, but then do a plan and say what is the plan of action there's typically an antecedent that's that's leading up to these acting out behaviors. How do we identify that and make sure that if the
student needs to be tested or identified as a student with disabilities. Maybe they need an alternative learning placement. Maybe they need family counseling and support. What can we do to make sure that as we have a threat management plan that we can implement that and have all the stakeholders together pulling the resources appropriately to make
Speaker 236
1:54:05
sure that we're doing what's best for that student and family. Well, I
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:54:10
don't see this bill as addressing just those extreme situations, not when you say.
Uh, a substantially likely to cause injury. I, I, I,
I, I can't see that and it sounds very subjective. Uh, I guess a student and you mentioned the family in need of services, that's they are normally shipped down to the juvenile court. And by the school, most of what I saw last I was in the practice of representing these children. That was the the big tool they have tools under the individuals with Disability Act, and they
don't all include isolating them in these
behavior schools that you want to set up. It's not there. There are different means, tools that are provided for children with disabilities and if some kid is acting out, uh, has some behavior issue to me, and I've always thought this when I see these children. That are disruptive or something. Something's going on in their life. And they should be tested. A lot of times Department of Human
Services picks them up as a dependent neglected child. So it's all kinds of things, but here this bill wants to put them all in one box. And I can tell
you that doesn't help children that have behavior issues. Because they seem to adopt. And gravitate to other kids and they see stuff and kids are just like that. They, they just, what they see, sometimes they act out. They do. So I, I don't think this is a
very good, good way to, to look at it if, if those children, these school districts have the right to set policies. On behavior
issues if somebody's bringing a gun or a knife to school, they can expel them, they can suspend them for something
short of those things, so I don't, I don't understand this and I really don't understand how you figure a juvenile detention center. It's gonna be able to properly serve as a school district.
With kids that are, they are temporarily most of the time. How is that gonna work? I think, I
Speaker 384
1:56:29
think we want, we want the same thing. We want to keep the kids out of juvenile detention
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:56:34
centers, and I think that's the whole purpose of this bill. It's creating a process when we understand that a kid or kid appears to be a substantially could cause harm to them themselves. Other students or staff. This group comes together and tries to figure out a new plan, a plan other than just remove them to the JDC. That's the I think, I think we want the same thing here.
And look, I, I will be a little harder than you. You think a kid that's disruptive to class as long as he's not bringing a gun or a knife should just be accepted, and I don't. I think when they're disrupted in class, you're harming the other 18 or 16 or 24 kids from being able to get a good education when a kid has a violent outburst in class. It could be days before the class is calmed down again, been able to educate. I think there should be a better plan than we're currently doing. There are current alternatives. They're simply not working or we wouldn't be sitting here at this sitting here at this table. And I'm with you when, when a
kid is acting out, there's almost certainly something going on at home that shouldn't be going on at home, but we
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:57:37
can't, we can't police what's going on at home. Well, I think DHS would
differ with you. Juvenile court judges probably differ with you. They seem to set conditions of probation they put these kids on and send them back out everyone has the same conditions. They don't care.
When you look at these children, when you go to those places and that's why you can hardly keep workers in DHS.
Because it's an issue. And they're faced with things that these kids are faced with. But we
don't recognize those issues and we don't properly deal with them. That's my opinion, but that's the goal
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:58:17
of this bill to recognize those and properly deal with them.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:58:21
Yeah, well, I guess then that would mean we'd have fewer.
Family in need of services referrals. We hope so. And so then the juvenile court judges are going to be upset with you. About that. Because that's a fee, that's 100 bucks. But each referral. And then you put them on probation, you got probation fees. They're not going to be able to collect that. And where's the sheriff's office going to get
some money for a school district. Thank you, Senator Davis. Thank
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:58:58
you, Madam Chair. I know this has been an issue for quite some time. Teachers feeling safe in the classroom, students not feeling safe in the classroom and um there's a lot of hurdles I think school districts have tried to deal with to get help, and they've simply been turned away and not been helped. So I appreciate the work on this. I think it's important, and bringing all the parties to the table to decide what is best for a student and to keep teachers and um students safe in the classroom and with that I make a motion to. Pass. Second.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:59:31
So any, there's nobody in the audience to speak for or against the bill. Are there any questions on the motion? All in favor, all post.
Thank you very much. You passed your bill. OK, we're going to quickly take up um House Bill 1810. 1810 and I would ask, I know we have a number of folks here speaking for the bill. I would ask you please to limit your discussions to 3 minutes and
please don't reiterate, we all know what a wonderful opportunity this is for the school for the deaf. Representative. identify yourself?
Representative John P. Carr
Unverified
2:00:12
Representative Joey Carr, District 34, House Bill 1810. It is a has a
zero fiscal impact. Simply what we are doing is it is the unification. of the administration and board for the Arkansas School for the Deaf and the Arkansas School for the Blind.
What this will do, it will help to streamline. The instructional plan and programming, uh, it will also make for a better use of instructional resources and also staff right now they're operating as two different entities over here on our campus. And uh 11 school is outsourcing the other one is using some staff and with some students they are deaf and blind. And so some of those
They're, they're not being served as well as they could have if the instructional program. was a line better and so this bill will take care of that alignment and will provide a better learning environment for the needs of those students. That I would
take any questions or we can go to testimony, Madam Chair. 3 Senator Flowers.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
2:01:36
So, so what do you see would be the big Difference
If your bill becomes law between the two schools. What, what would What changes it? Impact. Would it
Representative John P. Carr
Unverified
2:02:03
I, I see the positives that I
see is is it's going to make more effective communication. There, there, there's 23 students of the 150 about that are deaf and blind, that it will, it will set up a better situation, particularly for those students. And instead of uh you know, having part of this, the therapy services outsource part of them on staff that will just better align their their resources of of providing for those students and their needs. I know with
when I worked in the school, we always had the instructional flow charts. What this will do is this will better streamline that instead of having 2 and then you've got those kids hopping back and forth in between. It will put, it will put all students under the same under the same plan and program to where it'll better fit their needs overall. And both types of students.
What are these programs appropriate for both types. Many of the instructors as they go through their training, uh, I know they specialize in one, but, but I, my understanding and some of our uh testimony will be able to clarify that a little bit better, uh, would, could I ask Miss Walsh, our superintendent, and if she
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
2:03:32
would address what Does she contemplate, if anything, as a negative.
Speaker 411
2:03:41
You'll identify yourself, you'll be recognized. Good morning, everyone. Nicole Walsh, superintendent of the Arkansas School for the Deaf. How are you
Speaker 412
2:03:46
today? Um, so to answer your question, there really are no negatives. I only see positives at this point, um, for example, at the beginning of this school year, we had only 3 students who were identified as deaf blind. That is the result of the fact that we were doing a whole lot of finger pointing. Well, they're your kid, you take care of them, your kid take care of them and us working together, myself and the interim superintendent at the school for the Blind. We were actually able to
identified 20 additional students, so now we have 23 students on our campus who, which is about 17% of our student population, that's unheard of for deaf blind students to be able to receive services they would not be receiving otherwise. Um, our school audiologist serves our students at the blind school, our low vision clinic serves our students at deaf school and we're able to work together. What this does is allow those students access to things that they would not have otherwise. And the school for the blind is a perfect example. They have advanced placement.
The School for the Deaf does not currently offer those. This would enable our school for the deaf students to access those advanced placement courses, um, and have better chances for their future. So all around, this is an administrative change that allows our students better access, period. Thank you. For the
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:05:01
questions from the committee. I know we have a number of folks here to speak for
and against the bill. Um That Miss Hancock.
Speaker 310
2:05:15
He For or against. So. I think, did we hear your testimony the other
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:05:31
day? 1 2nd please. Go ahead. But To identify herself.
Kitsonia Hancock
Unverified
2:05:49
Hello remarks in 3 minutes. My name is Kitsonia Hancock.
OK, and let me do 3 minutes. I am
Speaker 423
2:06:01
the Arkansas Association of the Deaf President. This is my second
Speaker 424
2:06:05
term as president, plus I am also an alumnus of a. Go ahead. Yeah. Well
Speaker 430
2:06:23
Uh, vice president Jeff made comments about
Speaker 422
2:06:26
how he loves history. Yeah, yeah, and there were two figures who really stood out to him was President Abraham Lincoln. And
Speaker 431
2:06:33
uh Robert E. Lee, Lincoln fought for unity
Speaker 424
2:06:37
and the preservation of the nation. hearing the burden of those who gave their lives. Oh Um, generally, when I asked to
Speaker 423
2:06:54
leave the South excepted not for the cause of the war, but to protect his people, his home, and the state that
Speaker 424
2:07:01
he loved Virginia. Their principles, their sacrifice, their love for their resonate with me and
Speaker 422
2:07:07
I'm standing before you today. and hearing our staff of ASD ASDI our graduates, parents, students and staff. I fight for democracy and respect. For the letter of the law. I'm here today because House Bill
Speaker 438
2:07:28
1810 created without input for the reversible damage it can cause. Many people do that are more than institutions for alumni, they are a second home for
Speaker 422
2:07:38
parents, they are the foundation of cultural identity, a place where
Speaker 440
2:07:41
children throb among peers to speak their language for the community of these schools are
Speaker 441
2:07:48
places of gathering the deadline to amend any
Speaker 422
2:07:58
language for to the Arkansas 74 was February 12 of 2025. 1810 following the governor's extension of the legislative session. What's even more concerning is that this bill was
Speaker 423
2:08:13
filed under a declaration of emergency, and I have And I have read this bill multiple times and cannot identify any circumstances that would have justified that
Speaker 422
2:08:29
classification. This was introduced without full transparency and without input from both communities and without us
Speaker 423
2:08:34
having a seat at the table for the people that it directly impacts. We did not have the opportunity to determine the best route forward for the schools, for the students, for their staff, and for their parents. We've repeatedly asked who the stakeholders were and And we have been stonewalled with no answers. Overhauling the Arkansas Constitution requires meaningful
dialogue, not an overnight immediate fix. I'd like to explain why I'm opposing this bill. And uh with deaf representation. The bill removes uh statutory requirement for the board for a deaf board member who fluently uses sign language that is unacceptable. It violates the principle of nothing about us without us, which is a cornerstone of disability rights. Deaf board members have visibility and insights into
culture, language, and education that cannot be substituted by hearing individuals without guaranteed representation, ASL deaf culture, and the lived experience. experiences will be lost in school governance. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. Is there any questions for me? Senator Murdoch. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you. For, um
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
2:10:02
Your testimony You, you mentioned several things that are very concerning about not
being able to be a part of the process. Could you read Touch that point that The organization or the
group or not being able to be a part of the process and how Did you ask to be in and was rejected what happened in that
case that you were not a part of the process of this
Speaker 423
2:10:41
legislation being. Thank you for your question. Um, uh, Arkansas Department of Education had designed a survey that when that had been developed in the first place that was sent out on December 30 or December 23rd, just before everybody had left for Christmas break, which really didn't offer enough opportunities for people to respond to the survey. The
survey was also sent out without captions or a sign language interpreted version of it to make that accessible to. people who are have to make sure they fully understood what the survey was asking. There was also no audio descriptions for that survey for people who are blind to have access to that survey as well. There was a lack of communication, and we asked them to redesign the survey at that time to add ASL interpreters in the videos and audio descriptions to make it accessible, and we were told no.
And so that's why we have decided to take legal action about
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
2:11:37
this. So the department is involved in the Department of Education is a part of this there. Where's the
bill sponsor? Who's the bill sponsor? So the Department of Education is It's, it's, it's aiding with this. This is their bill. OK, can the department come to the table. I need to talk to the department. about this. She's asserting that
they were not given a proper opportunity to voice their input or opinion or whatever information was given from my understanding correctly, they were not giving a proper opportunity. Can someone address that. Jacob will leave it a Department of
Speaker 235
2:12:21
Education. Um I have to be careful how I have to answer this because there are certain
Speaker 236
2:12:27
individuals that are engaged in an active lawsuit against our agency because they're saying that they're constitutional rights were
Speaker 235
2:12:37
violated. I am of a strong opinion that we have been very clear. And very transparent about our intentions for this campus for at least a year and a half. We've had more public meetings, more public forums, more open houses, then any project I think I've ever been engaged in in 25 years of education. Um, to say that there was not an opportunity to have a seat at the table, to find out how we're going to make a better learning
environment to serve some of our most fragile students in the state. I vehemently disagree. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Senator Flowers. So I believe Mr. Oliva, this bill has an
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
2:13:39
emergency clause, why, why is it necessary to have the emergency
Speaker 236
2:13:47
clause. Um, thank you for the question. I think the reason behind this because we've got to start planning for next school year
Speaker 235
2:13:53
and um when our, when we look at our school calendars, they start July 1, we're we're in the middle of a large construction project that we're engaged in and as schools are making staff decisions. This is the time of year that they're building out course selection sheets determining how many teachers they need to hire at each grade
level. What kinds of electives you're gonna offer. So if there's an opportunity to combine and consolidate some
Speaker 236
2:14:15
the campuses to share services that's gonna help some. Decisions moving forward in the next fiscal year.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
2:14:24
Well, obviously because of the building, uh, The construction that's occurring over there. That's ongoing, so. Who, who, who is Who
would be in charge of that
now. How would that, um, relationship between. The school that's being built and the contractors that have been engaged, how, how would that be affected? I, I don't know,
I don't think that would really
Speaker 236
2:14:54
be effective. We're, we're still going to move forward and in ADE also has a seat at the table. We have facility folks that meet with the architects. Currently I want to say they have a standing meeting with the leadership team at the school district between the architects, the contractors,
if not weekly, probably more because anytime you're engaged in a large construction process, um, while you have students on campus, everybody needs to know what's happening and going on because we've got to make sure. the students are going
Speaker 235
2:15:26
to be safe while there's some large demolition and erection of new buildings happening, so, um, I, I don't feel like that that would be interrupted. It's, it's too much. There's too much going on that we got to make sure that there's daily, probably daily communication of what's happening on that campus.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
2:15:44
And if I don't know whether to
call you the superintendent for the school for the deaf and then you have an interim for the school for the blind, is that correct? So, the construction that's Occurring now. I, I guess it would seem logical that There would be a designed particularly for deaf students. And for
blind students. I didn't know you didn't have a seat over there about not having a seat at the
Speaker 412
2:16:24
table. I, I've taught kids for a a jillion years so sitting on the floor is kind of second nature to me, um, but thank you. I appreciate that secretary Lee, but. So yes, to answer your question, are there particular designs specific for deaf students and blind students. Yes, ma'am, but we have done a really great job working. We have a, we are contracted with an agency called a design firm out of Saint Louis called Mackie Mitchell. They
specialize in ADA. Buildings. We have a deaf and a blind architect who are actively working on the project with us and giving us all kinds of feedback and great things, um, and we are taking both students. Population's needs, as I'm sure you understand that every student, even within those populations have specific needs that are their own. And bringing them together to make sure that every kid has access that they need. A great example is that um for deaf students we need a lot of visual access, so there's a ton of glass going to be in this new
building, a lot of our rooms have almost complete glass walls so there can be access in and out, especially for our library and places like that. However, our blind students need a side of the wall to shoreline against which is using their cane to navigate and so we've built in 18-inch bunkers all the way around those. Those, those glass areas to continue communication but also provide our students accessibility, but
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
2:17:43
with the consolidation that's that's called for here. Yes, ma'am.
Would any of your designs have to be changed? No,
Speaker 412
2:17:55
ma'am. Everything has been, everything has been put together with the intent, um, because the, the money that we were given from the state is a finite amount of money and so we're trying to build the very best and most accessible space. The intention was always to put kids both sets of schools into a new building simply because if you haven't been over there, I would encourage you to come see our buildings are crumbling. They are at the li us built in the late 70s and
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
2:18:23
at the, I understand you had a need for it. That's, that's not an issue in my mind. I'm just trying to understand now
that we are contemplating, uh, merging I guess is the word,
uh, these two schools. How does that, if at all change. Any plans for One school I mean, what was the plan always
for just one school with two divisions in it, one for deaf, one for blind. Well, it's been very
Speaker 412
2:18:59
clear from the governor and from the Department of Education that for over a year and a half now since this project was originally announced that the state was going to make an investment that we were going to go into one building that has been from the very beginning, simply because the expense of trying to build two different buildings on 2 different places is, is silly when we can do it all in one space and have the space to do so, that's the, yes, ma'am, but to answer your question about
the merger, I think I just want to go back to that for a moment of like, what does this really do and why is the need for The emergency clause. The answer is it takes a while to plan all the fiscal merging of two school districts, and so this would give us the ability to have that firm start date of July 1st, which we know is the fiscal start. If we were to say like an emergency clause that kicks in tomorrow, holy moly, we would be scrambling trying to fix it, or if it's 90 days after the end of the session, that holy moly, we'd be having to wait and it'd kind of be one of those targets
where it's not exactly a finite cutoff date. So this this emergency. clause allows us to have that finite cutoff date of July 1st. Thank you, thank
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:20:07
you. Thank you. Are there questions? Oh, Senator Murrow. Thank you. Now
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
2:20:13
you, you're the uh superintendent for which school now for the deaf. It's the interim director for the school for the blind. Here, yes sir, he is. Can you speak to this? Can you come, please?
Speaker 464
2:20:30
Oh, OK, we, we. Just. Dr. Chris Barnes interim superintendent for the Arkansas School
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:20:41
for the Blind. Wait one, I think we're uh your testimony for against is over, so we need you. Yeah. She needs to return her seat. If you had identify yourself,
Speaker 469
2:21:02
you'll be recognized. Yes, Madam Chair, I'm Dr. Chris
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
2:21:12
Barnes. I'm the interim microphone. I'm Doctor Chris. The So real quick, I just want to hear your input on your support or
Speaker 469
2:21:21
lack thereof or your position on this legislation. That's all I can pretty much reiterate what um Representative Carr and uh Superintendent Walsh said, we have operated in separate silos. Thank you.
In separate silos for many years, that has resulted in many inefficiencies and lack of services and supports for our students as a result of that, we've not done a great job at ensuring supports, particularly for deaf blind students, students that have both visual impairment and some degree of hearing loss that would qualify them as deaf. Um, this merger will allow us to provide those services directly in support of those.
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
2:22:06
OK, do you concur with Secretary Oliva that the opportunity have been provided to both of you concur for both of you all. There's the opportunity has been provided for the transparency in the uh the lady that that testified, I'm sorry, I forget her name. They
testified, do you agree that they have had the opportunity that has been there. to testify to
Speaker 471
2:22:30
that We have held 33 stakeholder meetings over the course of this time, yes, I. Yes,
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
2:22:36
yes, I agree to be great. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Madam. Thank you, Senator Flowers. Look a little withdrawn I'm getting
that way. Well, I'm sorry. You want me to sit here and vote on this. I can leave if you want, but I want to know uh it's uh brought to my
attention that there is no blind representation on the the board.
Speaker 412
2:23:07
Why is that? Yes sir, yes ma'am, Yes ma'am. It's not written into there. That's, that's part of the reason. So there was concern brought up about the remo of a deaf person who is fluent in deaf sign language. That was the removal of that. There's concern related to that, and the reason for that removal is many, but the most important is that wasn't there, there is not representation for a requirement for a blind representative, but there is currently a blind representative and at the same
time, deaf sign language is not a thing. They probably meant American Sign Language, but that's not what it says in there. And who is to determine a person is fluent or not fluent. Um, so there are so many components related to why that language is not appropriate, in my opinion, is much more appropriate for the board to vote to amend their bylaws to include deaf representation and blind representation? That allows the board to be fluid and responsive to the needs of our students.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
2:24:08
So there is a provision in this bill that allows for deaf representation and blind representation, is that what you're saying?
No, ma'am, we get to the bylaws and change them. Yes, ma'am, it
Speaker 471
2:24:17
makes better sense for us to make the changes to the bylaws to ensure that
Speaker 412
2:24:22
representation than it does for the Constitution, because if there is a need, as we all know, disabilities fluctuate frequently, and we need to be able, our board needs to be able to be responsive to the needs of our students as they are currently at our school, um. I know that it's hard when
people and as Kitsonia stated, this school is their home. They grew up here and they have so much buy-in to the way the school works, but at the same time we have to be responsible responsive to our students' needs now, not what was the need in 1985. And so this allows the board to build their bylaws in a way that makes sense to target our students' needs currently. Does that answer your question? OK. Thank you.
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:25:08
Thank you very much, Senator Bryant. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just looking at, at page 5, and this may be for discussion amongst the committee, but lines 8 and 9 striking the advice and consent of the Senate shall appoint members of the board. You know that's you. Thank you. Page 5 lines 8 and 9, I guess for the for the bill sponsor, the Governor by with advice and consent of the Senate to shall appoint the members of the board, um, striking the, the duty of of the Senate.
Representative John P. Carr
Unverified
2:25:39
Do you know why the clarification I received that keeps it aligned and correlates with all other boards and commissions, how those how those appointments are made, state boards. Miss. Could I, could I ask
Miss Ford to come and clarify that? Yes, yeah, we,
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:25:56
we approve lots of wards and commissions. like Courtney Sali for Department of
Speaker 320
2:26:10
Education, um, so my understanding is that the current process is uh for governor appointment
Speaker 321
2:26:13
without any sort of other confirmation. Um, so we were just trying to make it consistent with the other educational boards and commissions and how those are appointed. With people now. I guess you're the rules chair.
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:26:44
Senator Davis. Yeah, I think the question around is do we confirm these appointees now? I would assume we do.
Speaker 321
2:26:56
I, I assume you do too, since that's in law. I'm, I'm not part of that process. That would be the governor's office, um, but like our state board of education members, I that I'm aware of do not go through any kind of affirmation from the Senate. It's just go appointment or higher ed coordinating board, so we were just trying to create consistency. Yeah. Thank you.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:27:18
Are there other questions from the committee? We have a number
of people. Um, Christine Strener. It's forward, yes. for we have 13 4. Beg pardon? No, no more again.
You would limit your remarks to 3 minutes, please.
Speaker 245
2:27:53
OK, this is all new to me. I'm sorry. There you go. Good morning. My name is Christine Streisner. I'm a parent of a student at the blind school, um, I'm also an educator. I taught for one year at the blind school, um, and, um. Something else, and I can't remember what that is. But anyway, um, I'm a stakeholder and I wanna say that uh there was more than adequate information sent out. I attended many of the meetings, and I
cannot tell you how overjoyed I was when I heard that the state was coming in to help our school. Um, uh, through this meeting this morning, I felt like the state coming in to help a school has had a negative vibe, but it has been the absolute best thing that has happened for the blind school and the um I did not realize my my daughter started at the blind school in K4, um, I did not realize until I taught there the year that she was in
first grade, so she was in K4 kindergarten, the year that she was in first grade, I actually taught there in a totally different building, but I taught there. I did not realize the separation between the deaf school and the blind school until I actually worked there and I believe that the state of Arkansas, the people of the state of Arkansas do not realize how to it's like there's a wall right down the middle of that road, and it is so sad to me because there are so many benefits that those kids
could have if they were able to be peers for each other and um it it it just it really makes me cry. makes me cry as a mom and it makes me cry as an educator, the things that could be combined, the money that could be saved in one cafeteria in one gym program and I mean there's so many programs in one health program which I think we've already combined. There's so many programs that could be combined money saved and all put back into the programs for the kids.
My daughter also has a hearing deficit. She is 12, she's in the 5th grade now, and She has not received any services at school for her hearing deficit because there's this wall, and she doesn't get to go to to the blind school very much. So all of her hearing, uh, Needs are met at ACH at the, at the hospital because they can't do anything for at the blind school because all they do at the blind school is address her vision issues, um, so in, in my
opinion, this is the absolute best decision. I think that the current administration, oh, I haven't seen an adminis I had not seen the administration at the blind school move like the current administration has moved since the day my daughter started school. I mean, are moving things and they are communicating and they are letting us know literally I used to get like one little text message. Now I get like text messages from people I don't even know, like all the time like I think everybody has every
parent's number and they are letting people know what's going on. They are letting people know constantly what what is happening and I just um I think that it would be really, really sad not to pass this bill and as an emergency, I don't know how much time I have left, but as an emergency, it is an emergency. The walls are falling down over there. The windows are broken. It is sad that we are putting this population of children. In those buildings they deserve, they deserve a new building. Thank you very much.
Speaker 492
2:31:28
Oh, do I have to stay for questions? Nobody wants to answer, I don't think so. Thank you. Um, Rob Fagen. All the way down It. That I have to sit down? OK it won't hear you. Good morning, senators. My name
Speaker 498
2:32:00
is Robert Fagen. It has been my honor for the past 4.5 years to serve on the board of trustees of the School for the Blind and School for the Deaf. Currently I serve as chair of the board. When we first started talking about shared services. I wanted to really do a thorough investigation on what that would look like. So I met with Secretary Lee and his staff. They sent me to Florida to Saint Augustine, Florida, where the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind has been there for 100 years.
Um, that school was ran by one lady that I think they call her the president instead of the superintendent like we do here, but she has a principal on the blind school side and the principal on the deaf school side. So both populations are served now they're they have 500. 80 kids down there. Well, we're a smaller state, less populated. So what we took back, we wanted to do what they're doing there just on a smaller scale. So around that time also, I had
the superintendent on the blind school side resigned. Or retire. I had the superintendent on the desk school side resign. So We knew in hopes that this bill would pass. That we could consolidate one administration for both schools. So the department and I and the board, by the way, the board, the 5 member board is 100% for this bill. There's
Two people, uh, Well, I'm, I'm blind, of course, but we also have um Doctor McAllister, who teaches mobility at the University of Arkansas, and we also have two deaf representatives of the board as well. Um, so when we Looked at hiring a superintendent because of the law the way it stands now, we have to have two superintendents. I didn't want
to hire two permanent superintendents because they might have to let one go if this bill passed. So we hired a Nicole Walsh to be the superintendent of the deaf school. But not only Is she certified in deaf education, but she's also certified to teach bond and visually impaired children as well. So we get the best of both worlds, you know, with her. Uh, but in the meantime, we also have Doctor Barnes as interim superintendent.
And he's doing a great job for us. He works very well with the Department of Education and Primarily when the governor gave us this money to build the new building. We didn't have enough to build 2 buildings. So to consolidate We're going to build one state of the art facility that's gonna meet all educational requirements for deaf students and blind students. Uh, the, the
cafeteria will be one cafeteria where now we have 2. Is my 3 minutes up?
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:35:11
Oh, I apologize. Anyway, I appreciate a good vote. Thank you. Thank you very
Speaker 503
2:35:24
much. Is there any questions? OK, good. Eric Yarbury. the kind of narrow.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:35:44
Good morning. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can hear you
Eric Yarberry
Unverified
2:35:49
if you identify yourself, you have 3 minutes. Good morning. My name is Eric Yarberry. I'm here representing World Services for the blind. I'm the CEO of that agency. I'm also a proud alumni of the Arkansas School for the Blind and have participated in our annual Christmas tree fundraiser. You guys see that down on Markham for nearly 15 years now. All that to say I want to share with you just my story briefly. I grew up in a small town called Desart, about an hour east of
Rock. 3 months after I was born, I was diagnosed with acid reflux disease and immediately lost my vision as a result of an overdose of medicine for that disease. My dad, a very southern truck driver. I don't know if you can tell if I'm Southern or not, but he's a roof company driver delivers roofing supplies and was found the school for the blind and At that point in time, reluctantly decided to put me in the school.
Now looking back, and my dad will agree that had it not been for the school for the blind at that point in time, um, I probably would have been set aside in a classroom somewhere. Uh, I was very fortunate to graduate. Uh, top of my class at the school for the blind, but also and big fish in a small pond, right, but also to go on to UALR and graduate with my undergrad in English and master's in technical writing. Um, I have then gone on to serve as our director of education at World
Services for the Blind, and now our CEO and Being able to look at Arkansas now and compare that to all the other agencies in the country, and I've been to several agencies throughout the country. Arkansas is one of the very few states taking it seriously and actually taking steps to make sure that services for the blind and deaf stay, and they grow so I won't take up too much more time, but again, thank you guys for considering this, and I look forward to seeing all that Arkansas has to offer and all the growth ahead. Thank you.
Speaker 511
2:37:55
Thank you very much. Uh, Chris Barnes. Oh, OK, thank you. Uh Oh is that Doris, Doris Hudson. You know, identify yourself, you'll be recognized.
Speaker 423
2:38:28
Hello, this is Doris Hudson, and I am a parent of 3 children who go to the school for the deaf. I am
Speaker 431
2:38:37
from Pine Bluff. I am from the Pine Bluff area, so we move, we commute back and forth between school and home every day. They are the 3rd generation of students from our family who have gone to the school for the deaf. I also went to the school for the deaf and my concern is You know, I, I, I don't want to take sides about this. I mean, I
understand, you know, where the deaf school and the blind school, you know, need
Speaker 423
2:39:04
to merge, but is this, are people going to have appropriate accessibility and successful accessibility to this. We have two
Speaker 431
2:39:10
schools that are separate now and I think that that's going to be successful, but if we go into one school, will that be successful for my children. Uh, the school for the blind, they are hearing the school for the deaf, we are deaf. you spoke in English. We do not use spoken English, and I was wondering how communication and things like that would happen in
the building with everyone around. That's one of my concerns. Also, a lot of, you know, a lot of the things that I've been hearing, you know, where your kids go to school there. I know that like I'm not, you know, kids will not go to school there because many of the parents don't unders, many of the parents don't understand the difference between the deaf and the school, the school for the deaf and the school for the blind. And so I really want parents to understand. The blind culture and the deaf culture, and as a generational deaf family, you know, this is passed down through our family
and yeah. And yeah, that would be it. Thank you, do you need to address any of that? Yeah No, observed
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:40:11
Nicole. you to identify yourself again. Yes ma'am. Nicole Walsh, superintendent of the Arkansas School for the Deaf.
Speaker 412
2:40:31
And I think the most important thing to address there is the concern related to access and ensuring that students have communication access and preserving that culture and language. I, I'm a firm believer that it is critical that we preserve deaf culture, um, as much as it is critical that we preserve the needs of our blonde students, um, and so we are taking steps to ensure that happens. Our deaf students and our blind students already eat supper together. Our dorm. Um, we've had Students who have started to become friends, they already ride the bus together. They have
been for years and now we're finally actually doing activities together that makes sense, um, we've also heard from students that they would like some more opportunities to communicate and hang out during supper time. So we're implementing a process right now to have interpreters available during supper time, something that's never been done before but is necessary, and I want to be very clear that while Doris says that, you know, they use spoken English and we do not. That is not true. Um, multiple of our students use spoken English. Bush at the school for the deaf, and we encourage students to use everything they have, every
avenue, using spoken spoken English does not mean you are less of a deaf person. Um, and there are so many students at the school for the blind who could benefit from the use of sign language and exposure to peers who are like them. And so while it is not It is not a black and white issue, so, you know, one side and the other side are staunchly different. It truly is and being certified in both deaf and blind, I think I can speak very uniquely to the commonalities at the end of the day, these kids are kids and every single kid
has a different need, and we have to address their individual needs. Will there be hiccups? Absolutely. Will there be things that we say like, Oh, we should thaw that one absolutely, but that's with any school, and you address those concerns and you move forward. And if we don't address those concerns and move forward, we are not adequately preparing our students to enter the real world. Deaf students are not going into a deaf world. They are going into a hearing world to work and they need to have coping skills and mechanisms to function. Blind students are not going into a blind world. They are going into a sighted world.
They need to have coping mechanisms, and this is a way for us to start building that deeper swimming pool. That's an analogy I use all the time that if we're a giant Olympic swimming pool. Our job is to be sure that before they're chucked in the ocean of the real world, we've taught them how to swim. And so this allows us to do that. Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much. You're welcome.
Laurie Cole
Unverified
2:43:14
So Laurie Cole. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Laurie Cole. I'm a twenty-year employee. From the Arkansas school for the blind certified teacher of the visually impaired and currently serving as the principal. The bill, HB 1810 is going to allow our students' worlds to
just be a little bit larger and teach students um Have a larger social pool, more academics, um, opportunities academically and socially. One example I want to share with you all is recently our 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade students of the blind and deaf schools have been lesson planning for a unit in Charlotte's Web, which included hatching baby chickens. Um, those chickens are housed at the Arkansas School for the Deaf. This allowed the deaf students to have language modeled for
them from blind students and the blonde students to learn how to communicate with. students and most importantly, they met new friends who they already, as mentioned before, shared the bus with. There's been a culture of separation with these schools in the past. This year I've had the pleasure of working with principals from the Arkansas School for the Deaf, um, to discuss ways we can make these schools stronger together, but recognizing that we each have our own special needs and identities. We agree to work together and to help
these students when it makes sense and to share resources. what's best for the students. We meet to discuss ways for the students and families we serve. We do currently share an art teacher and would like the opportunity to serve more services such as more teachers were appropriate, ideology in the low vision clinic. That our deaf blind population need. The combining of blind and deaf schools is a model in the following states of Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Arizona,
Montana, Alabama, Utah, Mississippi, and together I feel we can be stronger. Thank you for this opportunity. Tiffany Pritchard. Hi Tiffany Pritchard. I have a son
Speaker 519
2:45:41
at the Arkansas School for the Deaf, and I'm also on staff there. I'm here today to speak
Speaker 521
2:45:48
in favor of this merger, and the main reason that that is is because I believe that coming together to schools is one will allow us to keep our doors open. Over the past 15 years, the state schools for the 5 state schools for the deaf have been closed and numerous others have faced cuts and the threat of closure. When the individuals with disabilities Education Act went into effect. Many students previously at schools for the deaf and blind were mainstreamed into the public school setting, dropping our numbers
drastically. Our schools are no longer financially sustainable as two separate entities with our current student population, but I'm here to tell you today that I believe these schools need to stay open for both our deaf and blind students, and I'd like to share a quick example of why. 10 years ago, we adopted a seven year old boy who is profoundly deaf. He had never been to school and he had only about 10 words in his vocabulary at that time.
Those beginning years, although were incredibly difficult. We're a beautiful thing to watch as he discovered family. Um, the world around him and his language for the first time. It was just watching him go up, up, up. But then after a few years, he started to just kind of table off. So we watched for a little bit to try to see what was going on and then in his teen years, he began to clearly decline, and it was like watching a flower wilt before our very eyes.
It was heartbreaking to drop him off at school by the time he reached middle school age. It was a public school with a deaf ed program in Dallas, Texas. He would walk up very much so alone in a huge school that had all kinds of wonderful groups taking place around him band, cheerleading, friend groups, sports, but he wasn't able to join those. He could have fought for the right to have an interpreter by his side and take part, but that's not a
natural environment, and it was certainly not the least restrictive environment for him. He had picked up what he could in a hearing world, but now it was so clear that he needed community. And it was so clear that it brought us to sell our home in Dallas and change careers so that we could move here. To a school that, yes, has a lot of physical needs, but it had all the heart. It had community and access that he was needing. And I am so grateful to say that today, 2.5 years later, he is
back on the up. Um, he literally dances his way as he walks across campus, and he is joined just about every activity and sport that ASD has to offer. If I've thought that this merge was not in the best interest of these students. I would not be in support of it or here today. I know that change can be difficult and it's not going to all be easy. I know that the unknowns are scary, but I really think it will be for the best, and I sincerely appreciate you considering passing a bill that will allow us to keep our
schools open. Thank you. Holly
Speaker 527
2:49:09
Holy Mott and NJ Mott. love. Good morning. I think it's still
Holly Mott
Unverified
2:49:24
morning. My name is Holly Mott, and this is my son Nolan James Mott, and we are here to support this bill. NJ is one of the almost 20% of the students that have vision and hearing loss, and I feel like it's just extremely important that the students that have multiple disabilities or have dual disabilities with their vision and their hearing, should not have to choose which school or which disability gets
the supports that they need. And like they've said, it's kind of like this brick road down the middle between the school for years. I don't even know why, but when he started losing his vision, he was at the deaf school as a deaf student only and we saw that his vision was going to his diagnosis is potentially for full blindness at some point. We started trying to get services for him to learn orientation and mobility and safety technology, those kind of things, and it
wasn't accessible, even though we were a quarter of a mile away from the blind school, so we started fighting for those things, but he had get pulled out of classes. He had to go after school to have those trainings that he needed to connect with his vision loss as well. So on the flip side of that, his brother graduated last year as valedictorian from the deaf school and is now an A student in one of our Arkansas colleges, has a 4.0 still and is was interning for a government
job, a federal government job here in Arkansas. He's at the United States Geological Survey. Um, and they recently in January offered him a full-time permanent job which they let him adjust his hours while he's a college student doing amazing, but he wasn't able to access those classes that were accelerated because he was on the blind side. I can only imagine how far ahead he would have been had he had access to what the blind side has with their academics, so the point is
there are things on both sides, and there's this almost 20% of the population. That needs both of those things, and it's like representative uh fight said before this isn't anything new. Tiffany made the statement. There are several states that have done this, and all of them are the most successful and in fact, people, I almost moved here. I almost moved to Florida in 2015 because of the deaf school there when I adopted my boys and Levi was deaf, but I chose to come to Arkansas and then he became deaf
and now deaf blind and so I just, I want us to consider the fact that it's not just these two populations, there is a merge of 20% in the middle that we also have to consider, and last year he went to the blind school for camp being a deaf signer, and he says it was the best camp he's ever been to, made fast friends with the blind students, um, and had a blast. If I said deaf deaf camp, I meant blind camp. So as a deaf student, he went to the blind camp, so it can be done.
There are students. It's a good opportunity for them to learn to merge. To live in a world that is not just their isolated world. Philip Powell
Speaker 534
2:53:05
Morning Bill Powell, um, I serve on the board of trustees for the school for the deaf in school for the blind. Uh, I'm here today to support the bill. I am deaf. I've been deaf since birth. Due to a genetic hearing loss of where a cochlear implant, uh, something like this would be extremely helpful because I know firsthand how important education is, especially at a young age, especially with deaf and blind children, the earlier we can start them on the right path, the better chance they have of success in their life. I
myself have found success in my life. I went on to college. I went on to graduate school, got my master's in agricultural economics and now I have a job and do other things. But this is as a deaf person, I can't tell you how important something like this is, this opportunity, along with the new building, a new building is great, can only be as good as what is being taught inside that building and with Miss Nicole Walsh coming on board to service our superintendent. We have nowhere to go but up in this merger will help.
Confirm that, so, uh, and that's all I'll say I'll keep it short. It's been a long morning. thank you
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:54:19
all for your support. Thank you very much. Ah, That can. Barner Hello everybody and
Speaker 539
2:54:34
good morning. My name is Kay Anne Varner, and I'm the elementary
principal of the Arkansas School for the Deaf, and I'm happy to be here today to explain a little bit about what I feel and why I think it's an important for House Bill 1810 to pass. So at first, when we started hearing about the bill beforehand, we started talking about merging the schools actually before Nicole even came on board, um, to the Arkansas School for the Deaf, and at that time, I felt I, I really, I wasn't sure how it would work, how would it be possible to be
successful. There are a lot of those questions because people would say, you know, the deaf schools over here, the blind schools over here, and they're separate. The services, I mean, are they the same? Their histories are different, their cultures are different. How could they possibly merge? And so, through time and Nicole coming on board onto campus when she came, I really wasn't sure what to believe. I had never been to the blind school at all, whether you believe it or not, as a principle, I had never seen
her their education methods at the school for the blind. I've never been over there. I'd never even seen the services for blind students, and they didn't know anything about us either. They didn't know what we did or what services we had, what specials we had, what sports we had, they knew absolutely nothing and we knew nothing. about each other. So now that has changed for me because I've been given the opportunity to go and observe in the classrooms of the school for the blind an opportunities to meet teachers and meet some parents and observe classroom
interactions and see these children and see really, I mean, they're just children. It doesn't matter if they're at the deaf school or the school for the blind. They're just children. And there's only one thing that I still sit on the fence on and that's about communication. Is a true and hard fact that sound travels faster than sign language. Yeah And it's up to us to make sure we're supporting and that that doesn't become an issue. All of our children need to have equal
access to communication and equal access to voice their own opinions, and The situation like we were just talking about with the principal, right, of the, the 2nd graders who are doing their unit together. I mean, it has been a blessing and amazing to see how communication barriers can be overcome through the use of an interpreter. Really some of the blind students and teachers and staff are actually learning sign language with us, and that's not something that you see as an obstacle. We know that it could
be, but we don't see it as that way and we've decided it's really up to us as adults to make sure that we're providing the accessibility needed, and we want to thank the governor as well, Governor Sanders, for making sure that all of our students have access to quality education. And I'm grateful for her recognition, and that includes us, as well, and her goals for success. So thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you very much for your time. Do you have any questions for me?
Yeah. Thank you. Jerry Blue. Good morning. Good morning. Hello, my name is Jerry Ballew. Oh, and I didn't expect and I didn't know that this would be happening. I didn't expect to
actually fly out to Florida with the board to or I didn't expect for Robert Fagen to go out and see Florida School for the Deaf. I wish I would have gotten the opportunity to go, but from hearing about it, it seems wonderful that both the school for the blind and the school for the Deaf have been combined down there. It seems that the school for the deaf and the school for the blind have their separate needs, but they were able to merge those needs and grow their resources together, and that's really wonderful. So I support this bill 1810 to get passed. Thank you so much and have a great day. Thank you very much.
Speaker 547
2:58:49
Going by. Good morning. I'm Charlene Fi. I served in the legislature for 12 years. I believed I served with everyone on this table. I have a trophy on a shelf at home, and it's one of the things that I am most proud of, not only in my tenure in the house, but in my life. It's a great big
Silver, I love you. That was awarded to me by the Arkansas School for the Deaf a few years back during Silent Sunday. And not only is it beautiful and represents something precious, I think I could also use it as a weapon because it weighs about 10 pounds and so if anyone breaks into my house, I think I could pick it up and whack him on the head with it, but I am in full support of this bill. I was in on some of the early meetings with the governor, with
stakeholders. There were deaf people. There were blind people. There were parents, even some students came and joined in on making these plans, our facilities at the school for the Deaf and school for the blind have been in horrible condition for many, many years, and I've talked to most of you about that. This will give us a centralized service for the deaf and blind schools and a wing for the deaf school, a wing for the blind school. It's going to be state of the
art, and I really beseech you to think of what is best for these students, what the students need and
Speaker 333
3:00:36
pass this. Thank you. OK. OK, thank you very much.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:01:07
Right, OK. So, it'll be here in a moment. OK, so I think we have to have, we have an amendment coming over, uh, to correct for the
uh Senate that was taken out, I think by mistake, so we're gonna have an amendment to put that back in before we adjourn. Or boat. Yes, ma'am. So give us a couple of minutes.
should be here. Basically, Senator Dodson, do you want to stay with that? Yes, Madam Chair, the amendment
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:01:40
on page 5 deletes line 7 and substitutes the following language. Governor, comma, Governor, subject to the confirmation of the Senate. So That would uh that's the entire amendment is adding one line that says the Senate shall confirm the appointments of the board of
Speaker 5
3:01:59
directors. OK, all right. Well, it's, it's still on
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:02:03
its way over. She's just explaining it.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:02:06
Can't you make a verbal amendment? No. proof.
So as soon as that comes, we will vote on that amendment and then we'll vote on the bill. Should be here momentarily.
Oh Lord, I don't know.
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:05:26
Madam Chair, I'd make a motion that we adopt the your amendment
Speaker 567
3:05:34
to this bill. on the. They they. I make a motion
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:05:41
that we do pass as amended the bill. Thank you, Madam Chair and thank
Speaker 569
3:06:40
Members were here Senate Bill 149. Is this an
amendment. Senator, if you would introduce yourself and then you're recognized to speak to the amendment. Senator
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:07:00
Jane English, District 13, and basically the amendment that you have in front of you here, right here, um, have the correction to the or an amendment to the bill and
basically what it does is it takes the 2nd year of the uh adequacy funding and reduces it by $320. Which
is going to be the $320 instead of the money going out of adequacy to the schools and then they paid the ABD uh state is going to pay for the health insurance. is going
to provide that to the strictly right straight to the
ABD. Members, do we have any questions on the amendment? Senator Dodson,
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:07:57
you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So in the 2nd year, The uh the amendment on page 2 line 4 or page 2 of 4. Almost to the bottom, it reduces the funding amount.
So that's reducing the base foundation funding amount um, so that will also reduce the like everything
else that's tied to that like the uh education freedom account funding will be reduced as well. Yeah. So
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:08:30
it would be $8,162 to start this next
year and then it will go down $320 to $8,00037 the second year.
Yeah. Thank you. Members, any other questions? Dean, if anyone here to speak for or against the bill. Thank you. Yeah, we're on, on the amendment, right. to have a motion to adopt the amendment. I make motion 22 Senator Bryan, all in favor say aye.
Congratulations, you have passed the amendment. The amendment is all opposed. Anybody opposed. All right, the amendment is
adopted and you may present the bill.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:09:28
Thank you very much. The bill basically is the adequacy funding for the next 2 years. And the amount
will be. 8000 $162 for the first year,
$8,00037 for the second year per student. Members, any questions? Senator
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:09:57
Dodson, you recognized? Thank you, Mr. Chairman and This may be a question just for Greg Rogers over at the department if he's available. I don't know
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:10:07
Rogers well actually Courtney might be able to answer it as well. other representative from the department, yeah, the Department of Ed who can answer the question.
You're doing fine, thank you. And if you would please introduce yourself and then Senator, you're welcome to ask
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:10:32
your question. Courtney for Department of Education. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I'm just trying to understand if, if this If this does not pass. Because the statutory language in the existing code is tied to specific school years for the
previous stuff, um, there is no funding at all, so we have to
Speaker 485
3:10:57
pass something. Um, I'm not aware that that's ever happened and
Speaker 321
3:11:00
so as a lawyer, I would say that without a statutory provision authorizing funding, there is no funding. So So basically, yes. Thank you. members, any other
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:11:07
questions? And he wanted to speak for or against the bill.
Saying no one, Senator, you're welcome to close for your bill to
Speaker 584
3:11:29
accept move.mo? Yes. a second. Second, Any discussion
on the motion. Sean wants the will of the committee, we got a motion all in favor say aye. I said the same. Bill's passed. Thank you.
Speaker 310
3:12:22
Where are you, Senator Cole District 3. What's the number
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
3:12:36
of the, 00, Senate Bill 60767. Yeah,
Senator Steve Crowell
Unverified
3:12:39
Stephen Walker District 27. First thing we're passing out is an amendment. It is simply changing one word from I think it's equality to equal. Equitable to equal.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:13:06
Yeah, identify yourself, you will be recognized. Senator Steve
Speaker 591
3:13:09
Coll, District 3. Stephen Walker, House District 27. First thing is just we have an amendment.
Senator Steve Crowell
Unverified
3:13:15
Change it from equitable to equal on page 2, line 20. I hear a motion to adopt. Second on the paper.
Speaker 229
3:13:25
Thank you. Go ahead. I'm going to try and make this
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:13:30
semi quick because I know there's going
Senator Steve Crowell
Unverified
3:13:38
This is simply to keep it to local decisions. In Arkansas, in fact, I'm going to let Stephen Walker begin.
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
3:13:47
OK, so yeah, this is a simple bill. It simply takes Department of Education these existing rules for a 4 day school weeks and codifies them into law. Um, if I remember right, we opened the door for 4 day school weeks back in 1997, so we, our state has had since then to establish these rules, so we've not tried to change anything on that end, so we're trying to add it here.
So this ensures that our local districts know exactly what standards they must meet without having the goalpost. on the unexpectedly by the Department of Education or the state board. Most importantly, this bill guarantees that any future changes to these rules require a vote from us in both the House and Senate. This means that this means our constituents can be confident that they're elected representatives and senators will have both a voice at the table and a vote before any decisions are made that
affect local control or parent choice. We all agree that our children's best interests must come first. That's why we have included provisions that address accountability in this bill we've added that any school operating on a 4 day schedule that begins to underperform or receives a level 5 designation from the state board will not be permitted to continue at the 4 day school week model for everybody else, this bill preserves local voice. It protects parent choice and
allows communities to determine what works best for their unique circumstances. Uh, I'm going
Speaker 593
3:15:16
to read a quote to you. This is, this is a diverse and robust state.
Senator Steve Crowell
Unverified
3:15:23
I've had the opportunity to travel to different parts of the state. In fact, I've got to go to the Delta with members of the committee, meet with teachers and leaders and solicit feedback based on the conversation that some of our most fragile schools and communities, we are able to take these ideas from people and have their boots on the ground that are working in the
classrooms for some of our, our vulnerable students and make sure that their voices are heard. The one size fits all approach is archaic and not giving local decisions makes it challenging. The needs of Jonesboro are different than the needs of Helena. We know they are different than the needs of Little Rock. So by empowering local school boards in empowering administrations and school district leaders, superintendents, and educators that know what's best for their community is a big step in the
right direction when we look at moving those national rank. ran s This is from February 22nd. 2023 at 9:15 in the morning, Secretary of State or Secretary of Education made that statement. And that is what we need to do is have local control. So I'm not going to belabor a lot of these points. This is pretty straightforward bill. There is going to be, I'm sure some testimony on some some uh um. Some studies that were not conducted in Arkansas, and then
I will have some studies that were conducted in Arkansas. I'm willing for any questions at this point. The. There
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:17:00
are questions from the committee. There anybody in the audience to speak for or against. Yes, doctor, uh Jacob Oliva. against the bill. But he's still he's
he's on his way. Oh, OK. All right. Um, Gerald Stationer. is for the bill. So
if you would 3 minutes, please. I'm Gerald Streisner, superintendent Wichita
Speaker 602
3:17:33
River. Good morning and thank you for allowing me the
Speaker 603
3:17:38
opportunity to testify on behalf of the positive changes we're seeing with implement.
Washita River. our first year to implement. for 3 years before implementing. We adopted this calendar for 3 main reasons. Number one. You That And To recruit and retain quality staff. So what does our data say after
this first year's implementation. We see 80 to 90% of our stakeholders wanting to continue this calendar. We're seeing positive changes in student learning already. As evidenced by the most recent interim atlas data that we show growth in almost every area in Our
Speaker 604
3:18:40
classroom walk through that. and high levels of
Speaker 603
3:18:48
Our attendance has improved in almost 90% of our students and our staff attendance has dramatically. Improved as well. I attribute these improvements to the implementation of the 4 day week. We're not perfect, uh, we don't claim to be. When we learn to do better, we do better. But if you had to ask me if it was possible to go back to 5 days of model that instruction
versus 4, I would say no and that's due to the reason that our students and staff and community have all came together. To try to reach the goals that we set out to do earlier in my testimony. We feel this year is our baseline year at Washita River. We know that the changes that we're making now will have a positive impact on our kids in the future. Today we're focused more than ever on improving tier one instruction.
Using data to drive our decisions and preparing students to take the athletes Atlas exam at the end of the month. For a school calendars. Go the same instructional time as all other calendars. We don't cheat our students out of any learning. I believe the number of positive changes we're seeing in our data is due to staff dedication, high levels of student engagement and positive morale related to the implementation of this calendar.
Last, I want to thank all of you for serving our state. And our students, and I want to thank you for your continued support and allowing us to make the best decisions we know locally for our students. God bless and thanks for listening. Thank you
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:20:42
very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I'm just curious on, on your particular school district. You're, this is your
one year 4 day. You were at 5 a day previously.
Um, You said you've seen improvements. So
we'll, we'll see, I guess that reflected in test scores and things like that in the years to come, um. Previously, were you? What, what was your school districts,
Speaker 608
3:21:06
I guess. struggles as far like Were you an A school, B school, what? What range were you
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:21:16
in the benchmark years we were A and
Speaker 603
3:21:22
B. Then we moved to park.
And aspire we dropped to see for career and college readiness. Now we're testing grade level standards, the Atlas system has been one of the best changes we've made in our state to help teach grade level standards for our kids. So we don't have last year's letter grade. We have growth scores and we have our interim data now that shows growth in almost every area. So the last test we took was C. OK.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:22:00
Thank you. And then other other questions from
the committee. Thank you very much. He should be here. Oh, there he is. OK. Jacob Alima, you are
Speaker 235
3:22:22
against. You have 3 minutes, so I'll be brief, um, a lot of people think I'm an anti-four day school proponent or opposer. I've never
once said that. What I am advocating for is that students have access to 178 days of school. Our current laws and our funding systems are based on that minimum. I wonder if be reminded that 178 days of in-person instruction is below the national average. I even pulled the map. The highest the outliers go all the way from 186 days in Kansas, the lowest requirement, and there's only 7 states that are below 178 days of a minimum requirement is Colorado at 160
days. I want to improve learning and outcomes in this state. I don't want to be number one in the nation for requiring the least amount of schools, school days. The schools that are going 143 or 143 days or 4 days a week. That is access to less in-person instruction. That is not an opportunity to get systematic explicit instruction in the research is pretty clear nationally. It says that students do learn going 4 days a week, but they do not learn as much as they go 5, and I think we all know that if we
can develop calendars, this isn't a local control or local decision. We set the expectation that we should have 178 days of school. The local decision is how the school district chooses to meet those expectations and set the calendar works best for them. I, I, I go back to if If we know that in person and touch points with students matters. I look at our coaches who know that they have a short time to prepare our students for an athletic season. Why are all the athletes in these 4 days a week going to the gym on the 5th
day, and some of them are going even in on a 6th day. If this logic of we're just going to extend a few minutes and act like that's a good thing for kindergartners to be in learning for 8 hours a day. Why can't athletes just slip a little bit heavier weight for a couple more minutes a week and that'd be the same. It's flawed. logic. Students need access to high quality teachers. They need to be in environments that they learn. What I'm advocating for is that we go back to establishing a 178 day calendar,
which is already below the national average. The local authority and autonomy and all of this on how they determine how to meet those 178 days is why we have the excellent school districts that we have. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do you have a question? Mr. Oliva, could you have
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:24:53
just 1 2nd? I have a couple questions here. For Senator Bryant, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, I just, so
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:25:05
178 days, and what's the hour equivalency of that
Speaker 344
3:25:08
the, the current statute requires 1,068 hours and 178 days of school. 1,068 hours or 178 days depending on how
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:25:15
they want to do it, so. So my kids went
to a 4 day elementary. It was Blue Ribbon. It was phenomenal. I really couldn't tell you which one of those they met, but obviously there's there's a grief coming out of some of our local schools that feel like they're being told not to do a 4 day because I
assume that's pushing their calendar further into the summer. Are they going to start early? What is the difference between how they did it 3 years ago versus how they're doing it, asked to do it today, so I still think you can
Speaker 236
3:25:46
build a 4 day a week school calendar and be innovative and creative and, and, and you're going to have to make some
Speaker 235
3:25:53
sacrifices, but you can build a calendar from August to May, what you're not going to get is a 4 day a week and a fall break and a spring break and a week off at Thanksgiving and every other holiday, so you got to make some decisions or if, if
we believe in the 4 day a week and that's working what's great for the families and the students in the community, they can build a calendar, but just setting that minimum expectation of in-person instruction, especially for some of our most vulnerable students that need access to this. meters. The group of teachers that that I'm surprised we don't hear from the most, and I guarantee they're meeting with their students above and beyond our advanced placement teachers. You cannot get through an AP physics or chemistry course and do all the labs required in
biology on 143 day calendar. Those students are not going to be set up to be successful on those exams. So all I'm saying is let's have 178 days of school. We fund it. We should require it, and why can't we just set that expectation as a state that going to school is important. Thank you. Senator Dodson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, So
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:27:09
You kind of answered some of my question and uh I guess
I'm trying to understand if this were to pass, what the difference between current What districts can currently do, which is currently they can do 4 day a week, right? Right. That's not. The status quo is not removing that capability. If this passes, what does that change to the then this makes it explicit to where
There can be no parameters on what that 4 day week looks like and and I heard you say 143 days versus 178. Does this make it to where they're only in school 143 days versus 178 total. So currently the schools that
Speaker 235
3:27:56
are on a 4 day a week calendar and we have 47 districts in the state that are a 4 day a week. The majority of them are at 143
Speaker 236
3:28:05
days with this bill, what also do is remove my understanding is that our requirements established that
they only have to be in school for 6 hours a day,
Speaker 235
3:28:16
which would even lower the learning time for
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:28:19
these students. But They'd only have to be in 6 hours a day,
Speaker 235
3:28:25
4 days a week. With pretty much eliminating all governance and oversight from the state board. If I, if I could, Senator Isin, the our equivalency, and this is not new laws and these are laws that have been around for a while. The hour equivalency, I
think, was to provide opportunity for districts, especially when they're dealing with emergency situations, whether it's maintenance issues on a campus or severe weather or something where they can say we've established 178 days of school, but we've had some emergencies, but our daily school hours go longer than that, they may not need to make up school because they're within that 1,068. The the push every year has been totally whittling away with
districts going to 177, 176, 175. We're down to 39 districts in this state that have a traditional 178 day calendar. 39 Wow. Is education important or not? Thank you. Senator King. Thank you, Madam
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:29:37
Chair. So Representative Dunn has another bill out there. Can you explain that Bill from understanding support that.
Speaker 620
3:29:45
I don't know if I'm familiar with that one. It's your bill and Representative Dunn's bill, you're
Speaker 235
3:29:53
the Senate sponsor. About 4 day weeks or something, maybe representative Andrews. I'm sorry, I was like no, I got the wrong one I guess the representative Dunn. Yeah, so explain that bill and you support that bill? Well, I think that bill is more favorable. Would that bill requires is every school district to establish 178 day calendar. And it gives the hour flexibility. There, there's
still opportunities for districts to innovate and be creative with the calendars that best meet their needs and if a school district has the 100,0068 academic hours and they have to close. Like we've got schools closed today because of flooding. As long as they still met that 1,068 hour threshold while established under 78 days they may not need to make up those days, so it gives them flexibility
Speaker 236
3:30:39
to meet the needs of their community as issues arise. So I think that's a much more favorable bill and
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:30:47
you support that bill and so you say that people that support this bill do not care about education.
Speaker 235
3:30:54
I didn't say that. What I'm saying is I think people that support this bill, um, Like the flexibility and autonomy that they have to meet the needs of their families. It's helped with teacher recruitment, but to me establishing 143 day calendar is below that average, so I would like to see districts have the flexibility and autonomy to meet their community needs, whether
it's through a 4 day a week average, but let's just set a threshold that scheduling a calendar of 178 days of in-person instruction in front of high quality teachers should be the minimum threshold that we have outlined in statute. OK, well,
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:31:32
there's several schools in my district that that think that they are improving performance, which is a good thing, so and and I
Speaker 344
3:31:38
and I and I would say like when you mentioned the other bill, and I met with school
Speaker 235
3:31:44
superintendents, people that are here testifying, and a lot of people know where I
stand that if we wanted to have a uh uh like variances for like A rated districts or maybe even B rated districts, that's different than when I look at this list of the 47 districts who all their schools are. Yes, and we're taking away our authority to say the only way we can hold them accountable for learning is to do full state control on Level 5 intensity. I don't think anybody here in this room wants to see the state Board of Education dissolve more school districts. We want to
make sure that as adults we're setting up the conditions for students to be successful, and that's what I'm saying is when we establish 178 days of school, that's our job as adults is to make sure we're putting the needs of students first, and that's where I'm advocating from. So last year I met with you and I, you know,
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:32:36
invited you to my district. I have 6 counties to come up and I haven't. Have you seen you up in my six counties yet. I mean, I know, I know you're busy and have the whole state, but I mean, I did meet with you last year to come
up and meet with uh some of my schools, and I've not heard
Speaker 614
3:32:54
anything back. And you haven't done that yet or have you been in my 6 I don't know which counties I've I've been
Speaker 235
3:33:00
in every county and, and the majority school districts and prior to being a session where I have to sit in this room pretty much every day, all day a week. My goal is to be in school districts 2 or 3 times a week. So I like to pride myself as somebody that's in schools. These superintendents can't say I'm not available and that I don't meet with them. It may not be in person. It may be on Zoom. It may be on calls, but
I feel like we're very responsive, and I would take offense. to say that I'm actively out in schools meeting with constituents because I
Speaker 624
3:33:27
pride myself on that. Well, that's why, you know, it's sometimes
Speaker 625
3:33:31
face to face. I know Zoom can be. What has to
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
3:33:34
happen, but I think, you know, I have 6 counties, Boone, Carroll, Madison, Newton, Johnson and Franklin, and that's why I wanted you to come up and meet personally with them, and I haven't heard from you and I'm not, like I said, I mean, I did ask, well in the last year or two.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:33:54
Thank you very much. Susan Kessler. OK. You
need to turn on your A schools. So just let me start with that. So he'd
identify yourself, you'll be recognized. OK, thank you, Madam Chair and
Susan Kazire
Unverified
3:34:27
committee. OK. My name is Susan Kazire. I am the superintendent of Poen School District. Prior to that, I was at Bismarck for 16 years. Poeen and Bismarck both implemented the 4 day school week at the same time. I'd like to begin with the 4 benefits of the 4 day school week. I know. I've already shared some of this with you through email and improve student achievement, reduce burnout for students and teachers, enhanced teacher and student morale, better
attendance and retention rates, cost savings, and more planning time for teachers, which affords them additional time to develop more effective and well structured instructional plans. Currently 47 districts, that's 20% impacting 5% of our student population. You've heard the Rand report mentioned quite a bit. Let me tell you why the ran report doesn't reflect rural Arkansas. Arkansas isn't Idaho, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Rand uses
national averages, but rural Arkansas is different. This is a 2021 study that does not include us and it's based on urban and suburban areas. This study is also skewed because it includes data collected during the 2021 school year, which was impacted. by the COVID pandemic. Some of these states did not mandate instructional minutes like Arkansas does. We protect that instructional time. Therefore, we see success. Again, it's the exact same
number of instructional minutes, same instructional hours. Rural districts face challenges and the 4 day helped stretch our financial resources while still meeting the needs. Rand doesn't dive deep enough into that. Behavior engagement and well-being can also improve. The 4-day model is helping rural districts stay competitive, a quality teacher in front of students is always the most important factor to student success as Secretary Aliva says,
ran down down plays this. The 4 day week fits our way of life. laugh. Faith, family, and flexibility. 95.7% of our community and parents support the 4 day week and 99%, only one staff member did not. Poland Elementary ranked number one in growth across the entire state. We ranked above the majority of schools in the Dawson Co op for ELA, math and science, and we are above the state average in
both math and reading across the board as Secretary Oliva said, he said this to you last week, a one size fits all approach doesn't work for all of our students and families, administrators, teachers, schools, and school districts. Arkansas communities make the make the choice that fits their kids, protect our 4 day schools. Thank you so much to all of our bill sponsors and to all of you. Thank you very much. Thank you, happy to
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:37:28
answer any questions. One second, Senator Bryant,
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:37:35
thank you, Madam Chair. So in your current school's calendar, you take all the breaks that a traditional 5 day calendar. takes as well. Yes, we
Susan Kazire
Unverified
3:37:44
chose Monday because so many of the holidays already fall on a Monday, so, you know, MLK Day and Labor Day and so forth. So we chose Monday and um so many of them, but yes, we have Christmas break and so forth, um, for us every day counts as
1.25 because we're going the longer days. Again, it's the exact same number of instructional minutes. So instead of a 5 day that does the 300. 60 Minutes of instructional time. We do 450 minutes every day. So we're able to do longer blocks of instructional time. So let's say you go into a science class and instead of going in for maybe 40, 45 minutes, we're able to do an hour block so you can go in, have the lesson, and then at the same time you're
able to do the lab, so you're not having to break that up, so it's actually improving our instruction. You're able To go in and we block off in the morning our English language arts time and it's protected time. We're not doing pullouts during that time, so we're able to block that off, and that's another reason that we're seeing so much growth and academic achievement is because we're blocking off that time and, you know, we're able to have more extended class time for that instruction. So are you
currently meeting the 1,068 requirement. It's exactly the same. There is nothing different. with instructional time where we're saving on that time is a lot of those transition times, you know, time changing classes and time before the bell and you know, just a lot of those, you know, extra times in between. You're cutting out a lunchtime, you know, a lot of those different things that are being cut out of the day. It is the exact same number of instructional minutes. Nothing
is different on a 4 day than a 5 day when it comes to instruction as far as
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:39:44
the minutes ago. So I guess is there a current department ask that is jeopardizing the program with which you currently run. Say that one more time. Is there currently a department ask that is jeopardizing your current processes that should fall within the 1,068 hours but maybe does not. Um, I'm not sure exactly what
Susan Kazire
Unverified
3:40:03
you're asking, but this, this bill, you're doing everything
within the current we're, we're, we're following all the standards, everything is the same for us, and we are one of the highest achieving school districts and when I was at Bismarck, we were one of the highest achieving school districts. So, yeah, every standard, everything that and let me say this with all due respect to the school. that are a DNF school. If you look at that research, if they
were are a D and F on a 4 day, I can almost guarantee you they were a D and an F on a 5 day and that needs to be addressed as a separate issue and support for them as a D and F school and not penalize the schools that are actually seeing growth and success as a 4 day school. Those are two separate issues. If schools are achieving and actually growing and succeeding on a 4 day, then by all means I feel like we should encourage that
our morale is up. We're able to, you know, recruit high quality teachers. We're a super small school district in an area where we're surrounded by some schools that can pay more than us, but we now have that advantage to say, well, we can do this in 4 days. Yes, it's 4 longer days, but we can do this in 4 days, and it helps us to recruit some high quality teachers to come in and that just improves our instruction. Therefore, our students are learning more. OK, thank you. Thank you.
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:41:43
Senator Dodson. Thank you, Madam Chair. So if I understood you correctly, what you're currently doing, you can continue to do regardless of whether this
Speaker 629
3:41:58
bill passes or it doesn't pass. Yes, yes, well, yes and no. We can continue to do that, but we have been told that
Susan Kazire
Unverified
3:42:07
um and what kind of prefaced all of this was we were told that if the
calendar bill that was, um, I think 1864 if that did not pass, then Desi planned to go to the state board to try to change what we were doing. as a four guy school. So we're, we're not debating another
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:42:32
House bill or or what. The state board may or may not try to do in the future. As of this particular bill and as of the current status of things. If this bill passes,
Or this bill doesn't pass, you can continue to
Speaker 637
3:42:52
do what you're doing. We will continue on.
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
3:42:54
One other absent any other changes, obviously, but this one, this bill does not have to pass for you to continue to do things that you're doing right now with Fidelity and success that you're currently experiencing. If another we'll address those other bills at some other time, but as they come up, but as far as this one is concerned. This doesn't have to pass for you to maintain what you're
Susan Kazire
Unverified
3:43:20
doing is it does not, there are no protections on the 4 day school week, but one thing that this bill does do is it takes the current rules, which are from 1997 that we had not even seen before, but it takes those rules from 1997 and it updates them, so that's kind of where this bill started was the rules that we had received from Secretary Aliba. We took those. sent those to BLR because like
it refers to norm referenced testing. Well, we no longer do norm reference. Now it's criterion referenced, so we took that and then, you know, like we have the requirements to submit to him, and I know he's going to, you know, having to go through a million different sheets of paper from us, so the suggestion was to like do a digital. You know, application process. I was thinking like maybe the AR app might be something that we could do in the future. We are not opposed to accountability at all. We're not opposed to, you
know, following what was in the old rules, you know, but we're trying to look at ways that we can do that and make it more current from 27 years ago. Let's make it more, you know, let's update that to the criterion reference testing. Let's, you know, update that to where we have a digital process of doing. that where we're not having to, you know, print out 50 sheets of paper and try to mail that in or scan that into the email and and different things like that. So, you know, we're just trying to
take the old rules, update those into a more current version again this bill is actually, you know, taking that and continuing to put work on us for that, but that's OK. We don't mind. We're not opposed to accountability. We hold our students
Speaker 630
3:45:05
accountable. We hold ourselves accountable. as well. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Senator Sullivan, thank you,
Speaker 467
3:45:14
Madam Chair. So if this bill doesn't pass, what happens to
your, what's your current status, do you just continue as
Lori Cole
Unverified
3:45:27
is? Will you just continue on? Yes
Speaker 641
3:45:32
sir. Thank you, thank you very much. We appreciate it. um Tristan Nodel.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:45:37
You'll identify yourself and you have 3
minutes. Thank you, Madam Chair, Tristan Canadel,
Speaker 642
3:45:53
Superintendent Bismarck School District, um, I'll be very brief. I know you guys had a long morning, uh, today. I've listened to a lot of uh a lot of your committee meetings this, this year, the session. And I hear you guys talk about local control a lot and I appreciate that. Um, in fact, last session Act 688, that this legislature passed gave schools the option to choose 4 different calendars, traditional alternate 4 day or year round.
And we appreciate that. I think this is a local controlled decision. We have elected school boards. They should be in charge of making these choices. When we went to the 4 day, I wasn't the superintendent of Bismarck. This is my first year. Excuse me, but I did live in the community and had children attending the school. All stakeholders were involved in this decision. And uh polled and had plenty of input. This decision wasn't made lightly. One thing that's been mentioned this morning was
Teacher preparation and this has made all the difference in the world when you talk about teacher preparation, you know, generally teachers get around 45 minutes of planning time a day, but that can be. Taken up by various Things that go on in the schools, meetings and and such and so when you pass by Bismarck School District on a Monday. The parking lot's full. There are teachers there planning. I think we've all heard the saying prior planning prevents poor performance. That's part of why Bismarck has been so successful with this.
I'm going to give you some data of my own because I want to make sure I get to that in my argument. We recently finished up our 2nd round of Atlas interims that we've given twice this year. Out of 8 tests given in ELA, which is an English language arts, we outperformed the state average in every area. We showed an average of 10% growth per grade level from interim one to interim 2. The state's average growth was 3%. We had 4 out of those 8 cohorts of students already
outperforming last year's summit of scores. In math, 4 out of 8 tests given, we scored above the state average. The other, the other 4 were just a few points away from meeting that. Our average growth by grade level was 15%. The states was 8.75%. In science, 8 out of 8 grade levels scored above the state average with biology at 65%, which nearly doubles the state average there. Our average growth by grade level is 13% and the state's average growth was 6.6%. Now when I give you these numbers,
these are just kids who are moving into Levels 3 and 4, you know, they count for our proficiency percentage. This doesn't take into account all of the growth that we've shown, you know, some of our Level 1 students increased their scores a lot as well. They just, they don't show up in these percentages here. So I know that we've talked a little bit about 4 day school weeks falling behind. I, I don't see the evidence for that in this district or in my other district previously that I was worked in a 4 day school week.
Let's say Senator Sullivan has a question. Yeah, I hear the argument local control quite a bit, so the districts were formed by state government and if we, if the state grants you local control, there would seem to be some limits on what local control you're granted. So you're taking state money. Then you take state money, but you want local control. How
Speaker 647
3:49:27
does that work? Well, I think there's
Speaker 642
3:49:31
definitely some room, some things that the ADE. should oversee. I'm not advocating for complete control by local school district, but I do believe the job
of that's that's our job to decide where that line goes. So we grant money and resources to the local school and then the local school pushes
back against that and said no we want local control. We still want the money. We just want local control. So where is that line? Well, and I would say you
Speaker 642
3:49:56
guys drew that for us last time. You granted us the option to choose the calendars, but
you're the one claiming local control. That this that it doesn't go far enough. So if you want local control, where does that local control end? I'm not saying it doesn't
Speaker 642
3:50:10
go far enough. I don't know that maybe you don't know. We received a letter basically saying if we don't meet all of these bullet points the 4 day week would go away. That's where the bill comes from. OK, well,
I'm, I'm, I'll let that argument go. So um Is there a limit to how many weeks you can go if we continue
to combine based upon an hourly formula. I mean, what would prevent us from going to a 20 week school year by combining the hours. I I don't
Speaker 642
3:50:43
have an answer to that, Senator. I just know, you know, we go 450 instructional minutes a day versus a 5 day who goes 360. My calendar has 1,075 hours built into it out of a required could do that with
Speaker 647
3:50:55
you could shorten the year, but just by making your days longer. You could, but you know, we're we're about the max you would want to
go, you know, I mean, you don't want kids in school for 10+ hours a day.
OK, so what I'm understanding then is that their technically it's no limit. to how many hours you could go a day in order to shorten your year. That I don't know. I
Speaker 642
3:51:18
don't know if that's in statute or not. I just know there's a limit on the minimum. Thank you. Any other
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:51:29
questions? Thank you very much. Uh, Samuel Scott.
Speaker 653
3:51:47
Hello, good morning, afternoon, whichever one it is closest to after this long morning. Um, I'm
Speaker 655
3:51:53
Doctor Sam Slot. I'm the superintendent of Cosot School District. There's one some people have already said a lot of the same things I've already was going to say, but I'd like to go to this. This bill gives 4 day schools protection that it doesn't currently have. Legislators back several years
ago, made law that allowed schools to go to a four-day week. I was, I did a lot of this research back about 2007, 2008, when I was working on my master's degree. I was at the first school in the state of Arkansas to go to a 4 day school week that was Mansfield. We did it for one year. And we did it because of financial reasons. We went back. Because it was a Split board. And they chose to go back.
Spoke to those teachers for years later. Even community members that said, I wish we could have stayed and gone through with it. Last year I did a lot of research because I was a, this is my first year at Coot School District as superintendent, I was an elementary principal. When I did my research, Back in 2007, My biggest concern was how did it affect Kindergartners, 1st grade, 2nd grade children.
What I have found out. And experienced It doesn't have a negative effect on them. Going 143 days a year does not have a negative effect on those children. All the people that have talked to you today are coming from schools that are A, B, and C schools. I have 4 schools in my district. 3 of those are all B schools. One is a C school.
Talked about 178 days being the national average. I would, I'm not, I don't have the data in front of me, but I bet everybody that's talked to you today, they're reading scores are above national average. Their math scores are above average. Hm Schools that are failing on 4 day week were failing before. Failing schools is not on calendar days. It's based on the school culture, the effectiveness of teachers.
And the community involvement in that school. Days have nothing to do with it as far as 178 versus a 4 day school week. Also work hours. Some of the logic that I came to a while ago was this. Unless you're in school 8 hours a day. It doesn't matter to you. Well, I'd like to ask you this question. Those people that work 40 hours a week, for 10 hours instead of 58.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:54:59
Are they working less hard? Thank you. Lonnie Myers. You know, identify
Speaker 660
3:55:22
yourself, you'll be recognized. I'm Lobbie Myers. I'm the superintendent for the Mulberry Pleasant View School District in Crawford County. We're on I-40 at Exit 24 microphone closer.
Yeah. Better. Thank you. OK. As I said, I'm Lonnie Myers. I'm from the Pleasant View School District, which is in Crawford County Exit 20 and Exit 24 on I-40 between Alma and Ozark. I'll try not to repeat everything that everyone's said, but I, you know, I've worked at for 49 years in the school business and I love children and I think we would be really good whether we, I mean, we're going to work really hard whether we go 5 days or 4 days, so I've got to do my best regardless, but I find that in a small rural
school district has some different needs than larger districts I have worked at. Uh, here at Mulberry, the number one need we have is hiring and retaining high quality teachers. We've had a high teacher turnover every right that I've been there for that the 9 years before this for 4 day week that we're trying now. It's very hard to retain teachers when we're surrounded by larger school districts that have higher salaries in their school districts. Another need that we have in our school district, and I say this just to tell you that
our district patrons do support us is we have a hard time I guess finding the same amount of resources maybe that larger school districts have. We've developed an education foundation that gives us a lot of support. We have senior scholarships. We award about $30,000 a year worth of teacher grants or teachers. That's all through our foundation and we've had a village pass. We've had a village extension. We've built new facilities, new auditorium, new softball, baseball complex. I'd say all that just to
emphasize that our he does support us. The background to our 4 day week was basically the same as everyone else's. We've spent a lot of time studying, spent a year talking with our patrons, doing a lot of surveys to get information to see if our patrons would support it. And we did find that they did. They wanted us to submit a request to the school board. We did do that in the year 20425 has been spent. On the 4 day school week we did
this basically for teacher retention to improve our student attendance and hopefully to improve academic outcomes, although we've only had this one year, we really haven't had time to do anything other than interim assessments. We looked at the research from the Office of Educational Practice from the University of Arkansas and based on their research, their schools that they studied during a 4 day week, the likelihood that teachers would leave a four day school. was slightly reduced by 1.5%.
The likelihood that 4 day school week schools could hire more teachers with advanced degrees did increase by about 5.9%. Teachers in the 4 day school week schools reported lower exhaustion from their teachers and it felt like there was more personalization after going to the 4 day school week. The data that we looked at student attendance or student attendance did improve over the we compared The first two quarters of the last year we did 5 day with the first two quarters of the year
we did 4 day and we did improve from 93.96% to 97.02% with student attendance. Our employee attendance improved 17% and then our discipline problems went down about 11%. The Atlas summit of assessment has not been given this year this year, so very much for your 3 minutes is up. Oh, I'm
Speaker 555
3:58:59
sorry. That's OK. Thank you for your
Speaker 660
3:59:02
time. Our parents and community did support this or certified and classified staff did support this. Thank you for your time. Thank you.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:59:13
Shana Hearst. She here Not here. OK. All right, that concludes our speakers for and against. Representative Walker.
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
3:59:46
Thank you. So I'll go ahead and try to do my closing in about 3 minutes too. Um, I just want to clear up at least one statement that Secretary Oliva made about schools being able to go 6 hours, um, 4 times a week, in that. Same sentence we have, it must be an average of 6 hours of instruction per school day and 30 hours of instruction per school week. This language is word for word from their current rules, so we didn't change
anything there. We took their rules and put that same language in this bill, so that is what's currently in place right now. Um, So the, the other questions that I've been hearing from the committee. It's kind of about the purpose of this bill, if, if it's not changing anything, why have we ran this bill? Um, March 21st at schools were going into spring break. A letter was sent out by the
Department of Education that and I cannot find anywhere where the state board met. To make this change, but in the letter, the last bullet point on it. According to their rules right now, the part that they changed, it would be academic distress districts that operate 4 day school weeks who do not demonstrate yearly improvement on the state approved norm reference tests and other assessment instruments required by or approved by the ADE will forfeit their right to this option. In the letter they
dropped the word academic distress, so this applies to all school districts, so that letter showed, showed us that they were willing to change what the requirement requirements are for our 4 day school districts without having us at the table to have that discussion. That is the point of this bill. That's why we're not trying to change where the goalpost is put in place right now. We want to have a say before that goalpost moves. Senator Sullivan made a good
point that I agree with before I point that out, I personally, I don't think Department of Education should dictate what local control looks like for our areas, um, but I agree with Senator Sullivan's statement earlier that we should determine what to allow for local control. I 100% agree, we are the ones that should be making that judgment. We're elected by our constituents to meet together as a body pass bills on the house. Insanity and working together to determine what is best for our
kids when it affects local control or anything else. It should not be our state agencies making that determination all on their backs. We should be at the table. We should be the ones that vote on it. I'm not trying to say that 4 day weeks are good or bad or whatever. I'll just want to have that discussion. In my opinion, Department of Ed, if they have the data that shows that 4 day schools are hurting our kids. They should be able to present that data to us convince us that it's bad for
our areas and then we vote on it or we figure out what the requirements should be going forward because we can all agree at the end of the day that we are here to do what is best for our kids, and with that I'm going to close and I'd appreciate a good vote
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:03:16
on this bill. OK. Her second. So discussion on the motion.
Don't see none on paper. Uh
Speaker 667
4:03:39
all post. I think when you're all called. Senator Dodson. Um Senator Dodson, no. Senator Bryant, Senator Bryant, I, Senator Murdoch. Senator Murdoch. Senator King, Senator King, I, Senator Davis. Senator Davis
Senator Flowers. Senator Flowers. Senator Sullivan. Sarah Sullivan, no. I'm
Speaker 410
4:04:09
sorry that built fails. Thank you very much. OK. So folks, we
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:04:16
have about finished for the day. Oh, I'm sorry, you what? Is this a
We've got a very good one. OK, all right Go ahead,
and you've got 3, but we, we have to start here pretty soon. We've been here since 8 o'clock, so we needed to get all of our, our Senate bills out of here so they can go down to the house they're getting their house
bills up here. I have one that shouldn't be
controversial by 12:30 we need to
Speaker 333
4:05:03
be going. Alright Yeah. the hospital. OK. I'm trying to get the Senate bills out
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:05:08
of here just like the house is trying to get the house bills out of there. You'll
Speaker 301
4:05:17
identify yourself, you will be recognized. Brianne Davis, State
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
4:05:21
Senate District 25. Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. This is Senate Bill 624. We've all spent hours and hours discussing
intradistrict choice and max capacity, so this bill is very simple. It puts max capacity at 95% and it allows for intra-district choice. Happy to take any questions.
Questions for the committee. I. Nobody's signed up speak for or against,
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:05:50
you have a question. I just have a quick question. I mean, in this whole thing
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
4:05:57
with all this, I mean, is this gonna
cost the state more money or less money? It will
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:06:11
cost the state no money. OK. Do I hear a motion, uh, motion. pardon.
She motion, OK, alright, alright. Any motion, any discussion on the motion, all in favor, all opposed. Thank you. OK.
Speaker 371
4:06:34
Where's the next one? Did you have 3? You wait till Wednesday. All right,
Speaker 501
4:06:43
OK, all right. Where his. You want to do yours quickly,
Speaker 308
4:06:49
quickly. 14951495 House Bill 1495. Madam Chair, if I, if
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:06:54
you don't mind, can I have somebody to join me at the table.
Speaker 679
4:07:12
To many RJ Hawk District 81. One of them was a Jeremy Lasser with Bryant Public Schools.
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
4:07:26
Karen Walters Bright Public Schools. Um This is House Bill 1495 and um Committee over the course of the last few months, I've been working on this bill with uh Saline County reps, Grant County, and then here recently I've heard some uh up around the Conway area that this has been, this is a growing issue and what
it stems around is the transfer of disciplinary records for a student whenever they transfer into a school district. What we're seeing in our schools, kids are facing expulsion or been expelled. They're transferring to neighboring schools, the kids go in front of the school board and are accepted without any background knowledge of what previously happened. Oftentimes at school, the child is transferring to will request that information from the previous school, and they will not get any information from the school that they were previously at. You know, oftentimes what we're seeing is that once that
expulsion has happened or the pending expulsion has happened, the school, once they know the kid is going to transfer, they will just end the expulsion hearing altogether, and there's no track record of what's going on. Parents are now starting to hear about this and um I'll give you an example of something that happened in the Bryant School District. A kid transferred in that had been a violent kid at a different school district, he came to Bryant's, there were criminal charges pending. We had no knowledge of this whatsoever. And whenever he got here, he got
accepted to Bryant and then later it was found out that he was convicted and then parents found out. At that point, parents started calling me, started calling Doctor Walters and other teachers in the district going, why was this kid ever allowed into our school district. Uh, at the end of the day, what, what could have solved all this had been that disciplinary record following the kid from school to school. And so that's exactly what this bill does. And with that, I'll take any questions.
Speaker 685
4:09:19
As the bill, Senator Hammer has ma'am. I don't
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:09:25
know what that what that bill is sounds so much the same to me. OK, do
we have questions from the committee? There's nobody in the audience, so I'm
Speaker 608
4:09:37
sorry, Senator Dodson. I guess I'll ask questions, um, and this
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
4:09:42
is probably more More related to actually maybe be a department related question, but my understanding
of it was, and I recall having voted on a bill a few years ago that allowed for uh any type of criminal activity to be um That sort of thing to be shared like if someone, a student was arrested or or something along those lines, so if there was a criminal activity that could be shared with another district. Is that? Is that the current law. I'm sure that
Speaker 681
4:10:14
someone in the department can correct me. I think with that law requires authorities to notify a school
Speaker 540
4:10:20
district if one of their students had been subject to criminal activity. I'm not sure I could be wrong. I'm not sure that that requires a school
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
4:10:31
district that they're being transferred into to know. OK. And so, I mean this. This would require the permanent record of the the student to be transferred to or or be shared with the
district that did not have The students' existing records
right now and the student wasn't part of their district upon application of Of a student wanting to transfer into that
Speaker 686
4:10:57
district, is that just their disciplinary records correct, yeah, so
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
4:11:00
any, any disciplinary records that they may have uh in that school, you know, and what it, what it would allow for is if let's say um my child were to leave Bryant and go to a school, let's say Benton, for example, um, if there's a certain program that he or she may need to be involved in. The school district
could look at that disciplinary record and say, OK, we, these are what we can place them in this. what we can provide to help
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
4:11:29
serve that student. So if If a student, this is really
broad and encompassing because it includes private schools as well as public schools. The district of residents for that school student, so, so for instance if a school is going to a Uh
I don't know, private school, a Catholic school that has really high stringent disciplinary protocols and they were disciplined. Then their local public school district if they wanted to transfer out of that particular private school could reject them from going back to their home district of residences. Based off the discipline, so Senator Dodson. And, and what you're saying,
Speaker 688
4:12:18
um. I, I don't think that that is
something that a public school that we would expel for, so we understand that, especially at a religious school sometimes students are expelled for um doing things that don't align with their mission. The type of things that we're talking about here are things like bringing a weapon to school, uh, selling drugs, sexual assault. So those are the types of things that we, we feel
this is a safety issue, and if I can just say one thing that I don't know that Representative Haw covered. Right now, and I've said this before because it was in the school choice bill, and I think that's why Senator English had asked that. When a student is recommended for expulsion by me as the superintendent. I do not have the authority to expel them. So my principals, they go through an investigation. They come to me. We sit down, we meet, they show me all their investigative materials. I look at all the
witness statements and then I make a determination that this is an offense that I believe the student should be expelled for. So at that time I provide their parent with a letter stating my recommendation for expulsion. It also tells them that if they want to have a hearing before our board, it gives them a date that they need to request that they have that right. It goes through all of that information. The, the problem that we are seeing is that we are having students to leave the district
before that hearing happens before a board. So it's not always just a neighboring school. It may be a neighboring school and they come to me and ask for a board to board transfer, but because that board has not acted. We're in kind of a gray area. We're not sure what we can say and what we haven't, because technically the student's not been expelled again because I don't have the authority. So That's the issue is that we have kids that are sometimes leaving before that they had that hearing before the board and in
one instance, we had a student that representative talked about that came from an entirely different part of the state. They came from the northern part of the state were sent to live with a family member because they had assaulted, severely assaulted a staff member. I know we talk about it and your bill about Law enforcement, you know, telling thanks to the school district, but in that case, Senator Dodson, that That, um, sheriff's office or city police department, whomever
it was, they would not have known
Speaker 680
4:15:02
to have reached out to Brian because they didn't have any idea that the student had come
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
4:15:08
to write and enrolled there. So is that type of information not shareable from one district to another district as far as criminal activity. I'm talking about, not, not necessarily. The expulsion or the intent to expel the the proceedings that you're going through those. Like It seems like you're, you're
taking a, a broad-based approach to a very specific problem which is criminal activity, and that criminal activity seems to be, at least to me anyway, uh, more narrowly defined, obviously we don't want somebody who is a danger or threat or is is fleeing prosecution going somewhere else and becoming a problem somewhere else because of that, uh, because they, they can get away with it with um just a clean slate at the new place. But when it comes to
This particular piece of legislation, the scenario I laid out, you could apply that and maybe you wouldn't personally as a superintendent, but out of 240 some odd public school districts in the state and other other private schools and various other ones, they could apply a different standard and then I mean, I don't know of anywhere else that that you are. are deemed guilty until you're convicted with penalties that
could apply to you, um, so. The The intent to expel, I mean, that's kind of like being charged with a crime, but you're actually not convicted, so there's, but to have that tag along behind you wherever you go, I don't know it seems a little extreme to me. Well, I hear what you're
Speaker 693
4:16:49
saying, Senator Dodson, but again, let's let me
Speaker 688
4:16:53
give an example. So if there was a sexual assault that had taken place.
If that student came to enroll at Brier, let's let's say this, let's say that that student um the parents dropped that child to homeschool because they did not want them to be expelled. Let's say this happens this time of the year right now because I'm also trying to explain to you about the the private as well as the public, so my analogy. If that, if there were a sexual assault were to happen at Bryant. And I gave that letter the parents homeschooled them. Well, when they fill up that
homeschool paperwork, we are not going to continue through with the expulsion hearing because they're no longer our student. If that student goes to say Little Rock Christian over the summer and says we would like to enroll. I have recommended them for expulsion for something that we think is serious enough, and if I were the administrators and staff at Little Rock Christian I would want to know that, right? Just, it's not that we can't take them, it's so that we have the information and if necessary
there's a safety plan and we can keep our kids safe. In that situation where we are right now, Senator Dodson, is we, we do not feel like we can say, give that information because of student records, OK? Again, because if they've been expelled, then I can say like if if they've asked for a board hearing and what you were saying about, um, you know, them not getting the due process.
They have due process once they are given that letter by the superintendent, it is a law. This is not up to district discretion. They get to go before that board. They ask for a hearing. They can call witnesses. They can be, um, they actually can be represented. represented by an attorney. I've had that happen. For at expulsion hearings. So unless they're concerned. About what that outcome is going to be. And I get it as a parent, you, you, you want to get your kid in wherever, but the current law is
that they've been expelled for, you know, one of the reasons we, we don't have to take them. And I, I feel like that parents have kind of figured that out and they're skirting the system. And again, we, we want to educate our kids. I have actually accepted students that were going to be expelled. It was a local student. It was a smaller district. The superintendent called me, got permission from the, from the parents. Talk to me about the situation. It is not an offense that we would have expelled for at
Bryant. I sat down with the parents and with that student we discussed it. The students that this was probably in the fall that students been doing fine and there have been no issues. So It's not that we can't take them. It's that we feel it's very important that we have that information, because what we don't want to have happen is, so this has been an issue at another district. They come and roll with us and because that district doesn't feel comfortable in giving us
that information. They don't feel like they have cover for that. We don't want anything bad to happen to a student. So that, that's the purpose. There are questions from
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:20:21
the committee, Senator Flowers. Thank you. I didn't hear the beginning of the. Discussion
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
4:20:31
on this bill, but You know, it came to my mind when we were talking about
Expulsions and for the type of behavior or activity that's displayed. Uh, sexual assault. Physical assaults. It seems like that would
be. Something that either. A delinquency charge is filed in juvenile court on that child. are either A family in need of
services. Petition is referred to juvenile court. And
In that arena seems like the judge would have. More opportunities to
restrict are To say what the student can or cannot do in terms of The jurisdiction of the court. Transferring even to another school. Would you agree with that? I'm talking to you. I think
in in a lot of cases that may be the case, Senator
Speaker 687
4:21:40
Flowers, but in the instance where the student came to live
Speaker 688
4:21:46
with another family member and because the courts are a little bit delayed and when, you know, the students come before them, there just could be some, some time. I agree with you that there should be 5 charges that have been filed in the in the county where it happened, but it's just that sometimes that that appearance is delayed. Well, my experience
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
4:22:09
has been as soon as activity or behaviors are exhibited like you've. Like I heard you present.
The court automatically gets that kid when they when they get offenses petition, that child is brought in there generally that day. Particularly on a delinquency petition they brought in that day sometimes they are even retained in custody.
Of the court put in juvenile detention. And the judge can make temporary orders that intake officer is going to give them a sheet of paper with all these conditions
of of release if they are
released, so I, I'm not sure that I would want to see this going on a kid's record. Before there is some adjudication when we're talking about serious behavior that harms
people. I don't get that. I mean, it seems like there is a and should be some kind of Uh, interrelationship between
that school district and The juvenile court and over
the years, recent years, I've seen that. More pronounced, schools are definitely using that juvenile court. For shipping their kids off. For
I've seen it for little as throwing a little eraser uh pencil trimmer. Not a big 11 of these little bitty
ones across the room. And a kid gets put in detention.
So I this this to me is really harsh. And I think
that a child And a family. Needs to have the
benefit of some court adjudication, not just What the school board decides. If I
Speaker 695
4:24:15
may, Senator Flowers. I I think that all we're asking is that
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
4:24:20
so in your examples throwing an eraser, things like
that, the parents that came to me about this, right, um, in this situation that we that I outlined at the beginning, there was a young man that assaulted somebody in the northeastern part of the state. Before there was an expulsion hearing, right, there was, he went to the principal's office. There was a disciplinary record on, on hand. His parents transferred him out of the school district and that school district then they dissolved the expulsion hearings, so there was never an expulsion hearing. And so at that point,
Um, he went to go live with another family member in Bryant and from my understanding, it was the school district tried to reach out to the previous school to say, was there anything disciplinary wise that we need to be notified about to appropriate this kid, and they never responded. And so the reasoning for the bill and once parents found out about this, they were very upset because you had somebody that was assaulting kids and teachers in another school district. Now their kids are in danger
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
4:25:31
because no information was ever passed along. Well, was it that the court invoked at all the juvenile court
because they would have had a The right or the authority. To retain that child in that jurisdiction, even in that school, uh,
boundary. From my understanding, it was well
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
4:25:51
after the fact that the courts got involved. It should have been immediately and I agree with you, but in this situation it
wasn't. It was, it was well after the fact and so this childhood school's fault. The school
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
4:26:12
that he transferred from, yes, it was their fault, yes, ma'am, but because there is a remedy
under the law. Through the juvenile code. To address that school districts have been increasingly sending kids to juvenile court. Not just for delinquent behavior, criminal type stuff.
But also for these offenses that are not criminal, and they take them immediately. They will pick up a child. Law enforcement picks up a child, takes them down to the court. And they're confronted with the intake officer who was going to recommend their detention. Or some release, they even have those electronic. Monitors on these kids. So I, I don't see the need for this. It seems like the school
district is shirking their responsibility by not using. What's available in our law already, which is a juvenile court. I would say, and that's on the serious offense, right? So
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
4:27:14
even for minor so if I've got, if my child who's currently in
the school district, if I find out that the school district has somebody that's coming in and they fight all the time and they're causing that's not, that's not a serious offense, but if I find that out as a parent,
Speaker 700
4:27:29
I'm not going to be happy, and that's the battery
that that's serious and juvenile court, kids fight in school all the
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
4:27:41
time. Well, they do it all the time. That doesn't make it not
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
4:27:45
an offense, but if we could put it into a disciplinary record, so where it transfers so that let's say they leave Bryant and go to Little Rock Central or go to Conway, at least the school knows the placement they need to put that kid in at their special programs if there's things of that nature that they need to help that child out with. At least there's a disciplinary
record that they can look at and say, OK, he's got a pattern in this. We, we have
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
4:28:10
programs to help him out. Or her and and what what I have found in the
past is that you might have a kid acting out like that, but I found that they haven't been properly
evaluated for disabilities or uh It's a lot of things that that go into this. We just can't start putting all these laws in place and just willy-nilly doing stuff when we already have tools.
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
4:28:36
I just don't think those tools are being used properly and that's why we're that's on the school's part and that's why we're codifying this
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
4:28:45
to say that that disciplinary record would, would have to. Well, I think it's wrong to put on a kid's
back and on their record something that has not been adjudicated, fully adjudicated, and for a school to use the excuse we didn't do that. That's on the school. I mean, uh, I saw so many fins cases of being uh sent to
Speaker 702
4:29:06
juvenile court is unreal. And I think it's two different issues
Speaker 688
4:29:12
as far as the school side and, and the juvenile side and flowers so we many times, we, we will follow through with an expulsion and the student may not have appeared
Speaker 702
4:29:22
as far as had their trial before the juvenile judge. They don't have to have a
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
4:29:28
trial. They have pretrial issues that the
judge, the juvenile court judge decides, and I'm telling you on that day when a kid is referred to juvenile,
that Intake officer can see that child. They can either go to the school. Have the child placed under detention. They can
put a a monitor on them. They can do a whole bunch of things and the courts in the orders can prohibit uh restrain a child from. From going back to that school or any school or tell them to take since now we're going to have the juvenile court, the detention center being a school district.
I mean, it's so many things that are in the law already plus what we're doing up here this session that would would take care of these issues that you're bringing forward. To me. And,
and that based on my experience as a lawyer working with these juveniles and parents and families and schools. So I I I don't see the need for this. I see the need for schools to be more proactive in using the
tools that are already available. Are there
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
4:30:53
other questions? Oh, Senator Davis, thank you, Madam Chair. Well, you, you may have said it, but will you remind me the
process if, if a student leaves a school district pending expulsion. Homeschools and then enrolls in another school. What follows what does the receiving school district receive on that
Speaker 688
4:31:11
student. So, If the expulsion had not been acted on Senator Davis, that would not be on their record.
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
4:31:19
So so they see, but they do see beyond just the homeschool like they can see where the student came
Speaker 688
4:31:25
from even before that they were uh they were at Bron public schools, uh, they enrolled to homeschool on 412, uh, and You know, they would be able to have that information, yes, and by law, are you allowed to share with them.
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
4:31:41
That there was a pending expulsion and that's
Speaker 688
4:31:44
why that student that it is a gray area Center Davis and that's what we're trying to do here is, so it allows the the district where the incident happened to be able to say. You know, and again the receiving district can make the decision, but to say there had been an expulsion letter that was given, the parents chose not to follow through with the board hearing, which again is their due process.
This would allow us to make that statement, and then they're receiving district, you know, would determine that, but at this point, Everyone's afraid to give that information because it's not an expulsion and everybody's worried about, you know, getting sued and so that's what we're trying to do. OK, thank
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
4:32:30
you. I was trying to remember from my time on school board, what we did. I mean, I, I do, I think this bill is needed. I think, I mean, we had the same issues years ago even with teachers, they would have inappropriate relationships with students and
then get a new job and quit, and there was no documentation on their file and the school district where teacher left did not feel like they were able to share information on that employee and so you had a predator hopping school districts and every time he or she got in trouble, would just go to a new place. I think it's important to have transparency both from the staffing um side and also from the student side just so schools understand. I mean, I don't think we should be hiding things. I think it's, I think it's an important bill. Thank you. They
Speaker 695
4:33:16
Other questions from the committee. Thank you, you wanna, are you free to close? Yes, ma'am. Look, at the
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
4:33:25
end of the day, I think this is just a safety bill. This is something parents are asking for, uh, and we just want to, we, we always talk about safety in the legislature what whether it be, you know, gun safety or metal detectors. This is a simple bill that we can keep our kids safe and give information about kids that are coming and going with the transfers into our school districts, and with that, I would appreciate a good vote.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:33:47
What is the will of the committee? Motion right here a second? Oh. in discussion
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
4:34:07
on the motion. Senator Flowers. You know, I, I, I just think this is too harsh. And
I think it, it just overlooks the fact that we have tools available in our law now.
That addresses this and if, if, if there's been some criminal. Conduct
We got courts. Schools make referrals. Either for fans or for delinquent activity. And you know, just to put something on somebody's record, some kid's record, and send it to another school, even though it hadn't been adjudicated by the board. that to me.
is a way of trying to get around with the, the school's responsibility is. If a teacher has been harmed. You can still go to court. You can still go to the prosecutor's office or the law enforcement and file a complaint and that teacher will
come up in the court. Same thing with the child. So and even if a child transfers. That doesn't mean that the act didn't happen. You can steal in
the pends report a complaint, a petition.
You can still file. A delinquency petition. So I, I, I can't agree with
this. I think it's too harsh. I didn't care emotion in a second. All in favor, all opposed.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:35:41
Obviously, the news habit. Thank you. Thank you.
OK, ladies and gentlemen, we are finished. We will meet at 8 o'clock on Wednesday morning to complete what we haven't finished. And, um, thank you very much.
Agenda
Call to Order
SB436 A. Clark TO AMEND THE ABILITY OF A STUDENT WHO TRANSFERS UNDER THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE ACT OF 2015 TO PARTICIPATE IN AN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY.
SB438 A. Clark TO PERMANENTLY BAN FROM COACHING A COACH OR AN ATHLETICS PERSONNEL MEMBER WHO RECRUITS A STUDENT.
SB482 K. Hammer TO REPEAL THE ARKANSAS OPPORTUNITY PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE ACT; TO AMEND THE LAW RELATING TO TRANSFERS OF STUDENTS BETWEEN PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS; AND TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE ACT OF 2015.
SB528 Gilmore TO ADDRESS THE POWERS AND DUTIES OF THE OFFICE OF SKILLS DEVELOPMENT AND THE CAREER EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT BOARD RELATED TO SECONDARY TECHNICAL CENTERS.
HB1684 McAlindon TO CREATE THE PARENTS AND TEACHERS HELPING STUDENTS SUCCEED (PATHS) ACT.
HB1370 J. Mayberry CONCERNING MAKING UP MISSED SCHOOL DAYS; AND TO REQUIRE A PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT TO INCLUDE ADDITIONAL DAYS OR HOURS, AS APPLICABLE, IN ITS SCHOOL CALENDAR FOR THE PURPOSE OF MAKING UP MISSED SCHOOL DAYS.
SB604 B. Davis TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE REGARDING THE COURSE CHOICE PROGRAM.
SB607 Crowell TO ESTABLISH THE REQUIREMENTS FOR A PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT THAT INITIATES AND MAINTAINS A FOUR-DAY SCHOOL WEEK; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY.
HB1495 Hawk CONCERNING THE TRANSFER OF A STUDENT'S PERMANENT SCHOOL RECORD.
HB1646 McGrew TO REQUIRE CERTAIN MATERIALS TO BE STORED IN LOCKED COMPARTMENTS WITHIN A DESIGNATED AREA.
HB1810 Joey Carr TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE CONCERNING THE ARKANSAS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND AND THE ARKANSAS SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY.
HB1812 Gramlich TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT; TO CREATE AN EXCEPTION TO ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS FOR A STUDENT WHO TAKES A GED TEST; AND TO AMEND THE SCORE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE GED TEST.
HB1833 M. Shepherd TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE ADMISSIONS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS COLLEGE OF MEDICINE.
SB618 Irvin TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS STUDENT DUE PROCESS AND PROTECTION ACT.
SB619 Irvin CONCERNING THE FORMATION OF AN ISOLATED SCHOOL DISTRICT.
SB149 J. English TO AMEND PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING AMOUNTS UNDER THE PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING ACT OF 2003.
SB451 Hester TO REQUIRE THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES AND THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO ESTABLISH REGIONAL BEHAVIORAL HEALTH PROGRAMS; TO AMEND THE LAW CONCERNING THE EDUCATION OF CERTAIN STUDENTS; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY.
SB624 B. Davis TO AMEND THE ARKANSAS OPPORTUNITY PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE ACT; TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE ACT OF 2015; AND TO ALLOW A STUDENT TO TRANSFER TO ANOTHER PUBLIC SCHOOL WITHIN HIS OR HER RESIDENT DISTRICT.
SB625 B. Davis TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE CONCERNING THE ARKANSAS CHILDREN'S EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM ACCOUNT PROGRAM; AND TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY.
HB1786 Brooks TO PROVIDE ELIGIBILITY FOR A TUITION BENEFIT TO SOLDIERS AND AIRMEN OF THE ARKANSAS NATIONAL GUARD ATTENDING CERTAIN PRIVATE TWO-YEAR AND FOUR-YEAR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.
SB604 B. Davis TO AMEND PROVISIONS OF THE ARKANSAS CODE REGARDING THE COURSE CHOICE PROGRAM.
Adjourn
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — EDUCATION COMMITTEE - SENATE AND HOUSE MEETING JOINTLY WITH ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION, Apr 7, 2025 | Agenda | 2 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Speaker 5
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
Speaker 49
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
Speaker 97
Speaker 114
Speaker 124
Senator Jim Dotson
Unverified
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
Speaker 167
Speaker 176
Speaker 196
Speaker 210
Speaker 229
Speaker 231
Speaker 235
Speaker 236
Melissa Sutton
Unverified
Linda Kitchens
Unverified
Senator Reginald Murdock
Unverified
Speaker 272
Speaker 271
Speaker 301
Speaker 308
Speaker 310
Speaker 313
Speaker 320
Speaker 321
Speaker 323
Speaker 275
Speaker 344
Speaker 364
Speaker 334
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 384
Representative John P. Carr
Unverified
Speaker 406
Speaker 411
Speaker 412
Kitsonia Hancock
Unverified
Speaker 423
Speaker 424
Speaker 430
Speaker 422
Speaker 431
Speaker 438
Speaker 440
Speaker 441
Speaker 464
Speaker 469
Speaker 471
Speaker 245
Speaker 492
Speaker 498
Speaker 503
Eric Yarberry
Unverified
Speaker 511
Laurie Cole
Unverified
Speaker 519
Speaker 521
Speaker 527
Holly Mott
Unverified
Speaker 534
Speaker 539
Speaker 547
Speaker 333
Speaker 567
Speaker 569
Senator Dan Sullivan Chair
Unverified
Speaker 315
Speaker 485
Speaker 584
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
Senator Steve Crowell
Unverified
Speaker 591
Speaker 594
Speaker 593
Speaker 602
Speaker 603
Speaker 604
Speaker 608
Senator Bryan King
Unverified
Speaker 620
Speaker 614
Speaker 624
Speaker 625
Susan Kazire
Unverified
Speaker 629
Speaker 637
Speaker 630
Speaker 467
Lori Cole
Unverified
Speaker 641
Speaker 642
Speaker 647
Speaker 653
Speaker 655
Speaker 660
Speaker 555
Speaker 667
Speaker 410
Speaker 371
Speaker 501
Speaker 679
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
Speaker 685
Speaker 681
Speaker 540
Speaker 686
Speaker 688
Speaker 680
Speaker 693
Speaker 687
Speaker 695
Speaker 700
Speaker 702