Education Committee - Senate

And we have a fairly full agenda this morning and first I'll call on Senator Boyd for SB 135. Thank you, Madam Chair, and with your permission, I'm gonna ask Lindsey French from the Association of Counties to join me to help explain the amendment. Um, so with your permission I'll, I'll begin if you just identify yourselves, both of you, and then you'll be recognized. Yes, ma'am. Senator Justin Boyd. Lindsay French Association of Arkansas Counties thank you. OK, OK. Uh, so we had a bill that passed out of here a week or two ago. I don't remember exactly regarding elections on the millage and then just a reminder of the problem we were trying to solve is if you have a millage that is unchanged. Then having a vote on it doesn't change anything. The only time a vote matters from a changing standpoint is if the millage is changed, whether it's increasing the mileage or decreasing the mileage. It in that case, you, you have to vote to change the millage, but otherwise there's a constitutional requirement to have the millage on there. So what happens in odd numbered years. is you can have a an election that is literally just an unopposed millage on the ballot, so in Fort Smith, Fort Smith Public schools and I guess 23 had to have an election and literally the only thing on the ballot was the millage, and it was unchanged, so it didn't matter whether there were voters voted for it or voters voted against it. Nothing was going to change, so basically it was a taxpayer funded opinion poll, but it's not even a good poll because we don't know. why they voted for it or against it, and our case they did vote more for it than against it. Some other districts might have had a different turn, you know, outcome, but it didn't change anything and so we listened to feedback from Senator Dodson. We listened to feedback on the floor, uh, from Senator Disma, and we made an amendment to clarify that it would only affect elections in the odd numbered years where that can happen because as we know, we have primaries and we have a general election every single. Even numbered year. Um, I think you covered it very well. Thank you. I will point out the Uh, page one, line 28 again specifies there are only an odd numbered years and on page 3 line 2, it is, this is only for odd numbered years, so if it does land on a general or primary, it will still be on the ballot. This just keeps you from having to open polling places when there's literally nothing to vote on but an unchanged village. And we also um As Senator Boyd alluded to address Senator Dodson's issue, making sure that the appointee is a qualified elector of the school district, so I think we come back to you with a cleaner bill and a better bill. that we can all support the questions from the committee. Is there anybody in the audience who would like to speak for or against the bill. You like clothes for your bill. I just appreciate someone giving me a due pass in a second and a favorable vote. Thank you. What's the will of the committee motion. Second, thank you all in favor? All post. Thank you. You pass the bill. OK. I'd like to take just a moment here. We have some pages with us this morning. We're always glad to have the pages with us, um, versus Piper Peters, you'll identify yourself. Thank you. And Lucy Beaumont. William Lewis. Mark Carradua. And Emma Welch, glad to have you with us. Thank you very much. OK, moving right along, we will go to um Representative Johnson, is he here? He told me he was going to be here. No, I'll, uh, Lee Johnson. Representative. And so then how about Mark, Senator Mark Johnson. Is he here? Good, OK. You will identify yourself, you'll be recognized. Thank you. The suggestion was heard even though I didn't hear it during the meeting. I got texts that I didn't look at. If I had, we might have been able to get this quickly, but uh uh. What we did was, uh, A mended the section and it's on page 2 at about lines 203 through 26 to point out that uh this notification that's required about people's uh both students and school employees First Amendment rights, uh, can be communicated by electronic means or by placement in the handbook policy manual or other resource designed to inform students, employees, or parents. It's about policies, procedures, or rights. So thanks again, Senator Davis, for that suggestion and having served on a school board, you, you see things like that that maybe I, I happen to miss, so other than that, I would be happy to answer any questions again, let me reiterate one thing before I do, uh. This does not add or take away any rights of the. Thanks. Senator Flowers. Senator Johnson your microphone down towards you a little bit. Can you hear me? Yeah. Senator Johnson, I brought this up last time you were in here with this bill, and I understand that this requirement that the schools offer an academic study of the Bible course has provided in Section 616145 is already in the code, ma'am. But I'm just concerned, this sounds like indoctrination to me. Uh, I had an email from A person that said they were a teacher, but also a pastor. And they were in support of your bill, and they wanted to be able to uh Have this uh. Bible course study. At their church during the noon hour where he take the kids to his church. I wonder, uh, Does the school district set policies that might be able to allow something like that because that lends itself to all kinds of unseemly activities to me. And when you read about teachers, grooming students or in the whole concept of indoctrination and the Bible, uh, many people don't read the Bible. I read other texts, Qoran, uh. Hindus have a poem or something that they rely on for their faith. Uh, I'm, I don't know where we're going with this, but I would like your opinion or your take on how this could be carried out. Could somebody actually take kids off campus? The church by school policy and teach them whatever they want them to know about the Bible, and I'll tell you, uh every Bible is not the same. It's not. And I'd like your opinion on that, please. Well, thank you for that question, Senator. And first, let me point out that this bill does not at all amend any part of Arkansas code 616145, that's the statute you're specifically referring to and well I said that, but what I said is I, I acknowledge it's, but I do not like that it's in there or I didn't vote for that, but well, let me respond directly to your question because I tend to agree with you, and I think that that's something that school boards should be very careful of, but that's not not in nothing in this bill affects that one way or the other. I think any activity, not just something that like a course of study about the Bible or of course a study about anything, uh, if it's not going to take place on the campus, I think that I think you asked my opinion, I think that should be very carefully considered and Filtered through school board policy very carefully before something like that would be allowed to happen again. This bill won't affect that one way or the other, but I tend to agree with you that that that that could be a slippery slope when you let people take kids off campus to some other facility unless there's a specific reason that's approved by the administration and the board. So, but you do acknowledge that. A school board could initiate and set up rules that would allow this. Is that correct? Yes, ma'am. I would absolutely agree with that and, and again, not just on the course offering as described in 616145, but anything else that would take the kids away now. There may be some legitimate things like field trips and other things, but that's, that's a school policy that they should be careful because, you know, we have a lot of safety issues that you and I didn't have to deal with when we were kids. I don't know what I had to deal with, but anyway, I'd like to know whether This bill would allow the Department of Ed to set up the curriculum for this Bible study. Who, who does that? Is that, I mean, just off the cuff some claiming to be a priest or a preacher or something, Senator, your point is very well taken. However, this bill does not address that section in any way whatsoever except it is reiterating the language that's what's in in 616145. Well, I thank you for your responses, but I, I, I can't go along with this. Thank you, ma'am. Davis Certainly Thank you, Madam Chair, just for a comment. I wanted to say thank you for the amendment. I think it clarifies very well. It's not burdensome to the district, but I think it's also um advantageous and probably much appreciated by superintendents and administration across the state to know that there's one place they can go when they are asked these questions, which I think they do get asked regularly. So I appreciate the bill and the amendment and thank you for your work on that. I want to thank you, Senator, as well as Dr. Hernandez also weighed in on it. of this, and he thought this was a perfect solution to it, so I'm glad we have consensus on that, and thanks again for your help. Any other questions from the committee? Is there anybody in the audience to speak for or against the bill. Let me see, there's Maxine Allen. I Speaking against the bill or for for the bill. again Oh, OK. Are you Maxine Ellen? Yes, please go ahead and have a seat. You'd identify yourself. You'll be recognized. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I am the Reverend Maxine Allen. I'm a retired elder in the United Methodist Church. As a retired elder, I have more than 100 hours of seminary education as a retired elder, I have served in the United Methodist Church for more than 38 years. I do believe in the separation of church and state. I do believe that there are some persons who are qualified to teach Bible or other religious texts while others are not. I believe it is a burden on our public school teachers to ask them to learn some additional curriculum beside those that they are already accredited in. Many of our public school teachers have disciplinary problems and other issues. in the classroom, which do not allow them to even attempt to study biblical text or other religious texts in order to prepare adequately to teach a topic, even though it may be in fact a topic that there is an academic curriculum developed by the Department of Education. I too have concerns about those persons who would be developing the curriculum. How do you balance uh Protestant versus Catholic. How do you balance Christian, uh, versus Hindu. How do you balance liberal versus conservative. How do you balance folks with liberation theology over against theologies that restrict women from preaching. How do you balance all of those things in order for students to clear be able to articulate a faith that the United States Constitution talks to us about that is neither a bordered by prejudice or discrimination, so I have some real concerns about this and senator, if this is not doing anything other than what is already in the books. This is a waste of time for you to even be voting on this and so I would appreciate if you would vote this day. Now, because it does nothing for our children, additionally, it does only confuses public school teachers who many are not qualified and do not want to wade into religious waters. It does nothing and so therefore whyact it? Thank you so much for your time. Does anybody have any questions of me? Questions from the committee. Thank you. Wait, wait, Senator Sullivan. Can you show me where in the bill it says teachers are going to be teaching this. It's not a part of the bill, but he inferred that in terms of the curriculum coming from the Department of Ed. So are, are you suggesting that people other than teachers in classroom would be teaching this. I'm just asking you a question suggesting you if there's anything in the bill where teachers are required to teach from a curriculum on the Bible. The senator has already referred to that and saying that the Department of Education would develop a curriculum, so now if teachers are not teaching it, then the bill needs to be more specific about who is OK, thank you. I'm just not, I'm asking the question. Is there anything in the bill and your answer is no, not according to what is written, but what is inferred by the senator. I know, but I'm asking you what's written. That's what we go by. Yes sir. But we, you also heard the senator's response to a question asked to him about what was uh about the curriculum being developed by the Department of Education, so I cannot speak for him, but that was what he said. Thank you very much. Appreciate your comments. Thank you. Tony Rose speaking for the bill. Um Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Tony Rose. I'm with the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, and I'm speaking for this bill. Um, I've read this bill several times and nowhere in it does it state that teachers will be teaching any type of or sort of religion. The the purpose as I read the bill is to clarify. The confusion that we have had regarding religious rights of students and teachers and Public schools and I think it's very helpful to understand that. Arkansas isn't alone in this. We've had a number of states as well as Congress clarify these rights and Senate resolution 5, Senator Lankford of Oklahoma recognized the religious freedom as a fundamental right. We have bills in Iowa. We have bills in Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Tennessee. All clarifying the rights, the religious rights of people of faith to demonstrate that faith to bring a Bible, to say a prayer within the confines of the school day and curriculum. So we're not asking teachers to teach religion. We're only clarifying because of the years of confusion and pushback on people of faith within a public school and charter school environment. That's all this bill is doing. In May of 2023, the US Department of Education released an update and guidance on the constitutional protections for prayer and religious expression in public and secondary schools. So, uh, Arkansas is simply trying to clarify this for our Arkansas schoolchildren. I can take any questions. And flowers. Thank you for your comment, um. You say this doesn't require any anything, but if you look at the last page that reiterates what's in the law and, and uh again puts In the law offer an academic study of the Bible course that's provided in by section 616145, so It does talk about a course. And you say it doesn't require it to be taught, but like Senator Johnson said is already on the books. And he reiterates that in this bill. And who do you think is going to teach it. There's no requirement to teach religion or any form of religion in this bill. There is a long list. Who's the academic study of the Bible course. Who would? Not the public school teachers. Well, who would, who would the Department of E certified to teach that. I don't know. So you don't know, are you concerned? No, because I think the Department of Education will handle anything within this bill. That if somebody wants a religious education at schools, then they'll take care of that. That's the Department of Education's decision. And so this is for public schools and you said for public schools and secondary schools. Well, secondary schools are public schools. That means secondary schools. Well, private schools are private schools and then and parents have a choice as to what type of uh environment they want their children to go to. Well, they're receiving public money. And what about homeschool students. Should they, uh, At least get this academic study of the Bible, they receive many of them do, and that's the parents' choice and it's my thought, uh, it's just a personal opinion that um much of the flight from public schools in the last few years he said the light, the flight F I G H E Le public schools, um, is because of the confusion. And and sometimes hostility toward people of faith within the public square and the public school systems, so I believe that something like this would be not only a relief, but an incentive to parents of faith to leave their children in public schools instead of taking their charter money and applying it to private schools, which they've already done. Now they have a voucher. system, which allows them to take their tax money that they've paid into a school system and apply it to a school that they feel like does a better job of delivering for them. We want our public schools to be healthy. We want them to be well rounded. We love our public schools. We want to keep our teachers in our public schools, and bills like this only clarify. To people of faith that they have rights within a public school system. Well, you know, you, you mentioned this reason for flight being about faith and one of the religion. My experience has been white flight. From schools that have been integrated. And, and, and that has happened quite a bit. Would you agree? I wouldn't agree that integration is the cause of any kind of flight. Oh, really? OK, thank you. Are there other questions from the committee? Thank you very much for your. They no further. Folks to speak for or against the bill, what is the will of the second. All in favor. All post. Senator Dodson. Senator Bryant. Senator Murdoch. Senator Murdoch. Senator King. Senator King. Senator Davis. Senator Flowers. Senator Sullivan. We need 5 to pass the bill. Oh my Lord. He passed the bill. Thank you. I voted for it. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, committee. Representative Lee Johnson, like he was. Oh, good. He uh presenting uh House Bill 1384. Yes, Madam Chair, thank you for the committee for hearing this bill. Representative Lee Johnson, District 47, um, am I recognized to present? Thank you, members, we passed some legislation in 2019 to create a grant mechanism for graduate medical education, graduate medical education, as you probably know, is the apprenticeship training that physicians go through that's also called a residency. We recognized back in 2019 that we were going to need some funding for this, but it took a little while to secure the funding, you know, we had this board, this legislation passed to set up the framework, but the funding really didn't become available till last session. And so in the interim there has been some, some of the language that we were using originally in this statute was a little bit outdated, um, and so the product that you're looking before at right now as an amendment that came out of conversations when the board was actually assembled, so the board was assembled this fall, started looking. the language, put out some rules for public comment and the amendment here is is the result of those conversations as well as the result of the public comments, to my, to my knowledge, there's no opposition. We got input from all four medical schools in the state, both the medical school at Jonesboro at Fort Smith, UAMS, and then the soon to be open medical school in Northwest Arkansas and all of these entities agree that these languages are needed to reflect not not only the changes in terminology around how we do residencies now, but also to assure that the money that we're trying to grant for these programs is put in the right place to most effectively grow these training training entities, so again I'd be happy to answer any questions that people have questions on this. Questions from the committee, Sen her flowers. Thank you, Representative Johnson for bringing the bill. I want to understand the purpose. Obviously in in past legislation was to increase the number of residents. Uh, for medical, uh, purposes in Arkansas. Yes, ma'am. And so you mentioned the study and all, so I noticed somewhere in here it said something about the cap with the cap, what is the cap on residency, so there is a federal cap which which every state has to operate under that caps the number of slots that can receive certain types of enhanced funding, so there's funding of mess recognizes that if you are going to have a training program, it's going to inherently cost a little more because residents are slower and it takes time to train them and so to recognize that there's some enhanced funding that comes down and the cap sort of puts a limit on how many people a program can have that they could access it funny so this bill really can't do much to address that cap that would have to be federal changes that what is the cap right now I don't know the specific answer. It's not, it wouldn't specific to Arkansas. I'd have to have to dig into that a little more to give you a specific answer on how that it's not specific to each state. I don't think so, but I could be wrong. I've been wrong before answering that question. I thought it was specific to each state and so the money would come from the feds through grants. No, for this money this is state allocated money and then it would be distributed through the state based on state programs. Have we Been allocating funds for Residency programs we just now in this past 2022 session allocated money into this program and so that's what triggered the board to get assembled through the legislation we enacted in 2019 and we're trying to now take grants and distribute the funds that we've been allocated. These rules are designed to help us distribute those funds in a way that more effectively grows these programs. And so, and what about uh geographic areas for residents to be Placed, so it's open to any program. There's no geographic restrictions one way or the other. It would depend. I mean, the main restriction on growing residencies is you have to have enough clinical staff to train the residents and certainly in certain rural areas of Arkansas that's harder than in the more urban areas because you just don't have the staff but there there have been some effective rural family practice programs that have been set up and there would be no restriction in here on new programs being applied for that would be anywhere in the state where they could support them. Last question, Madam Chair. When, when I served on public health. Committee Um, there was a discussion about um The number of residents. Coming from out of state. Medical schools, so Anywhere in here is an anticipated that we would do more to make sure our Arkansas medical Graduates would be In a residency program in Arkansas or do we have some reciprocity with other states for our resident for our medical uh students to go into their residency program, so I don't think, I don't think there's anything that gives preferential treatment within the residency programs to anyone from any geographic location, whether it's Arkansas or out of state. What we do know is that people tend to live in the last place they trained and so the statistics are pretty clear that if you train and do your residency in a particular location, you tend to settle in that location. So from a workforce development standpoint, the more of these residency programs we have in Arkansas statistically speaking, the more people that are going to stay in Arkansas when they finish the training, having more of these programs available, especially as we grow the number of medical schools that we're growing is important so that we don't lose medical students from Arkansas out of state just because they don't have a training program available, you know, and so this is where Again, this is an important thing for us to be funding so that we can grow the the training programs that are associated with the medical schools as fast as we're going in the medical schools so that we can keep Arkansas and Arkansas and people that train in Arkansas and Arkansas. Thank you. Thank you. Any further questions from the committee. Is there anybody in the audience who likes me for or against the bill. Seeing none like to I'm closed for my bill, madam. Thank you. No Second All favor all poses. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Right Um, let me see. Senator Clark You 167. Madam Chair, need to identify yourself, you'll be Clark Senate District 7. Madam Chair, I am just here because you had asked me if I was going to run 205 and 167, I told you yes. 205, the Department of Education had questions at the last minute that were answering, and 167 AAA and AAE met me outside the door with last 2nd Amendments, so I'm not running either today. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. being here. Just OK, let's see, Senator Dodson. OK, you pass it over. So it appears that. That we have no further business. We are adjourned.