Joint Education
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- October 2, 2026
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:34
Good morning. Welcome to the senate and House Education Committee calling this meeting to order.lad to see everybody here on this beautiful day. The we need to prove the minutes from the March 9th and 10th meetings Do I hear a motion Motion to her
second 2nd. A discussion on the motion all in favor thank you
ok we have a full program today but first off off off the bat we have a presentation from the Arkansas Excellence in
Teaching fellowship programme so if you ladies would please come and join us at the table And gentleman do we need another chair have enough
and if you would push your little button there and identify yourself you'll be recognized Sure
Speaker 8
2:45
so I'll I'll go ahead and kick us off. Jacob Oliva Department of Education and I'm here with three friends
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
2:51
that are representing three different school districts I'm gonna see if I get this right off the top of my head. Cabotpoan andrew central and I'll let Lindsey, Lisa and Melanie each introduce themselves and then I'll tell you a little bit about why we're here and then let them speak a little bit about what's happening and their wonderful classrooms so
Lindsey Lester
Unverified
3:14
hi my name islindsey Lester. I teach
Speaker 12
3:19
third grade at Pon Elementary. I'm Melanie Brotherton. I teach third grade at Drewentral Elementary in Monticello.
Speaker 15
3:26
li s s a Monroe and I teach third grade atord Central Elementary in
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
3:32
the Cabot school district. so these three teachers I I I was saying earlier I think saying three of the best teachers in the state of Arkansas is an understatement. Some say these are three of the
best teachers in the nation and they're out in front of our students each and every single day and what makes them great is that they just completed finishing a yearlong kind of residency program or fellowship called the Arkansas excellence in Teaching Fellowshipgrame. Now in order to be in this program this is a new program that we worked on throughout the agency and in order to be invited to participate in this program there are some criteria that they had to meet and they're going to explain a little bit
about how they met that criteria but one of the biggest indicators is they are recipients of teacher merit pay. and if you remember with Arkansas learns as we elevated and celebrated excellent teaching and student learning by raising starting salaries and investing into our classrooms we developed a teacher meritpay system that recognizes teachers that are getting amazing gains out of their students and these three third grade teachers are
recipients of merit pay and then they participate in a yearlong fellowship program with some representatives from our agency to talk about the profession because one of the things that we definitely heard from the legislatures how do we get our best teachers to help mentor and teach other teachers about some of the wonderful work they're doing so we're following up
Speaker 8
5:03
on the commitment I'm gonna turn it over to them and I'm sure some members may have some questions if that's OK. one of you has to jump forward
Speaker 19
5:21
the fellowship has been a really cool experience. we meet a couple of times a year through Zoom and we there were a about 20 2 I think it says 23 of us from all over the state and so it was really neat to get to learn from other teachers who are excellent educators and see the different things that they're doing in
Speaker 21
5:44
their classrooms. it's provided us with resources now have two3rd grade teachers that I can reach out to
Speaker 22
5:52
across the state it's helped me to strengthen myself if I have ideas somebody else's idea may be better
Speaker 21
6:00
and we're all in this to learn no matter how long that we've been in education and I've really enjoyed learning things from other teachers across the state
Speaker 14
6:12
it's kind of like being on a cheerleader squad where everyone is completely encouraging one another it's just been amazing
you don't realize the situations that you have in your own school district with your own students that those same things are mirrored in other counties and other parts of the state so when we have something that is a difficult task it's just a blessing to be able to you know confer with other educators who have some ideas that have worked and what works is when you see kids grow we're here for one
Speaker 15
6:48
reason, one reason only and it makes sure students grow
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
7:01
Representative Mayberrry thank you. I just have to brag that Lindsey Laster taught my
daughteroney back when she was at East End Intermediate School, not atpon but was also there is my daughter was a special education intern through Henderson state atpoen this year and I think had some interaction with you as well so anyway wanted to say thank you. I know firsthand what a great teacher you are. but while I have the opportunity we've got a group of
third grade teachers and we're all here to kind of learn and help one another and and all that and there's been a lot of focus on third grade testing. and just wanted to ask advice from other third grade teachers. They will likely be some teachers who will have students who are going to be retained for the first time this year because of of their scores on the atlas test what advice would you give to those teachers who will have these students
potentially being held back. if you could could share some some great advice I'll address that I
Speaker 14
8:11
had a little girl come to me at the beginning of the year that was reading four words a minute in third grade. So my advice to any educator number one is when you get your students at the beginning of the year you have to think where do you want them to be in May? what do you want to achieve by May to allow them to continue on their education to fourth grade
we have to intervene we have to plan interventions once we get the data and you have to do things above and beyond what is available for example, I met Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday mornings at7:30 with a group of kids that was really struggling that received a level one on their interim and our whole goal was what can we do to make that better but we have to do that at the very beginning of the year and my advice to any third grade teacher is you're in it for the long run and you have to know
why your heart is in it. If your heart is in it to see kids grow you're going to do the things that allow them to grow and you're going to find things so you're going to either do interventions you're gonna get pullouts you're gonna go to RTI meetings you're gonna make sure those kids are taken care of and if you feel like you don't have enough resources we have a committee that principals are all willing to get things into the hands of teachers to allow them to get those kids to grow and that is our focus
Senator Jane English
Unverified
9:35
So thank you so let me ask this question is is it only is is this only third grade teachers or is this all all teachers kindergarten through 12.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
9:52
graders mean that are part of this s of this leadership groups for
Speaker 19
9:56
anyone who receives merit pay I think for today's panel
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
10:00
it just so happened that these3 were available in the all teach third grade but and it's
because we're the topic is the reading is so important yeah so but the the fellowship included23 educators and they covered pretty much all subjects across the spectrum so uhpresentative Duke
Senator Jane English
Unverified
10:17
thank you madam chair thank you all
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
10:21
for being here and for your years of service. I am my first question is how many years have you all taught?
Speaker 21
10:29
I've taught 27 that have've been in education for 28. I started as a paraprofessional that's great
Speaker 19
10:37
I'm a little over ir0 I am 13 I started in fourth grade for four years. I moved to Poen and did 1st grade for two years and then I was asked to move to3rd and
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
10:49
I've been there for7. that's fantastic so just again thank you guys for staying in the long haul as well too so we really appreciate it I'm glad to hear your your years of wisdom are being passed around to these that are part of this cohort I'm curious the information because you guys I guess are zooming together what are you doing with the information that you're gathering and then
dispensing it through your district because obviously it's great for you but how are you making your districts better through what you're gaining through this
Speaker 21
11:19
cohort? I meet with my team and discuss what was discussed on the zooms and pass on the information I also share it with my principal and other lead teachers and other grade levels so that they everybody knows what we discussed. right the rest of you
Speaker 30
11:35
y all do y'all have a similar strategies?
Speaker 19
11:39
yes ma'am. I we're I'ms small we're small.pon is very small so I whatever the information I got I would send out to my entire campus and then I would send it to my superintendent and the principals and we would discuss things in our PLCs the merit payy slide show that we got that was something that was really I guess interested in and so people would come and ask lots of questions
Speaker 14
12:00
about that. I was just gonna say the same thing in our PLC meetings which is strictly by grade level but our principal and assistant principal passed that information on to the whole
school and then when we got the slideshow I sent it out to the entire staff and then to Liz massey who sends it out to all the elementary
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
12:19
schools in Cabot. OK great I have a question for you Secretary Leva so on on these teachers here maybe it says
this on this form and I didn't see it what do you know like what is I guess the teacher with the least amount of years of service and the ones with the longest. I'm just kind of curious where some of your gyms are that you
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
12:37
have in this cohort. that's a great question. I don't know that information
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
12:41
on the time my head but I'd be happy to to get it for that would be great because just think that's kind of fascinating to see how long they've been there and also if we have some that right off
I guess is it three years or something before you can be a part of this so obviously they couldn't have been year one or two but maybe if you had your three or four it also might be an indicator of how our colleges are turning in our teachers too if they hit the ground
running you know year3 or4 and we have some of them qualifying for this but that's really super exciting. I appreciate again what all
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
13:08
y'all are doing there yes I'm sorry say I think also
would would just really kind of special about this program is is one that they're probably not going to tell you this but they probably don't like this kind of attention right like the these these teachers are the ones that are starting meeting with kids before school after school nights and weekends they go and by around this is a calling this is their passion this is their heart and soul and you know when we've been doing this teacher merid and and looking at value added measure scores and and making sure that people have that information.
Every one of these teachers will tell you like I can't believe I'm getting recognized for this like this is just what we do and I think what you'll find when we get that information to you and that that spectrum of teachers this is what makes our state special you know the these these teachers have been working here 2030, almost 2 030 years and they're seeing a lot of education reform happen, right? And I'm sure every one of them probably says here we go again watching the educational
pendulum swing but what we're doing with learns and getting coherence and alignment and then really investing in our classrooms is why we're going to see these monumental shifts in outcomes and and I think like if if they were to talk about that experience that I think that's kind of where you're getting at is like these are there is so much knowledge and wisdom that not only just help the next generation of teachers but think about the these third graders that are now reading at grade level how they're going to
be successful in school and you know when when we look at how many teachers we recognize through teacher merit which was new, new to the state of Arkansas. how many teachers we recognize like our goal would would be like for everybody to qualify because it's there's a reason they're here and there's a reason that happened so yeah we'd be happy to do that but I I know sometimes they're they're they're not gonna brag right but we need to brag on what what these folks are doing each and every single day and then and for them to share their expertise and wisdom with others
it's it's contagious and and everybody wins because
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
15:17
of it. I agree with that and I also one more question do you also I know these are not you're are third grade. The other range of teachers do you have high how high up in in the high school do
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
15:30
you have I wanna say they went to about biology geometry like the the end of course exam subjects areas so it it's a pretty good spectrum that's
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
15:38
great and then I guess my final question it would be so since you guys are all third grade teachers and you're
dealing with that right the conversation's being had I I mean gonna assume especially since how you excel with your 1st and 2nd grade in kindergarten teachers could you maybe kind of expand a little bit on how you guys are communicating with them and preparing those kids so we're not hitting third grade with the4 words
in a minute but getting that conversation lower I'm sure it's happening but since you're here could you
Speaker 21
16:09
share with us it's become more intense for K2 because those students have got to be you know we have to know
who they are they shouldn't be getting to3rd grade we should identify them before3rd grade. so I believe that even more screening testing it's become more intense for them which is good for us because you know of the law that's you know that's a great thing that it's is more intense because a child is probably gonna do better if they're retained in first grade rather than3rd. I was just gonna share
Speaker 14
16:45
that one of the things we're doing
this year which I'm so excited about is each grade level so I just prepared over the weekend and beginning of third grade test so things that we expect second graders to know by the time they come to3rd grade. they're giving those assessments this week on Wednesday and then we meet in the summer during our PLC to plan our whole year out and we'll have that data to drive our instruction even more fully and see who needs the
intervention before they even get to school. so we're so excited like my third graders will take one from the fourth grade teachers so I think that's going to be very very developmentally helpful for all of us because it'll give us data that we can use to get that instruction even a
Senator Jane English
Unverified
17:36
lot more solid So are are we
testing children in kindergarten and first grade to see where kind of where they are and see what issues that they might be having so we're not just waiting till
the third grade but we have some testing going along and and some things
Speaker 31
17:55
in place to help them. yes ma'am we start the year with the screeners
Speaker 32
17:58
that are given through Atlas and we take those results and use them throughout the year. The students are progress monitored throughout the year and we also have testslits through Atlas that we can give along with teacher made assessments so those kids are monitored all throughout the year and then we take atlas at the end of the year.
Speaker 14
18:16
let me identify this to the little girl that came reading
four words per minute they did not want her to move on from first. The parents refused. They did not want her to move on to sec and so that is out of our control if a parent says they want their child to move on so we did everything so this year our our goal was what can we do to give her the very best education she possibly can regardless of the support she has at home the last plug that I
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
18:47
will say is when you guys get the surveys
please extend to your fellow teachers those surveys that come from I don't know how it's labeled from our committee just asking all the different things please just make sure everyone fills them out we have really good participation from the superintendents but I for one would really like to have better participation from the teachers because as you guys are gonna see or maybe you follow we're gonna go through these and it really does matter to us what your all's opinions are so encourage them next year to make sure they fill them out it's not just one of those surveys no one looks at we actually do look at them and go through them very thoroughly so again thank you all. thank you madam chair
Senator Jane English
Unverified
19:22
thank you. OK, let's see Stteen meeks thank you
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
19:26
madam chair so I'm over here by the column here so first off thank you ladies for your for your service to the to the state as my colleagues know with my portable planetarium program I literally see thousands of third grade students across the state every every year and so my question is is kind of related to that what do you see this is basically what this third grade group they're they're basically kind of like
the first postOVID group, right coming up? What do you see as the biggest challenges facing our third graders right now that might be hindering them from being where they need to be? Is it social media? iss it issues at home what are y'all seeing as as as those challenges and then my next question but maybe for the secretary. I noticed there's only 23. sounds like a great program. Is there a reason it's only
23? why do we not have50 or75. so just kind of curious the those two and then I'll have one
Speaker 18
20:32
more follow up I don't think it's anything new that students don't always come from a good home so I see
Speaker 19
20:37
a lot of that in the area that I live in where we're more of a lower socioeconomic area so we have a
Speaker 32
20:43
lot of students who live with grandparents and great grandparents and aunts and uncles and students who live in campers and different things like that and I know that that affects them in the classroom.
so one of the biggest things that we do at the beginning of
Speaker 19
20:58
the year is build relationships with them because they're not going to do well on any assessment or any classwork if they don't have a relationship
Speaker 77
21:10
built with you and they don't trust you I would have to follow up with what she
Speaker 21
21:15
said the most important thing that I can do with students regardless of where they came from or what their situation is is building relationships because that's where you start and build that bond with them
where they trust you and they wanna step out and ask questions I deal with that a lot and the most important thing I can do is find out who they are where they are they challenges their
Speaker 80
21:38
strengths and what kind of learner they are. think
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
21:42
school becomes the only stable thing in their lives a lot of times it sounds like. so Mr Secretary the so I think it's
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
21:50
a great question so you know when we're we've been looking back at this program
this is year one of the program and we we put out an invitation and I wanna say the the initial response because we we were targeting like the very high end of teachermeripay like these are the teachers that are getting the $10,000 award you know the7,500 dollars award so we we would we sent out letters to all of them and not everybody wants to participate it's new. Nobody knows what they're signing for because this is a commitment right I mean the the these were people that you you are giving up their personal time above and beyond to
participate in this program so yeah maybe next year we'll get to50 you know maybe maybe as word gets out and you also got to try to find that magic number where it's still small enough that they have time to learn from each other the benefit so I think we're gonna learn from them too about how to make that better but yeah we we want to invite as many folks that are eligible and hopefully participation percentage goes higher
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
22:50
right and then my my final questions for the for the ladies obviously you're sitting here in front of the general assembly. I know y'all have
talked probably amongst yourselves and your colleagues and said I wish they would do this or they need to do this differently so here's your opportunity what would you have us know that yes yeah I know I may be opening a can of worms here but yes yeah remember this is live streamed yeah so just be careful but what do what do you wish that we would do different or what do we need to do as a general assembly as a state of Arkansas that maybe we're not doing that
we need to do to help you in what you do, right? if you've ever you know, I wish I, you know if I were the governor this is what I would do differently, right? So how would you answer that question to how would you have
Speaker 14
23:44
us help you do your job. OK I think the number one thing is we've got to do a better job promoting positivity in public education and I think the way that you do
that is you focus in on the success stories of both students and teachers and go to different districts go to the ones that you know have a lower socioeconomic go to the ones you know up in Bentonville go where they are growing and find out what's happening and let them be the person who speaks. I think the more we cover people that are doing a good job because they love it not because of meritpa you know I I had a
first year teacher ask me about merit pay and I said if you are concerned about merit pay then you need to go back and ask yourself why are you teaching? Why did you choose this profession and I believe if you're why is heartfelt and genuine you don't even worry about merit pay and I can attribute to the other women next to me the first year I received it. I mean I cried so hard my husband thought I was in an accident because I thought I was gonna
get maybe $200. I had no idea and it's because that was not my focus my focus is how can we make these kids better how can they grow? what can we do to make them a success and I think focusing in on those teachers and those students and putting it on the news that's going to promote positivity in public education Maybe other two
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
25:24
ladies have any ideas on that or can't think
Speaker 19
25:28
of anything off the top of my head that specifically but and I'm sure that you guys
do this but just reaching out to teachers in different school districts in different grade levels in maybe throwing them an idea and seeing what they think and just and kind of including teachers. I know that there have been some times where my principal or superintendent have come and said ok now we have to do this and I thought, oh man, I wish they would have asked my opinion and like I said I can't think of one off the top of my head but just including teacher input I think would be great right thank you again thank
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
25:56
you lads for being here thank you madam chair thank you very much. let's see
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
26:04
ourpresentative Barnes all right thank you chair thank you ladies so much for coming today and I commend you fory outstanding work first of all I've always thought teachers ought to be highest paid you you are shaping mold our at least and they go make50 million
and you're making50,000 but thank you so much for what you're doing. I do have a question number one are you curriculum guided in your teaching or you test guided I'm hearing a lot of teachers say they're trying to teach the test and how how how how do you do that
Speaker 14
26:56
I have never taught to the test. I take the state standards and like I said we think about where we want them in May
so we take the data that we receive on them in the summer or August and how do we align that to better get them to the position that we want to get them to and in in the end of May so if you focus on what the child's needs are and addressing those needs you don't have
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
27:26
to teach to the test. 11 last question have you found any incentives that seem to work best with that age group when you're trying
to motivate them to learn what incentives you may be using for
Speaker 22
27:41
that age group I use a card punch and they get a question correctly I will punch a card they get 10 across that card they get to tell me what they want as their reward
Speaker 101
27:53
they love that I've used that all year long. do
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
27:59
you have any support from the community in helping get those incentives up extra monies from some
outside entity non faithbas or some investor into the school will help you buy those local churches inwardd because we're kind
Speaker 43
28:15
of the stepchild of Cabot I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean
Speaker 14
28:20
that in a good way we're just our own little city and our churches donate and like I'm missing right now they are doing an atlas incentive and the local fire department and they have a foam machine so they're out getting sprayed right now and I get to stay dry but yes we have a we have community outsourcing
Speaker 22
28:40
thank you so much I buy things like that myself when they come into my classroom they become part of my family so umm I mean I feel like I'm buying it for my own children. My children used to be jealous of my classroom
Speaker 33
28:59
kids so thank you chair thank you very much umpresentative Bram
Speaker 106
29:03
thank you madam chair and thank all of
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
29:05
you for being here today and for the work that you do.
I had a question for Miss Monroe. you told us I mean I really appreciate the extra effort the initiative you took to work with these children that needed a little extra and I I didn't recall I don't recall you saying how how how well they improved did you were you able to see I'm sure you are improvement and can you tell us some of your
Speaker 14
29:37
success stories I had um7 children and only one
could come just one day a week so I really had6 because you don't like to get more than6 in a small group but all six of them grew at least 10 to15 points on all areas of their atlas scores. so we saw great improvement and one of them who was a level one in the fall, a level two at interim in the winter it became a level3 reader and grew33 points.on thank you very much thank you all
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
30:13
Representative ladyman I'm over here thank you madam chairir and I'm not a member of the committee. I appreciate you letting me ask
a question well thank you all for being here and giving us your time cause I know it's valuable and I also have to put in a plug for Haley Harris up in Valleyview where I coached for some time and my kids went to school there doesn't surprise me that Mallieieu is doing this and one of the teachers there one more thing for us a question Miss Monroe, I agree
with you 100% about the positivity you know it if you have one negative thing it takes 10 positives to offset that and we don't get near that many positives especially in news coverage and I'm saying this for the news because y'all need more coverage on programs like this where the kids grow and the atlasest I'm very familiar with that. I fished with my two grandsons in the boat this weekend. I heard all about the atlas test
and what grades they made and what they didn't do very good at but just a real quick question what what this program going through this, what's the most important thing that you learned from talking to other people and participating in meetings what would you say is the most important thing that you gained from that collaboration this might help other teachers that
Speaker 21
31:41
are listening. how other people use data, how
they use it in the classroom, how they interact with the the students on the data things that they may do for assessments that we don't do we even talked about the use of AI and how other people are using things that I haven't heard of before so then when I heard it I'm introducing it to everyone in my school to get that word out that there's other ways that we can do things
Speaker 77
32:17
I don't depend on AI a whole lot but I'll grow to that I'm kind of
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
32:24
old school so you know that's amazing you mentioned that and they'll probably get it quicker than than I
Speaker 116
32:32
would. y'all have anything else? I think that we learned collaboratively that there's no magic
Speaker 19
32:37
program even though we're all using HQIm that is on the list from the state it it's about consistency and it's about the data and I know sometimes teachers feel drugged down by
all the data and it's data this and data that but if you use it correctly you
Speaker 14
32:57
know your students and you're going to see growth. It's connecting data
Speaker 118
33:02
to a relationship with a child can I make a comment for
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
33:08
conversation because we we have three third grade teachers here we get asked all the questions about third grade promotion. what does that look like? how is it different? where what are the numbers gonna be
but what's different I think going into this school year and what we've built as a state through Arkansas learns and I like to say some of the biggest things I think that Argasas learns did for teachers was provide clarity in alignment. We made everything that we expected them to do so confusing and hard to understand and then didn't give them any information specific back to those students and their performance for months and
what we did when we made this commitment to building a unified coordinator progress monitoring system kindergarten through high school where every student's working off the same criteria clear and easy standards to understand we talked about teaching to to the standards not to an assessment but we made the assessments clear we doubled down on the science of reading. we added additional resources like coaches and high impact tutoring and and all of those
those right investments but we're also able to now get that snapshot in time which is that summit assessment and through that progress monitoring teachers can get that data and make instructional decisions so that when it gets to that summit of assessment it's not a surprise it's not a surprise if a student's ready to
Speaker 53
34:38
pass that assessment or not retention is not new in the state of Arkansas. Students have been getting retained for decades which new is that we actually do something about it. We actually say let's get this child, let's
get them in an intervention plan. let's make sure they have resources and if they have to move on and they're not where we expect them to be. let's make sure that that plan continues. that's what we're doing here before we would just retain kids retain kids now we have a purpose and it's a laser likeke purpose we're going to retain less students because we're getting better at it but what's different this year which I think is magical and that teachers alluded to it is students are getting their test results within 24 hours that's never happened. Think about that
talk about celebrating so now they can meet with students and families and say this is how your child's doing and this is how they did and this is what we're going to work on. so this system that we've built it's taken a few years to build and we're still figuring out some of the stuff especially in the K2 spaces because that's in its second year of alignment but what we have done as a state
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
35:44
is we've added clarity and alignment and we're going to see outstanding performance and growth for decades because these teachers have been here for
decades. The teachers know what they were doing we just threw them in a bad system bad systems beat good people every time we have an
Speaker 53
35:59
aligned system for the first time and so your grandkids are getting test results. When have students ever been able to talk to their grandparents or parents about test resultsever you know why because we never told them how they did. Now
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
36:12
they know and so we're owning teaching and learning that's why I think this is exciting when we talk about that in a in a and I think and I don't I'm not asking
commit questions of the committee but that's what's mag also happen in this year and and I don't correct me if I'm wrong but I think some of these teachers here have received merit pay every year that we've had it right? like these folks have always existed. we've got them aligned in a system where we're gonna see even more
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
36:39
students excel. congratulations on the merit pay. I know that's not why you said you said that why you didn't do it but I believe it we should reward hard work and I think that's what that system does. Just one more quick question I'll give up the mic
here but Secretary Leva, I don't think this question's been asked but maybe you need to answer but what is the smallest school that we have a representative from and the largest I mean are we do we have people in these small
Speaker 34
37:08
schools that are going for this this merit program I mean you're
Speaker 124
37:12
you're probably the small est in employees yeah yes I'm fromowen and we're very small.
Speaker 19
37:16
we have two classes per grade level and there were4 or5 in our elementary I know that received merit pay. so I feel like we're doing pretty
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
37:25
well so what about the large schools Cabot is prior it
Speaker 14
37:32
was a little secretive who got it the first year but in my particular elementary school we had5 teachers I know of that received it so I don't know how many outside of my particular elementary school received it but quite a few but5 from our school was a lot well thank you thank you Senator Davis
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
38:00
thank you madam chairir. I I love this fellowship program. I mean I think you alluded to it a little bit the first year the yeah I know it's hard to see the first year I had friends who are teachers and they would come up to me and say I got merit pay you know but they didn't want anybody else to know just the the culture around that and I love this fellowship program that it is really bringing celebration and excitement to the fabulous work that teachers are doing across the state. I think it's worth celebrating and I think
it's worth rewarding and so I love that this has come together and we have teachers across the state that are able to collaborate and and finally sort of come out of the shadows so to speak over the last few years on merit pay and and be able to say like I am doing a fantastic job in my classroom and I'm getting you know rewarded for that. I think it's I think it's amazing I was kind of curious if there are any strategies or approaches specifically and you guys have sort of maybe answered this question throughout the line of
questioning but anything that you're doing specifically in your classroom or that you're finding your strategies and approaches are really what you're seeing other teachers doing across the state that are also receiving merit pay if there's any sort of like common denominator there as far as teaching I know building relationships with kids and having them trust you but are there actual like teaching things that you're doing that you find are being done across the state or that really worked for you in your classroom?
Speaker 14
39:32
several years ago Cabot brought in Ruby Payne and we used a lot of her strategies back that was probably 8 years ago probably the best professional development I've ever attended and so they kind of got away from those and what I did was I introduced those to my fellow co-teachers and said this works you know you try to get a third grader to capitalize the beginning word of every sentence and they've got a little formula that you can use and so
that's been very helpful as far as strategies and I think any other strategies it goes back to when we talk about relationships every child is different so they learn different. you know, boys learn differently from girls. I have4 boys, I know that for a fact and you have to really take to heart you know some of the kids that have really deep struggles it comes from something behind the scenes not something in the classroom when we discover what
that is and are able to develop how we are a safe place and we really want to see them excel that's when the growth happens and I can give you an example of a little boy real quick that came to me angry he was in the office every day and I sat down with them at lunch. I had him eat lunch with me found out that he came from a split home he was living with dadd he didn't get to see mom and he was angry about it and he couldn't speak. he had very difficult speech problems and you know the parent said
constantly you can't read because you can't speak so we started on that level and I got the speech teacher to work with me on things that we were working in the classroom and just that little bit that kid grew from a kindergarten level to reading about48 words on a third grade level at the end of the school year. simply because we erased the anger and replaced it with relationships and he really genuinely knew that we cared about him so I think that strategy of
knowing the needs of the child which I'm sure these two teachers do every day makes
Speaker 21
41:46
a huge difference. I use a lot of one on one at first in my classroom. I do the one on one and then it gets less because I start putting them into small groups I like to I mean I'll start with teacher led but I go to studentcented so that they are taking ownership of their learning and their teaching which is a higher depth of knowledge level when they have to teach each other and it
also forms those relationships with each other to where they're critiquing in a positive
Speaker 22
42:16
way and supporting which is what I want them to do is support each other and rally behind their successes and meeting the small goals that I I make for them at the beginning. we sat down and we talk and we decide on a goal you know first it might be well I want to learn how to read fast, but then it gets more specific as you go on I mean I'll take those I'll take that
Speaker 21
42:42
but then it goes a little bit more specific and a more centered to what they really need
Speaker 32
42:49
I always say that my success is not mine alone. the K2 teachers build the foundation for the students that I get in the third grade. I think that we have we we are very I don't know how to say it. I guess we're we have the benefit of a small school in my hallway there are two second grade classes and 23rd grade classes and we're on the same PLc team. so we meet at the beginning of the year with all of our test
scores and we put every kid on a note card and we're moving them around and putting them into groups sometimes I'm able to send my third graders to second grade teachers to work on things and then they're able to send some of their higher level readers to me to work on comprehension. So I feel like that has really helped us grow in our school district. I think that just having high expectations is a really big deal because students are not going to rise to low expectations every the past three years my co-teacher and I have had
pretty good test scores, and so I feel like we're we're in the right we're going in the right direction we're doing the right things and we've had teachers from other school districts call and come and visit us and they want to know what are you doing why are your test scores so high and it's because we work together and we use the data and
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
44:02
we figure out what the students need. I love that thank you. are there times in the day that I know there's like planning prep periods but to really look at data like consistently are there times in the day that your schools have carved out for you to be able to do that
like on a consistent basis like weekly even
Speaker 31
44:20
or we meet once a week on Wednesdays after school for30 minutes. Most of the time we go over but we're we're we're required to be there
Speaker 21
44:28
for30 minutes. thank you We also meet once a week we have a a we call it a cluster meeting where we meet with
Speaker 22
44:34
our master teacher and then we have a meeting where I meet with my grade level team
Speaker 14
44:42
Diddtto we meet during the week for our PLC meeting and
we usually meet45 minutes but sometimes because they have three consecutive activities in a row sometimes
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
45:03
it goes all the way till we pick them up at recess Representative gonzalez thank you first congratulations. and I am an educator still, still prac practicing and so it excites me always whenever I'm around teachers and especially teachers
that have gone the extra mile and now you're recognized and and continuing to learn I think that's one of the big things is you know being that critical thinker but also critical on your practice so that you can move forward and learning from other teachers and that that you mentioned that throughout when you were just talking, just now. I was curious as to the pathway you you are paraprofessional you mentioned
you're from paraprofessional to teacher and I have a I work with therow Your ownwn programme in my university and so I was just very curious because one of the things that that I've learned just through the years is that when you're a paraprofessional and you have this interest of becoming a teacher, wow that's just awesome because you're in that classroom and you know exactly why you're in that classroom because you've had all those years' experience of prior to and so what I wanted to know from you is what your pathway was from parra to
teacher just how you were able to move from parent to teacher and then my second question might be more for the secretary and that is I know that for teachers who apply to this program. one of the one of the number four on the well this is for the eligibility and I didn't know if this was when it comes to critical shortage area what do we mean exactly by critical shortage area. OK so those are my two questions I was actually certified as a
Speaker 21
46:52
teacher when I was hired as a a irra I actually volunteered and I started at the school because I had two daughters and I wanted to help them so what came you know involvement became a purpose and so wanted to work at this particular school because I graduated from there and it was like coming home when I was there you know when you have those teachers that pour into you you want to do that same
thing for for others so I was actually certified when I was a pair I actually had a groups that would come to me either the high or the low it didn't matter I had
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
47:37
my own classroom OK thank you first part I agree just on the comment about paros and investing in different pathways to help them become a licensed teacher if that's the pathway they choose in my experience I I think we found that a lot of your best
teachers may have started as a pararo and maybe didn't know that they have this natural gift to want to become a teacher so I'm like those grow your own programs and investing in those opportunities to to credential the pair of pros that are there is is such a great investment so definitely concur in in that journey and being a part of that what identifies as a critical shortage area we actually run our report every year and in
that report it it looks at the number of licensed folks needed in those different teaching categories and then how many we have and then that report gets published so like all the different criteriameripay and and we could be happy to send you some information because we have a pretty good website that has all that information but I think it's important for folks to remember it's it's not just tested subject areas that are eligible for meripay there are critical shortage areas like where where we know and a lot of times you'll see it in maybe
like 2nd day secondary science like it's hard to find a physics teacher or a chemistry teacher like those are the kind of subject areas but it's also a geographically hard to staff locations so even you have critical subject areas but then even like geographically there's hard to staff areas just because of the region or part of the communities they serve but every teacher's eligible we have kindergarten teachers that got merit pay here this year.body keeps saying that they're not eligible. I think we have about35 kindergarten teachers receive merit pay because they can fall in a
different bike. It doesn't matter if you're a band teacher, it doesn't matter if you're a PE teacher. there are things you can do you have to be licensed you have to be deemed highly effective or effective or highly effective on your evaluation but one of the biggest programs is is part of our master teacher designation program or mentoring other teachers and teaching a critical short years geographically hard to locate so when we look at kind of who receives this teachers received meripay from our largest districts in the state of Arkansas all the way down to our smallest so but to
answer your question there's an annual report that we have to produce
Speaker 148
50:03
that that looks at the the numbers so just to make sure I'm understanding
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
50:09
so you also mentioned the maybe areas of support like academic support in a in a school or a school district that they're are you refer ring to for example paraprofessionals just as an example. would
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
50:24
this would be for licensed teachers yeah yeah for academic was just
curious because I know they act the supports that that come along oftentimes it's coupled with
an instructional assistant or it's a you know well and I
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
50:39
think it's even just you know talking with superintendents sometimes it's bigger than that like I like to say our our entire educational family right so like bus drivers food service workers I mean everybody pays a part until these students being successful in these classrooms and you know that there's some harsh
realities like like probably one of the hardest staffing areas I hear consistently is bus drivers right like who wants to get up at5 o'clock in the morning, drive a bus and they all like just how do we find better incentives because they're making a difference and and I always like to say sometimes those are the first the bus drivers the first face a lot of students see in the morning and the last one they see and and the bus driver knows a lot about what's going on in a student's life and when they're partnering with their teachers and everybody's coming together that's when we start seeing these x success stories
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
51:32
represents Representative Richardson Thank you. thank you madam chairir. good morning to you guys and I had to step away for a minute but I did want to say thank you for the work
that you're doing and what you're doing for our children it's very much appreciated. my question is for Doctor Alita. I'm sorry Mr. Oli a secret Oliva Olivia ok listen I've
Speaker 159
51:58
been called worse youca you can call me whatever you want.
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
52:04
I'm curious to know and I don't know if the question had been asked or not but in terms of not necessarily people that are receiving the merit increase or merit pay but do you know if there's a breakdown in time and position like are we seeing merit pay for teachers that are two years or less or is it are we mainly seeing it from more seasoned teachers that have been there5 or 1020 years. Yeah that's a good question. I don't
Speaker 154
52:26
know if we have the exact number of years for everybody that does merit pay but part of the the eligibility requirements you have to be in the classroom
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
52:35
for at least3 years so it it you're seeing like we we've got teachers here with30 years' experience 1 6 and20 something so it's all it's it's it spreads all over the spectrum but at least they've been in
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
52:46
the classroom for three years but you are able then to pull that data to show people that have teachers that have been there for three at least the three years to be eligible percentage of those have been eligible as opposed to those that have been there longer yes ok thank you Representative garner
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
53:05
thank you madam chairir over here I just have a quick question and I'll save the others for their update for education but you talked earlier about ruby Payne is it the same ruby painne that talks about poverty in the classroom? OK. so that brings up a whole set of issues obviously when we're talking about poverty in the classroom and I love that you're that you're dealing with with her and some of her
programs do y'all have a social worker in your school districts does every every district in Arkansas does not have a social worker yet did they? I didn't think so. do do y'all have a social worker or do you have access to social workers in your community you know some of these folks obviously want to help their child but they're working three jobs or whatever and so I don't think it's quite fair to say that the parents aren't interested in their children. I don't think sometimes that may be the case
but most of the time I think it's it's something else but I'm just wondering if you found those that program or her her suggestions helpful in the classroom if you're pulling in some of her some of her expert advisors out in the
Speaker 14
54:24
community we have a lot of counselors and one of them is deemed as a social worker for the district but we have counselors in the school all the time and they
come and meet with us individually to see how that student is doing what are you using so for example theruby Payne strategies if they're struggling in reading comprehension or in writing I you know I give those to that counselor and when they meet with thats that student they can go over that with them so they're kind of double dipping and so that's been very very beneficial but as far as social workers coming into our building we have more counselors than we do as social worker
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
55:08
and and I think that I think that most people would agree that school counselors have very different job description than social workers. so you're using a school counselor it sounds like exactly like you should be using a school counselor and and they should be helping with those academic issues but when you're talking about some of the other things that poverty is poverty related to the families then you probably do really need a social worker or somebody somebody in the in the mental health and andhaal out of our four outside counselors two of
Speaker 53
55:39
them are actual social workers can also add to that cause you know there's
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
55:47
a lot that's put on schools and schools only have so many resources right and I and I think what you're talking about is kind of organizing communities to to to have some ownership and when we heard about firefighters and faith-based organizations and looking at the entire family and I think that's a lot of kind of that vision behind the governor's ent I think it's the
1013 initiative sometimes they get the wrong verse in that but it's like what is that hope hub? like what is that central and I know like recently I visited a a program at Batesville where like if a family comes in to register for the school district they have a lot of like community partners offices in the school district so it's like hey if you need help with this this and this it's it's a onestop shop and I think I think that's kind of like conversation that you know there's there's so much that the school can do and that they do
do that is above and beyond but how do we get our other agencies how do we get our other partners together Ca typically if you see a child in need of services there's a family in need of services right like it it's it's usually not just a one off and I think that's what we've heard a lot today about those relationships it's like they they have to unpack like why is school not fun to an eight year old right like something's going on school should be fun and we should we should want to go to school and and life shouldn't be that complicated so if we can remove some of those obstacles and
barriers, I think that's why we as a state you know the legislature invested in the in the 1013 initiative and that that we're trying to put some resources around being more laser
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
57:23
like focused and organized. great and I think you know I think I think the school is a great place to do that because every child and every family have you know have have input there and are are there every day. I'm just I'm thankful that the education department is working with some of the other initiatives to make sure that
that's happening we we should not be mandating with any with without giving resources for anything I don't think but we shouldn't be mandating without resources but it makes sense that the school is the one place where families and children are going everyday that that we should be working together to make sure that that's happening so I just appreciate that thank you. I was just going to add we have a backpack
Speaker 67
58:04
program every Friday and we have the local people come in and they fill the backpacks with food for the
Speaker 14
58:14
family at Christmas time the teachers and the local churches adopt families that need Christmas presents and then we also partner even though we're out in ward with the every Arkansan which is in downtown LittleRock and we have provided when there's been a fire when there's been they've lost a home we've provided furniture for the entire family utensils you know in case they lost everything so we have a lot of resources that we utilize for
the benefit of those students and those families
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
58:47
that are in need. Thank you. And I just want to clarify it's the 10:33 initiative I think I said the wrong one and I don't want Morgan
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
59:03
apologize.10:33 I will not forget. Umpresentative shepherd thank thank you madam chairir and I'm I'm thankful thatpresentative garner asked that question beforehand because it's along the lines of the question that I was gonna
ask so I think two parts now Mr Secretary one is as do you know what work and if you don't know if you can get the information to the committee I'd appreciate that in regards to ACs which is adverse childhood experiences and of course children in Arkansas face more trauma than any other child in the nation so do you know what work is
Speaker 178
59:40
currently happening throughout the state related to addressing ACs in our
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
59:46
schools. Yeah I don't know if I know the answer specifically around aces I I know like when you look at the percentage of schools and districts and sometimes it's even through a co op that have those mental health supports you know so when you look at that adverse childhood experiences that means there's several different conditions that are could be predictors that students may need some extra intervention and support I I I probably need to do a little research in a specifically how they use those instruments and
tools. I don't know if I know that because it may look different depending on the school or or the
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:00:23
co op or the region but that that's a good question. OK thank you I'd appreciate that and the follow up you mentioned the the 1033 initiative at 1033 is based on Luke and the Good Samaritan I was actually a part of that launch in Pulaski County with Morgan in the governor's office at my church. so with that being said
Speaker 181
1:00:42
the question is are our schools partnering with 1033 initiative?
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:00:50
in a way so there's there's also this kind of hope hub initiative that many of our districts are learning more and more about where they can help partner and that could feed into some of the 1033 support or other support and whether it's through other state agencies whether it's faith-based communities it's about just kind of being datad driven like when you look at the centralized dashboards at the Hopehub kind of facilities partnership provides it it helps you get just more organized and and that's why I kind of like highlighted like
Speaker 154
1:01:20
the Bbatesville model other districts I think are looking at doing
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:01:25
something similar to that as well. would you mind giving us the schools that are working with the
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:01:35
initiative you madam chair thank you all for being here today senator flowers thank you madam chair and congratulations to your teachers on your achievement I'd like to know first off are
any of the students that you see student growth in
under IPs and can you tell us what the percentage and how are those children and students distinguish from your other ir graders that are not under an IP. I can
Speaker 14
1:02:09
address that we coteach so we have4 third grades and two of us, one I teach literacy and my co-teacher teaches math and science and then we have the other two third
grades so out of our two third grades this year out of50 students we had 27 that had IEps dyslexia intervention or a504. The other two third grades had 12 so we started out the year33% below basic and we ended the year 13% below basic so that's that ' s how much
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:02:47
that they grew would would those children that finish below basic then have a
Speaker 14
1:02:56
waiver or an exception ma'am all every one of them have an exception we have our in fact the inclusion teacher that comes into my classroom actually just got hired by the state of Arkansas Education department. she's so good and she came in and co taught with me when she was in maths she would go in there and then literacy she would come in there and those IP students a lot of them grew every one of them grew the 13 that are still below basic they are all of
them have exceptions they either have an IP they have a504 they've had extra intervention they've had the state supported tutoring afterschool tutoring that they had to be you know they had to be certified by the state to tutor because they got this the grants so all of those people have been literally taken
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:03:49
care of throughout the year and you specifically mentioned the student that had the anger
issue and eventually started getting speech therapy and improved was that an IEP that was an I
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:04:08
year yes ma'am. OK and then I'd like to know are any of you in a critical shortage area no and and Secretary Oliva then I I would like for you if you can to
address whether we have teachers that
have received the merit pay in these critical shortage areas yes we
Speaker 154
1:04:37
have and like you have critical shortage areas maybe like in certification
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:04:42
like for a certain type of positions but then also geographic locations while some of you may have gotten the geographic component. I'm I'm not sure but we we have we can get a a breakdown of where and the type of person that received teacher Mary Pa I wanna say
I wanna say it's close to 10,000 people received some sort of merit pay last
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:05:11
year so it it covers the whole spectrum Well looking at the map on exhibit C and it seems like the far eastern part of Arkansas from north to south the delta area has no teacher that qualified or received teacher merit pay so that map is just
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:05:35
showing of is is highlighted a 23 teachers where they came from that were in this fellowship program the recipients of
Speaker 154
1:05:41
meritpay looks very different so that that would that's not this map so I would have
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:05:46
to give you another map. Well I'd like to get that you send it
to our staff to send out the other thing is I noticed I saw something I read something about a virtual
program that you all participating in or that
meritpa recipients participating in do you all three participate in some virtual program that goes across the state to other school districts
Speaker 202
1:06:20
Yes ma'am the teacher fellowship that we're in the Arkansas Teacher Fellowship we
Speaker 31
1:06:26
meet via Zoom with the other teachers who applied the other 23 teachers and we meet Once once every couple of months we meet with Brendon from
Eachdaycomunications and I remember specifically in one of the meetings he had a couple of us to do a breakout room and to speak specifically about something that we use in our classrooms so we were we were able to do that and learn from other teachers and the things
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:06:54
that they've used in their classrooms so that's a program or a viewing just among the merit pay scholars yes ma'am the ones who
Speaker 69
1:07:02
received merit pay and applied for it. Well Secretary Oliva then
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:07:12
why would not that kind
of virtual learning be offered to all teachers particularly those in schools
where you see test scores lower for third graders yeah
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:07:28
I mean don't think that's not possible. I think that's something we can do this specific program that the teacher the fellowship program was to find out from our highest level
teacher merit payy recipients meaning they got at least7,500 dollars or higher we reached out to them and say there's a reason you're getting this level of recognition up to 10,000 dollarspec specifically we want to talk to those folks and find out what they're doing and how we can get them connected so that they can take that knowledge back to their districts and other fellows and other merits so the program we're highlighting today is a very very very small
subset of a much larger picture when you
Speaker 196
1:08:19
look at the number of teachers that received the meripa.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:08:23
yeah but I think my point was just that it seems like the qualifications
and the the fact that you all received this merit pay based on the eligibility criteria would make sense to to communicate to teachers in districts that are not having a
Speaker 21
1:08:45
growth impact would you agree with that teachers I think that's an excellent idea that's wonderful I I think that that might help
Speaker 137
1:09:01
yes. because we're all in it to to bring up student growth. it doesn't matter. I
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:09:06
mean Arkansas we want them all to be up there Seems to me like that would be a professional development activity event that teachers in in these other
districts that don't have teachers that see impact
growth would benefit from. I wanted the last question I think would be about students in your schools that might
be subject to court orders or families that are subject to court orders I I heard
where I'm not sure where you're from
in the middle but you mentioned there were
students that were living in homes of that are not their parents they're either their a their grandparent that kind of thing is that a result of maybe foster care or either court ordered custody placements if you know and do you all if you have such students do you all get
information from social work or DHS about these children and the reason for their placement other than in their parents' home I think a
Speaker 31
1:10:32
lot of it is parents who have been incarcerated or they've had issues with drugs and alcohol abuse. I I don't personally get that information. I'm not sure if the school district does we just get whatever the parent or grandparent tells us at open house or with communication,
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:10:51
from phone calls and emails. well when when I I practiced in juvenile court it and with children and families many times a judge would order the DHS worker caseworker to go out to the school
and either check to see if the child was attending
or even to take a get a urine test so I mean if you all not experienced any of that
Speaker 126
1:11:29
I have not experienced any of that. I know we have one family that was dealing with a custody battle. she was getting custody of her grandchildren.
Speaker 31
1:11:36
I'm not sure the the case but I know that she was very careful she made sure that they were always there. she wanted all of their records. She came to every parent teacher conference because she knew she had certain guidelines to follow but I'm not aware of what those were.
Speaker 14
1:11:52
we've had several cases like you're talking about and we had 22 little boys they were cousins and when they came to our school February the it was right before Valentine's dayy. they had not been in school sinceoctober. and they went fromor to Oklahoma to Texas then to Arkansas. so we had someone come in and explain to us that we've got to really watch them
make sure because one little boy didn't have his parents. he was with his aunt and his grandmother and we didn't get any school records and so so we had to work with this caseworker on going back to where they finished before they came to us because they actually have missed so much school so we finally got the records from theor school and then we did not get any records on the student in my room who's we don't know where
his parents are if they're incarcerated or if they were actually running from the parents. They told us that they were there was a high alert like there's only certain people that could check them out and if anybody came to the office so we were let known made known of those situations when they first came to our school and it's it's been a very intertwining case but we're working with the
grandmother and the aunt very very closely to
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:13:32
make sure that they get caught up well are are you all aware of any involvement with your school district even your your class
of kids indhS Department of humanman Services caseworkers are yes ma'am
Speaker 14
1:13:47
we've had several Dhs situations in our school district and so they're on a case by case basis and they're very private. We get called into the principal's
office and say this person, you know their family was called DhS was called into the home and now they're here so they they make us aware as teachers but I don't know that they can tell us everything but we we've been made aware of whatever we were allowed to
Speaker 200
1:14:14
know would you like to know more I would
Speaker 216
1:14:18
love to know more. It would be helpful in the classroom with the child you know because sometimes I wonder if
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
1:14:25
the child you say you you the way you describe the
child with the anger issue seemed like you had to pull that out of him by going to that one on one first to see what was actually going on in his his home and in his life do any of the other two teachers have
Speaker 22
1:14:51
any comment on our absentees we take that and it goes into the office and it's it's an automatic system that if they have5 days letters are sent
and you know eventually I'm sure that if it's a problem they have to file fins but I I don't know that unless they tell me I am to alert the office if someone's potentially being checked out or you know they're missing a lot in certain times of of the day but as far as like specific information I find it out from my parents and usually my students
Speaker 21
1:15:24
if I'm alerted by things I'm to go straight you know to my counselor to let them deal with those things
Speaker 31
1:15:34
my situation excuse me is mostly likelissa's it's we've called in before to DHS and they've come to speak to the students but they're pulled into the office and we don't get a whole lot of
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
1:15:53
information. Representative Rye thank you madam chairman Secretary Leva we hit on a lot of a lot of this but I'd like to ask you a question because I think it would actually
would clear this thing up as far as the things that's required from us to be able to take that child and make sure that we detect right about the child having trouble reading and what is the proper protocol Doctor Lefa.
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:16:25
Well I think you know if you really get a lot of the conversations have here is it it starts for before students even come to kindergarten if if
if we're doing a good job with our early learning environments and voluntary prekinergartner and sometimes you can find children and there's a program called childldin that may need additional support intervention if if there's anything that we know is the sooner we can identify and provide intervention the outcomes of improvement go into place a lot quicker but when we look at the system we built especially in kindergarten 1st and second grade in the in the law requirements around dyslexia screening especially
around literacy the the the the system that we've created now is able to identify potentially students that may have some gaps or need some more intervention in an earlier age and we take that snapshot in time three times a year when students start with us in kindergarten but I always go back to you know working with parents and families you know and and the investment the state's made by getting books in the children's homes and and creating a culture on literacy starts well before kindergarten
and when we look at kind of the system we built with Arkansas Learns is to be more methodical in identifying students that need support and then like at third grade if if a student's still not where they need to be we know that such a critical juncture because in order for you to s succeed you got to be able to read right and school if you're in6th grade or7th grade and you're struggling with foundational literary skills you're not having fun and when school becomes fun you become
dis en g age d so the state of Arkansas has been has made a commitment into being acience of reading state so when you look at kind of these reading wars we've taken a strong stance which is the right stance we're continuing to build out professional developments support schools with the implementation of the scienceence of reading but then that snapshot in time which is which is great about the policy and learns is it requires us to do somethingbody wants to look at like oh you know we're we're just trying to retain
students that's not the spirit that's not the goal the goal is not to add more student parking at middle schools because everybody's retaining third grade it's to say we have to hit a red flag. we have to hit a caution button. this this student is not meeting at a basic level and when you start getting away from sys systemic systematic explicit instruction of phonics and get more into the content we need to make sure that there's a plan in place for that student moving forward that their access to get
Speaker 154
1:19:10
those holes filled so that that's what we've
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:19:14
done and that's what we've committed to as a state thank you sir and thank you
madam chairman RepresentativemcGruder thank you madam chairir really want to say thank you to all of you educators for being here today being an educator myself I really appreciate you all and all that you do aspresentative barnes stated we have people like Jacob Oliva. we have our governor and people like myself who all started with
an educator from the beginning so our job is never done. I do have a few questions for you ladies I want to know how many veterans veteran teachers that you all have within your districts Let me can I ask you to clarify how do you define
Speaker 118
1:20:02
a veteran teacher but just the the great question just to make sure but I saw their wheels turning so
Speaker 226
1:20:08
I just wanna like see if you could give him a little a
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:20:13
veteran teacher is someone with about 10
Speaker 14
1:20:15
years of experience. we have a very large school district and I do not know the answer to the number of veteran teachers I can tell you in our own school we have probably45 teachers and out of that45 teachers I mentored one brand new teacher this year that's all we had was one brand new teacher but we have a huge turnover for
the next year because within our little school we have the highest number of promotions to administrative positions than any other elementary school in the district and you're in Po'm in Cabot at Ward Central inwardd but we have more coming out of wordd central into administrative we've had several go to the department of Education so it's kind of exciting that we've seen them move on but we've got probably like I said we just had one brand new
teacher this year and I was her mentor because we've only had
Speaker 21
1:21:27
one but next year we're gonna have several. we have about 8 from K4, you know the rest of the other building I'm not sure of how many they still have that's t0 and up but we have about 8 from K4. we're a
Speaker 124
1:21:39
K6 building and there's two teachers in each grade level and I want to say about 10 of them have 10 or more years of experience
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:21:50
my next question is in regards to academic coaches cause I know that matters tremendously to our helping us teachers improve our craft do all of you have literacy coaches in your buildings no we
Speaker 234
1:22:06
don't yes we do cab it does and the other
Speaker 227
1:22:11
two districts are po en andrue central
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:22:22
I was listening to you on my drivein I I honestly think Secretary Oliva scheduled a lot of the word roadwork today to hinder me from arriving on time but setting standards I heard one of you say that on my drivein which is very important to make sure that our students can achieve I think that's an area that we have lacked in where we don't set standards also cross core curriculum PlCs I heard
someone say they would meet after school and so do you all have time so do each of you have time during the day to help do you do cross cross curriculum PlCs and is that during the the day or is it after school? I heard somebody say after school earlier and I want to know which district that
Speaker 126
1:23:12
was at and we're a four day school week so our contracted time is7:45
Speaker 19
1:23:17
to4:30. So after school I mean by the kids have left we're still contracted at that time.
Speaker 21
1:23:27
We meet deer in our planning time that we have at least once a week I
Speaker 43
1:23:35
teach everything so you are the curriculum PLC teach everything so we also meet during once a week during ours during
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:23:46
school hours and my next questions are for Secretary Oliva again thank you ladies I know we're ending the year and teachers are marking the days off the
calendar test scores have we got any in
or are we seeing any gains or improvements yet? so I
Speaker 118
1:24:03
like to say don't count down the days make every day count, right? but yeah so
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:24:09
school schools are are coming to I actually think this is probably the most exciting time of the year especially when I was a high school principal is that end of the school year and you're having the graduations proms all that good stuff. we we are still in the testing window right so we get
asked a lot of questions around when are we going to get test results and and I'm not sure if you're here yet but we stated that students in schools are getting their3 through 10 atlas scores with pretty much within 24 hours some some some are a little bit lagging because they do a lot of verifying it's still a new system and and cross checking but definitely within a week so student takes the test the parents are able to log in the portal and see how they did on achievement levels within let's say72 hours of
mostly pretty much there so they have their student data every every teacher I think has access to their student data school as exit data we don't have the aggregate at yet at the state level because the windows not closed right like so the state window closes this Friday. and we'll get those student files in probably the 2nd or3rd week of June because there's a lot of calibration that that has to happen then it takes a couple weeks to load that in the student information system so we'll be able to generate
reports definitely by July because I think the questions are gonna be like how did the districts do how do the schools do we we don't have that ability yet because we we have to get the files and convert it and there's all these this this process that happens and then they'll be calculating learning gains which will be able to release but schools have access to their achievement data now and and what I'm hearing from schools is is they're seeing pretty good results as expected as we're building on our current itter reference system so I don't have specific
dates and answers but I think in the next like if we did an update in June or July
Speaker 154
1:26:07
the next time we have meetings we'll we'll we should be
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:26:10
able to share like hard information then I know in my district we we made some strides in the right direction so you're saying that's
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:26:21
just the atlas exam that we're looking at now. First yeah that first3 through 10 then that's the the criteria that goes into the school and district grades and it the tests the subject errors are English language arts math and science
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:26:33
but then you get into course exams in ultraoid geometry and biology so the I love what we're doing with this program. I was very frustrated by nobody being from my area so my question is how can someone like myself help recruit people for this program especially those people who are in the delta where we're located.
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:26:57
Well awareness is I think the first part and that's something that I think we're always
looking to do better as an agency school district schools teachers there one of one of the teachers mentioned earlier when when asked like what can we do as a legislature is we gotta say the positive things that are happening in our public schools right? we we have incredible opportunities for our students and families so I think the biggest thing that you could help us with and and help with is is awareness right because there's still just a lot of confusion. I I get emails all the time like you know how come kindergarten teachers aren't
eligible for teacher merit pay when we're critical to setting up the foundation and I'm always having to share more for it they kindergarten teachers are eligible there there's different pathwayss so there's a lot of confusion around it this program specifically looked at top tier teacher merit pay candidates which I wanna say there's about50 if I'm I'm just using ballpark math so we invited anybody to want to participate in this program so if somebody from your area may
have qualified but chose not to participate. it was their first year. I'm I'm hoping you all would say this was a worthwhile experience otherwise you wouldn't be here because we aren intending to do cohort two. these are official graduates a cohort one. congratulations gra du ation season. but we intend to do a cohort too so I think word of mouth if you get invited to be part of this fellowship program we we would want to encourage folks to participate because not everybody that was eligible chose to participate and that's OK. that's OKok hopefully we can we can do that and and
maybe when we get that list as I'm thinking in the if I I don't know when that list will be calculated probably around August or so by the time we calculate the learning gains in the va scores and who who is eligible it it may be worth when we identify the folks that are eligible letting all of the representatives and legislators know like hey these folks are eligible if you want to encourage them to participate that that that's probably would probably be the best way to help because I think if if a teacher
heard from their rep like that you should do
Speaker 240
1:29:12
this it's it's a little bit different than getting a letter from
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
1:29:17
me and my last question and thank you Senator English for the leeway I I hear that we're working towards getting literacy coaches and academic cultures in all the school districts which is a process I know we're getting ready for adequacy study and I don't know if this question is for the chair or secret orliva how can we identify the districts in need
and how can we assist in making sure that everybody has those coaches so we can make sure
those students are in the low
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:29:52
socioeconomic areas and those teachers can achieve better. I can respond unless you want to respond so that's a good question and what we did with Arkansas learns is made a commitment to the legislator made a commitment to at least having about 120 literacy coaches statewide to
support our DNF schools so we we started withdNF schools which I don't think any of you are at a deer in a school or you were but not but you've improved congratulations so every DNF school gets assigned a kind of a state literacy coach every single education cooperative has literacy coaches because I think part of the question that that I would always say back to is like what data shows that some of these schools need coaches how are we there's only so many resources so we got to make sure we prioritize those schools sodNS schools should have a state
literacy coach assigned to them one of the challenges that we have and I think this is a great challenge is that we'll have a state sign up I'll pick on rew central here as as an example maybe they were ad school and they had a state literacy coach then they approved to a C school right and now they don't qualify for one and they're like wait a minute you know this person helped us you can't take this resource away from us but then they don't qualify then they then they the
district may try to hire this person. like there there's almost like a deeper conversation is like yeah we made that commitment we established these DNF schools. Hopefully we don't have any more DNA schools like I keep saying we have to eliminate failure but we also can't see improvement and then take away those resources so everybody that improved that had a littleha coach doesn't want to give one up so now we're trying to find more loadersy coaches and and it's it's an ongoing process but DNF's schools what have assigned
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:31:43
a literacy coach for sure. thank you Representative Mayberry thank you I'm sorry I really didn't want to have to ask another question because I know we have a lot still on the agenda but you you said something in answering some questions a moment ago that really perked my my interest and I just wanted to to just be a little bit more direct in asking because you you were stressing and we've had so many conversations about early childhood education. we've had so many meetings and and you
were stressing that learning starts before kindergarten and I cannot agree with you more on this and and you've said some fantastic words just a moment ago. So I want to ask you know very directly does this mean that maybe in the future that we're going to see the administration come forward with some support for more resources for more financial means to be able to take some children off of a waiting list. We have a3000 child waiting
lists for early childhood education to to help some of our struggling early childcare centers are AB ABC centers with some more funding so they can stay open. I mean I think what your comments were very much noted the importance of that in in starting kindergarten offright. So so can we potentially hope those of us who are hoping that we could see some support from the administration for that
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:33:16
well I think the administration has made a commitment to supporting our learning and it did start with learns with kind of just recalibrating and how do we define quality how do we look at investing in our classrooms have we arrived? Absolutely not. Do we need to keep this conversation going whether it's more resources whether it's more training whether it's more funding this is when we need to be having these conversations and and I think I've been pretty consistent when saying like our investment as a state if if we're gonna invest in state
programs because it's kind of hard to invest in federal programs that that you don't know what they're gonna be each and every single year our investment in our state programs and I I'm getting all the ears wrong but I don't think it's has had an increase or reevaluation since around 2019 so it's I think it's worth
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:34:06
having that conversation. I think it's long overdue so would you you know would you support more funding from the educational adequacy fund to be able to support some
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:34:17
some of that so that's that's such a general statement is is there data that says we need more funding I would support looking at the data and looking at the return on investment and looking at the impact and looking at the process to make that question I'm never gonna throw more money at a problem that doesn't work. just throwing money at
Speaker 53
1:34:37
things we did that as a nation with COID funding. We flooded people with federal dollars that we did not need and now we're still paying for it.
what was our income from all these federal dollars that we threw at schools and in classrooms to impact COVID learning. Our kids are still well below preOVID levels. it wasn't funding we threw tons of money at the prom. you know what we did is we bought more stuff. We we brought in initiatives. we hired a d mini s tra t or s we made fake jobs. I'm not going to throw more money at it. I'm going to look at a plan and says if this is the right plan, if this is the right strategy to improve quality and access will it need more funding? Probably but I
think we need a strategy first.h throwing money made things worse and we did that thanks to
Speaker 252
1:35:25
our federal government by just writing blank checks
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:35:28
would I would agree. I think our ABC program does have that data to support it and and that's what I'm talking about that that we have the highest level of criteria for that ABC program and that's the program that I'm referring to in your own numbers from your own department indicate that the students who have gone through
that program do better and in kindergarten and and all of that so that that that's where my question comes from. I agree with you. I just, I, I hope that in 2027 that we can see some some widespread support also among legislators. I just had to take advantage of that opportunity to to you know, keep this on on the topic of our our radar screen here because I think it's so very important. thank you and I agree and just just so
Speaker 53
1:36:16
you know I agree but that's why I think we need to look at and have the right
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:36:22
strategy and then make sure that it's appropriately resourced. p re s ent ative garner Thank you madam chairir. Now
on thank you thank you and and and I will say and I certainly appreciate umpresentative Mayberry's passion and you know I'm I'm right there with you I do appreciate you guys coming once a month and for the legislators that don't know we are meeting once a month for
early childhood education to talk about some of these things with with during ALC week and also with the commission so thank you thank you for that and I agree we've got to do something because we can't wait for a long term strategy we've got to we've got to have a short term one. so thank you for that you also brought up some some information that I was gonna hold but started talking about the atlas scores and and and when we get them and how we get them and those kinds of things what are we doing about
retention? so how early do we know how many kids need to be retained in third grade? Do we have a list of those districts not the kids themselves but the districts and those kinds of things do we have that information? how many kids are being retained where they are in the district and how early do the families know that well yeah hopefully
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
1:37:44
right away so you you know we started the school year we were asked like how many students are at risk so we basically took the rising
cohort of second graders and said if you're a level one you're at risk before the school year started which we knew was around 10,000 students so schools and and I would love for the teachers to talk about it immediately didn't wait like they started working with families they started intervention they started tutoring. In fact, I remember talking to a principal not too long ago that says you know before school started we had every family of of our third graders that were at risk and we invited them in and and we worked on a strategy of what they can do at home when they go
to school and they're like these meetings went so well that we actually just did the whole school and I was like wow like you know like this is great like it's more in involvement. so the the teachers have been working with these students that are at risk throughout the school year. Well when the students take the assessments they're getting their results so the teachers already know if the student met you know the level two criteria to move on or not we won't know like how many kids were retained until probably after the school year starts
because they're happening at the school and district level we can we can get a snapshot of like the number of level one s you know by school and by district bush should have that probably about the 1st or secondnd week of July once the system is loaded but schools know right so schools is like if a student's take an assessment they're already doing interventions some are planning some are learning programs some are doing high impact tutoring now we we actually even did something that's new this year
and and I think it's it was a pretty good idea from the team that's been working on this. so like our official testing window closes Friday like for all the subjects and in the test well the following Monday we're opening up3rd grade again so if a student took the test and wasn't successful and has been doing intervention they have an opportunity to retest before schools even out and we'll we'll know what that data is when when when that's done but parents and students if they tested some
some schools haven't tested yet right they're still testing but if they tested they they know their scores. I I don't know if
Speaker 21
1:40:06
it's fair if you want to hear from them or not. I have5 students that was on the retention possible retention list at Christmas. I don't have any that will be retained
Speaker 14
1:40:19
so great news thank you we notified our parents at the beginning of3rd grade if they were considered at risk and then
we took the fall interim well we the fall atlas and let the parents know how they did after that and so they have been very aware all year long if their child was at risk. so we started out between the two classes that I teach there's50 and because we're split and we had 1 1 atri and as of today we only have one possibility and that is the student I spoke of that hasn't been in school since
October. However, we just got his scores Friday we still have a couple trickling in and he actually was a level 2 so right now if if that be the case we have zero between just our fi0 with the other two classes I think there's three at risk and then one of them is just the student that was the cousin of the little boy that was not in school since October so that's just down to one. we did the same thing in the
Speaker 126
1:41:31
beginning of the year we let all the parents know about the law the
Speaker 19
1:41:35
things that the department sent we sent home and throughout the year when we did our testing we have forgive me if you know this but we have the individualized reading plans which we call IPs and every time we do any kind of progress monitoring, we add that to their IPs and parents have full access to that through the portal all year long. So not only were we sending messages through our communication portals but they were able to log into Atlas as well and then when we took the sum m it ative assessment like
secret Oliva said that's a mouthful. he said that they were coming immediately and they were we finished testing at before 10 o'clock I think and by lunch we were getting scores coming in immediately now we did have some that I guess were pulled for the yes recalibration and those came the next week but that was that was amazing as a teacher to be able to get those results immediately and see how the students did.
Speaker 126
1:42:34
august September, october last year for K2 so just all of the things I guess are coming together and they're helping us thank you
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:42:48
very much Representative gonzalez this is our last question we obviously have had a really great discussion here almost two hours so this has been very very good but we have one last question and then we'll have to move on to our resource allocations
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:43:05
our adequacy stuff thank you thank you madam chair mine is more of a just kind of a cautious comment if that's ok and it it addresses theruby Payne work that you were mentioning and so I would just say I mean I've been through that training and the the thing that kind of stands out when I was doing the training is that it it operates kind of like from the cultural deficit model you know where they're comparison of kids who are low income kids versus those
who are middle class and what these are and how you can get them here and your relationships and survival for example that's what a low income kids focus on versus middleclass values of achievement and future planning. it's like this or that you know and and I would just cau caution you know, because I know after coming out of that training and I was thinking to myself you know, wow, then there were teachers leaving the training and then they're talking
about their poverty kids and so that that really is bothersome and and maybe that's I'm sure that's probably not going on in your your classroom but just kind of thinking about that because there there were stereo there were stereotyping etc. and and I just wanted to you know blaming the culture or behaviors values versus what assets do the students have and how can we bring4 those and build upon that it's just a different mindset but I
understand where you're where you're coming from. like I said I've gone through the training too. we all want what's best for our students and and we want to see them all as assets in our classroom you know preparing that next generation of leaders and and and our future career our careers is is based
Speaker 173
1:44:58
on our students now. I will say my students had no
Speaker 14
1:45:02
idea who she was and that was just one of several strategies that we use so they don't know the why behind her
Speaker 43
1:45:11
teaching at all they don't know that it's
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:45:20
for poverty students Thank you very much. This has been a very informative couple of hours we've really enjoyed it. I thought it'd be about 15 minutes but it's been very well it's been very very enlightening I think we all had the opportunity to ask questions from the people who are in the field doing it and that's really critically important for all of us and I appreciate very much you all being here today.
thank you so very much and thank you and now we'll move on to our adequacy resource allocation study from our bureau
OK. thank you ladies if you will identify yourselves we'll get moving. e li z ab
Speaker 261
1:47:03
e th y n ha m bureau of legislative Research Adrianne beck also
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:47:11
with the bureau Lea Hedley bureau of Legislative Research and we will make sure you pull your microphones way up close to you please
Speaker 266
1:47:28
OK so this is part two continuing our resource allocation presentations in part one we went
Speaker 267
1:47:33
over the per student costs across all districts as well as the adequate resources determined by the matrix and non matrix spending. Part two we'll look at expenditures from fund sources beyond foundation aid reviewing best practices and educator feedback were available. So going back to our adequacy statute number6 on your tracking sheet tab 1B of your binders as a reminder this report is
presented in partial fulfillment of this section that's requiring a continuous review and evaluation to take into account the certain factors relevant to providing an education an adequate education for all students including an expenditure review of specific required funding. As a reminder from the reports he presented in March, foundation funds make up more than half of state funding in total the rest is coming from other funds in those funding streams the federal here is referring to the
miscellaneous funds that are received locally by districts morere detailed definitions for these fund sources can be found on page 29 or appendix A of your reports which is exhibit E2 of today's meeting The first allocation report showed that public school districts and charters spent over $7 billion in the 25 school year that total expenditure has been split at about49% from foundation,51% from other funds for the last three school years? Within those other funds are several funds that we've
identified as categorical supplemental as well as some additional fund sources multiple fund sources make up these categories and when looking at overall spending the additional category includes federal dollars like such as Perkins grants for CTE. However, under these categorical and supplemental labels there are several funds created to either address many of the factors listed in that or described in that adequacy section or listed explicitly as part of the requirements to accomplish the required review.
So today we're going to focus on the funding sources that the state provides some established to provide specific educational supports to students the categorical funds and some required by statute thatelizabeth introduced back in February such as the National Student Lunchunding now known as enhancedudent Achiement and others addressing teacher salaries which have been enacted as recently as 2023. we'll be looking at how these looking at how these states have spent these funds
we'll be looking at how these states have so how these districts have spent these state funds including the review of those specific funds cited in section H1 of the adequacy statute and a few more additional unrestricted and restricted state funds that are available to districts. so first we have categorical funds There are4 of these at the moment. we've got three of the four funds there are3 created to address the needs of specific students populations that would be
alternative learningvi ALE English learnarner, Yel and enhanced student achievement or ESA pd is instead in short is instead provided to ensure that personnel is equipped to support all students Spending from all four of these funds is limited to their designated purpose and has requirements that are outlined either in rules and or statute. Additionally, the funding is based on student populations with ESA having the most allowable uses and PD having the largest population of students.
when we talk about programs spending in this presentation today this is when we're referring to district and charter spending that's been dedicated to the identified purposes in each of these funds. So for EL it'll be spending on English learners and providing those associated services and programs and the same for the other three categorical funds. The per student funding amounts are set in statute. they're also in your binders for the next biennium in the back of the matrixx in funding summary where you'll see that only AlE has
increased in the last three years but the increases for the other four categoricals are present for the next biennium. While these funds are restricted, statute does allow for the transfer of funds between categoricals they're still restricted to each of the fund's allowable uses but for instance a district may transfer part of their ESA allocation to spend on English learners instead. Lastly to put these funds in perspective in expenditures of total spending the categorical funds made up about4%, less
than300 million of total spending for the 25 school year. Last year we'd asked all superintendents to rate the extent that categorical funds then met their needs for the last school year. You can see here that the needs vary a lot by diff by districts for instance, py was the only categorical where no superintendents responded NA but where ALE shows the highest NA response at about 10% among those districts receiving the funding it was the least reported that it met needs and
the most reported that it did not meet their needs. Both ALE and ESA showed less than0% that the funding had exceeded their needs and like the responses on Matrixx needed fromart one you can find these answers in page four of your superintendent survey which is tab3C1 of your binders. so the first categorical is ALE and according to Desi's 2025 guide to alternativeation. they make a distinction between alternative education which is the specialized programming and alternative learning environments even though those
terms are used interchangeably, which emphasizes the location of instruction for our purposes today we're talking about AOE spending including what districts are spending to provide the education as well as support the students in those environments. According to Desi Ru's governing special needs funding categorical funds for ALE are used to provide alternative and specialized programming that eliminates traditional barriers to learning for students. These students must spend a certain amount of time in this programming before being counted
for funding purposes and I want to emphasize that the districts are based or funded are based on the number of students placed and how long that student is in the program. During the previous school year and so overall that becomes a per student FTE funding basis to be a student for it to be an eligible student Desie rules governing special needs funding outline the 12 characteristics and situations defining criteria for placement. the full list is in your report on page three of
exhibit 2 of exhibit E2 and of those 12 barriers students must be experiencing or exhibiting at least two. Dezzi rules also provide for a hybrid programming type for ALE which is defined by time spent in nontraditional Aless. those students are funded at one half in statute a traditional A student must be an must be in the program for at least 20 consecutive days to be counted for funding purposes for those who participate in partial days, there's a calculation outlined
in rules that determines how to fund those students the chart that you see in front of you is the last three school years total FTE funding account for studentsccording to desi's legislative reports on ALEs that they submit each year to this committee. there have been over 11,000 students that participate in ALE programming each of the last school years decreasing slightly into 2025 and but the chart here is showing you a total funded
students inFTEs which is based on the prior year and so that5400 number is based on the FEs they identified in the 24 program year. the actual funding amount for 2025 was5,417.35 students reflecting those partial days that students have spent in ALE and while and because funding is based on instructional time, this decrease in FEs reflectsent reflects students spending less time in the program and being returned to the classroom more frequently.
So in part one you saw several threeyear trend charts divided by foundation and other spending. today you're you're going to see charts showing the categorical fund amount provided by the state for the intended purpose, the spending from those funds and then spending from all sources which can include foundation dollars. so first in our green columns at the bottom is the purse student funding amount for the last school three years last3 school years Next is the green line showing the per student spending on ALE or program spending from the
from the ALE categorical fund and the top line is spending from all available sources all available fund sources spent on program spending or anything spent on by districts to provide ALEs as you can see there were there though there are fewer FE students districts are still spending increasingly more per student to provide ALEs. and especially increasing from all funds available.
Similar to our per student chart we have our green bar to of total ALE funding allocated from the state and provided to districts in the last three years as there have been fewer FTE students identified the state has been providing less in funding despite the increase in the per student Similarly this green line is showing the expenditures on ALEs from the ALE fund which is also decreased but you can see the districts are still spending more more than their current year funded amount
the difference in these charts is that this new yellow line is showing the total amount spent from the AOE categorical fund overall regardless of its purpose. This would include transfers to other categorical funds and spent on those needs. Comparing the two green and yellow lines though the chart is adding some visual distance you can see that most of the total spending from the AOE fund is been has been spent on ALE for the last three years and finally that top line again is total program spending on aoli from all all available fund
sources showing that districts are not only spending more than twice their funded amount but increasingly more each year. So moving on to some related legislation since the passage of Act911 of2025 districts are not required to provide alternative learning environments in statute the legislation made no changes in the way that districts can choose to provide an ALE so according to statute they still have the flexibility in how these students are served which by district can include the possibility of a school or a
school embedded program operating as an ALE Most districts do not use the education service co op option or pay another district but for some insight into the58 districts that reported using those options you can refer to page se of your superintendents survey report just tab 1C again. hold on just one second I
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:58:47
think we have a question on the last hold on Representative Duke, thank you madam chair thank you all again
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:58:59
for your work a quick question on um, I guess slide 11 on page 6 on the on the per student
fund funding so they've got their categorical fundings the ones that's just specific OK this is your ALE funding. they can move between the other categor categorical funding so obviously they're spending more is all that additional funding coming from those other categoricals or are they coming from their local dollars? where's the additional money? Do
Speaker 267
1:59:29
you know from each from these districts so yeah so typically what we found is that the the the reason or the way that districts are spending more than they're funded each year is from fund balances of previous allocations. I believe the transfers are typically found in the expenditures on from the fund but on other programs and so that would have been the yellow line in the next chart of the total spending and so in this yellow line here that45
million would be including transfers from other transfers from other categorical funds so
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:00:04
it's all coming from other categoricals not coming from other correct
Speaker 267
2:00:08
yes yes it's it's either a fund balance from a categorical previous allocation or another categorical fund OK so I'm gonna,
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:00:14
I'm sorry I'm gonna have to use simple words on this cause I I this I find a little challenging
as far as school funding sometimes to understand exactly what's going on so we're talking on this categorical funding back here to some of these other charts when you're talking about the ESA and
the English learnarers and so forth and I guess Pd they can't move from. is that correct they're not taking money from that it's either going to be money left
over from previous years's balances or they're going to shift from ESA to in to some of these others
Speaker 267
2:00:49
yes so they'd shift from EA PD English learnarers to pay for ALE so the reason why
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:00:55
I'm asking this question is so if they've got leftover money in these places and they're
shifting into ALE then I guess what I'm trying to determine is are we funding these different things correctly if we are if if they have enough money left over and this is not a question that I'm asking you to answer, right? I understand that but that I'm trying to I guess explain my question to see if I'm processing it correctly. I guess is what I'm trying to understand so if they are taking money from EA or they have fund balances from previous years we've got the formula off a little bit because we're shifting but ALE doesn't have enough so the schools are spending more on li we're not
giving them enough money there but they're finding it in other places they're just moving it is that a fair assessment and my understanding what's happening correctly with them? Yes I think
Speaker 267
2:01:43
so and as far as the per student amounts especially that would be your green line is yes that's the move between categorical funds and again that top blue line is from all funds and so that includes foundation funding it includes any other unrestricted funds that they've been able to find to support Aoli and so that's where you have that
Speaker 270
2:01:57
12,000 per student. OK so that guess that that is
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:02:01
what I was wondering so it's not just categold money
they're pouring into it they're also pouring from other places they're pouring it into ALE because in these specific districts they are finding a need more there than they are finding other places and they're figuring out ways to move it. OK, so that I am
correct in that analysis on that. OK, thank you appreciate it thank you madam chair. p re
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
2:02:27
s ent ative gonzalez well that was similar that that address that addressed my question. I was just wondering since I spent
more how we what can we do or how could we find out what that was what that was and and I was looking at the slide right after that69.8 million that's a lot over over what was over what they received for that specific category so I would be interested yes to know what what they spent it on yes, thank you right now as I mentioned
Speaker 270
2:02:58
earlier you'll see these ch ar t s per student for EL andpd ESA is funded a bit differently but the total
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:03:07
funding charts you'll see for the other categoricals as well Representative Ggarner thank you madam chairir. My question is also on that slight that same slide so now I'm confused and and I I got everything up to date Up to what we talked about now except that do we know where they're using the all funds so so this 12.8 million the blue
line do we know where schools are pulling those funds from yes we can track the expenditure sources so where mostly are the schools pulling those funds from do I don't have it in front of me but it's it's a very quick pull yes that would be great would love to know where they're getting those funds because that is not from a fund balance necessarily they're all at additional sources right'd like to know how they're paying for it. thank OK, moving right along
Speaker 287
2:04:13
We at English learners that's correct. so Title6 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires districts to provide an equal educational opportunity to language minority students federal law provides that no state shall deny equal educational op opportunity to an individual on account of his or her race, color, sex or national origin so Arkansas provides categorical funds to assist districts and charters in meeting these requirements for
English learners or Yale for short as Lian noted earlier. So as a reminder categorical funding for EL students was366 dollars in the 25 school year and these students are those identified as not proficient in the English language based on statewide entrance and exit procedures criteria including an approved English proficiency as assessment instrument the ELPA21 which we covered in a previous report that you can also find in your binder the accountability and achievement
but these fines are to be used for salaries for EL skilled instructional services relevant training for teachers, program development, instructional materials and assessment related activities. In2025,94% of El categorical expenditures were spent on salaries and benefits and so moving on to that chart that we all saw previously for for EL ALE excuse me we'll see a similar version here. So this chart is going to show
total funding from all EL categorical funds in that bottom green column and that's compared to total l spending from all funds in that top blue bar. so in short this is showing us that total spending on EL services has been around43% higher on average than Eel categorical funds in 2025 total El funding came up to almost $16 million while total spending for EL services from strictly those El categorical funds totaled
almost $18 million again indicating use of fund balances and transfers so total EL funding increased by7% over the past three school years as did spending from EL categorical funds for strictly on ER related program services so we'll look at how these students are across the state this shows distribution of these students shown as a percentage of total district enrollment for
the 25 school year charters are not included here since they do not have geographic boundaries but you'll see amongst districts that that percent range from0.7% of all students up to35% with all districts having at least one EL student and then of the 25 charters in the 25 school year 19 had EL students ranging from 1.4% of total student population inIP delta up to70% at the exalt academy in
southwest Litterock. and then in the previous three school years that statewide percentage has increased7 percentage points and you'll see that reflected here this chart shows EL per student funded amounts for the last three school years as compared to the per student EL programme expenditures from EL categorical funds in that green line and then again from all fund sources in that blue line. so you'll see the person at
funding amount has remained flat for these three school years but the per student spending from both categorical funds and all fund sources has exceeded per student funding for all of these years for categorical spending this indicates a use again of fund balances and transfers between other categoricals while per student spending between 24 and25 decline the number of English learners increased by7 percentage points during that time as noted in the previous slide. and I will
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:08:21
move to enhanced student achievement. excuse me just when we have a couple of questions
Speaker 293
2:08:35
here umpresentative House ok oh I'm sorry that's ok okale it was I'm sorry thank you I've never
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
2:08:47
been called that that's go ahead sorry yeah no
that's fine the chart that you have on the percentage of English learners by district that that chart OK this one. so we have if we if you just glance at this this this is by school district and there are more that are in the0 to3% versus those who are a little higher number and of course the darker. so my my question is I just wondered about when you look at the
categorical fund needs when you started off like the superintendent survey it said that English learners only 27% reported that it doesn't meet the need and I got to thinking about that in that overall there are most of the school districts across Arkansas they're in that0 to3%. so they're not more than likely not going to say that that's that's a need that's not being met. you know what you know and
so but there are fewer that have those big dark you know and that would be one superintendent. so reporting you're right and so I just wondered about that. I'm not sure that would that's accurately reflected when you have, I mean it's all the school districts but the majority of the school districts that have large numbers of English learners they're you're only talking about one superintendent that's going to answer that and there may be a need in that particular district but it's not going
to show up overall because of the
Speaker 287
2:10:31
small number. does that make sense? Yes, that makes sense I think we could easily pull our survey results and revisit that question and maybe break those out by concentration of those students to see how that varies if there's any differentiation between districts that have a lower percentage in those that have
Speaker 175
2:10:48
a higher percentage of these students thank you you're welcome thank you umpresentative Hope duke ha
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:10:59
thank you madam chairir similar question to the last one and I'll probably have that on the upcoming ones as well I haven't reglanced over them since yesterday but can you just give us I'm sure you don't have it now but where that spending where they're making up the difference is like we had asked on the ALE one whenever they're at the districts are having to make up that money where are they pulling from to make it up? I know they're categorical that they can move between but they're clearly
Speaker 292
2:11:30
I apologize for it to put the microphone on. I don't have the exact breakout with me. actually I think I I do so it looks like a lot of that is federal funds that they're pulling in from that they are using a good chunk of foundation funds to cover those expenses can you get us a little bit of that that can you get us
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:11:47
that information a little bit more can break that down further'm particularly mean
anytime you bring up federal dollars that always makes me go and of course I know we've got a lot of
federal money pulling in but I like to be as independent from
them as I can cause we never know when they're going to cut things. And so that is just having that information is good to know so we know what we need to where we need to fill in blanks if
Speaker 292
2:12:12
necessary, right? And it looks like there is a specific title I fund from the federal funds I think that makes up the largest proportion of those
Speaker 287
2:12:20
federal funds it's related to English language acquisition so I think which is targeted towards English learners so that think up a big portion but I could absolutely give a more detailed breakdown of those funds so they
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:12:31
can't they can't shift that funding but they could potentially right if it's coming down from the feds it's saying it's targeted for this then I assume we don't have the flexibility with it so then if that you have that funding coming in from this pipeline but you can shift your EL funding right so then you could you get the money coming in here and you can shift the money here. and potentially doesn't mean they're doing it correct but you would know right if a district
has had the federal money coming in and they're shifting the EL
Speaker 287
2:13:02
money somewhere else to fill in a gap somewhere else we could yeah absolutely and we can even disaggregate to see if there's any particular back to that question about the concentration of students we can even go further and dig in to see which districts are maybe doing that predominantly more are they ones with higher proportions of districts we can definitely do some breakouts to follow that money a little bit more closely to see how that's working out.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:13:23
I think that I think that would be at least a good story to know where where they're kind of shifting shells around a little bit because they've got federal dollars coming in in a
particular area versus another area where they would not be receiving that. So
Speaker 305
2:13:41
thank you thank you moving right along excuse me. our next categorical is enhanced student achievement enhanced student achievement is formerly known as national school lunch funding because it is based on the number of students in a district eligible for free and reduced price lunch it is awarded on a per student basis a per student amount based on the percentage of students
eligible in the district and so you can see those percentages in the amounts on the screen. ESA funding also includes growth and transitional funding growth is additional funding on top of these amounts provided to districts that have experienced at least 1% growth in the past three years and transitional funding is funding awarded to districts that are moving between those funding amounts so for a district that is moving from receiving $1,076
to538 dollars it's spending intended to give the district time to adjust to that new to the loss in funding you can see on the other side of your screen the eligible uses for ESA funding a caveat to the first one these are from the public school funding actct the public school funding actct does require that schools cannot use EA funds to meet supplant or satisfy the standards of
accreditation or the minimum teacher salary requirements so districts are required to meet all of those requirements before they begin using EA funds on salaries so the requirements you just saw are from the public school funding actct. desi also has requirements in the rules for how EA funding is spent. they are meant to be targeted to the needs of students based on the district's needs assessments. It is for programs and purposes
intended to increase academic achievement and reduce gaps in achievement among student upgrades. Now looking at actct807 from 2025 and some changes to reporting requirements on ESA funding previously statute required districts to submit a three year plan to the department outlining how they were going to use their EA funds
Act807 removes that requirement and instead districts are now required to include in information onris prioritization and intended use of funding in the districts strategic plan however the public school funding statutes still requires that the state board will promulgate rules for submitting that ESA plan and the rules related to ESA funding still require the three year plan and those rules are current as of March of this year
now looking at total funding and spending and I'm going to start from the bottom of this and work up you can see at the bottom those green bars are representing total EA funding the green bars that you see at the bottom are representing spending from EA categorical funding on ESA programs the yellow line here is showing total expenditures from ESA categoricals on any program and this is where you see transfers
to the other three categoricals and you can see that it's about uh4.5 million that's been the districts are spending in 2025 above that green bar and that4.5 million is all transfers to other categoricals and then that blue bar is showing all spending from all sources on any EA Looking next at eligible
students, ESA funding is awarded based on prior year eligibility and so this chart is showing the number of students that districts received funding for in each year. you can see that the number is going up about 1000 students from 23 to24 and then declining almost 8000 students between 24 and25. the map here is showing you each district's EA rate for the 25 school year of course the map is
only showing you the traditional school districts the charters are not included since they do not have geographic boundaries you can see that there are6 rates this is including the transitional funding for districts that are receiving that transitional funding. you can see that most of the districts receiving the highest amount are in the south and the eastern parts of the state looking at charter districts 9 charters are receiving that lowest538 amount for a receiving
the 1076 amount and five districts five charter districts in the state did not receive any EA funding in 2025. and then finally looking at the top expenditure categories for ESA funding academic supports and intervention makes up more than 92 million, almost half of all ESA expenditures and more than twice any of those other categories.
And I'll be happy to take questions on this section or we can go ahead Second
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:19:31
we've got p re s ent ative Thank you madam chairir.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:19:37
just a quick question, different question than from the previous ones. my question is on your free and reduced lunch the drop. do we know why and do we know
Speaker 305
2:19:50
where that's occurring. I don't know I don't know exactly why but I can tell you where yes I
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:19:55
can pull that for you and ok so you're going
Speaker 305
2:19:58
to pull that and get that to us? Yes, I can I can pull that I can pull that by district we did look and compare this to the ADM across the state and this is more of a decline than just the decline in enrollment across the state when we looked at this decline we said well is this just reflecting a general drop in enrollment and this is a steeper decline than
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:20:20
the drop in enrollment but I I don't know why do you have any idea if you're seeing if that's being seen in any other maybe neighboring states if this is a trend or if this is just exclusive to cause I I'm going to guess that's not been the trend if we were to go back further, that's not been the trend in Arkansas I mean obviously I don't know
Speaker 305
2:20:39
but I'm guessing. I don't believe so I haven't looked at other states but I'd be happy to pull ahead and
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:20:43
look into that for you. OK I mean I just that's just is pretty noticeable especially when you say it doesn't go with the the drop in enrollment doesn't correlate, I
mean it's steeper than our drop in in in enrollment so
that does yeah, I would appreciate that information
Speaker 146
2:21:03
and I'm sure that other members would as
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
2:21:06
well thank you Representative gonzalez yes thank you my question is on slide 26. the top five EA categorical expenditure categories. I would be very interested in knowing what that consists of for the academic supports and interventions and also additional teachers like what is that
what exactly what do we mean by that or how is that
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:21:29
being spent in those categories I I can
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
2:21:33
pull additional information on that for you thank you my question on that just and and unless I'm not this is the first time I'm dom I'm in session with fiscal session and and learning about adequacy so I have a lot of questions so the sentence that you had mentioned EA funding cannot be used to meet satisfy or supplant the state standards for
accreditation or minimum teacher salary requirements so I just wondered if we have more money being spent because there's a bigger need and it seems there seems to be a a big need in particular areas from year to year. would that eventually be moved over to like a consistent line item that is being that we would we would we would include that in maybe in the matrix or something
that's solid if it's if it continues to be an area that there's a lot of need and we're having to figure out where the money is going to
Speaker 305
2:22:37
come from to meet that need Representative Gonzalezen that's a policy question in the legislature could do that but but that's a policy question and that would be a decision for you the
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:22:51
committees thank you Representative beatty thank you madam chairir. I'm over here. I I my question is kind of going back to the ALE and the categorical fund
transfers. is there any correlation between the transfers and the districts that choose to do that and the actual student outcome? Have have we looked at that to see if if those transfers have actually improved the outcomes ir just
Speaker 283
2:23:18
so I'm understanding your question regarding the AE students so the districts that are choosing to provide ALlis those that are
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:23:25
choosing to provide ALEs and also to
transfer the categorical funds over to the ALEs are are we tracking is that actually improving the the outcomes for those students or is it kind of like what the secretary said earlier iss just throwing money in an area that's we're not seeing the the benefits right so does these previously
Speaker 266
2:23:48
presented to this committee I think it was in 22 possibly that they they have a program
Speaker 267
2:23:54
like they have a legislative report and that includes some student outcomes that tracks
some items such as I think the graduation rates of students like how many students have been returned but I believe that that's the only mechanism that they have to like identify and classify student outcomes. we can pull which districts
Speaker 144
2:24:12
they're transferring those funds absolutely but I don't think we could provide any comparisons. I think that would be a desi question right thank you OK, moving right along
Speaker 286
2:24:34
Great. so we're gonna move into our final categorical and that
Speaker 287
2:24:40
is for professional development So Arkansas disperses pd funds in three different ways as discussed previously in the funding report but as a reminder these go out in three different ways and we're going to focus on the portions distributed to districts through desi as the grants and then the portion that goes to districts as a per student amount and as a reminder41 dollars is allocated for professional development
buts districts receive3750 of that in 2025 a portion of that cons so as I said districts receive3750 per student for purposes of pd and statute defines the purpose of Pd as that to improve teaching and learning to facilitate individual schoolwide and systemwide improvements so that's all students demonstrate proficiency on state academic standards and these specific requirements related to professional development and
more outlined in Desi's roles governing professional development. So categorical funding provided for pd is to be used for pd related activities and materials that do the following so it needs to improve the knowledge and skills of teachers administrators and paraprofessionals it needs to improve student academic achievement and then provide training for a school bus drivers and in 2025 more than60% went towards salaries and benefits for certified teachers for purposes of pd
So our similar chart here we're gonna look at funding as related to spending for professional development. so again you'll see in the bottom green column this is the total categorical funding generated from that3750 amount and the green line above that this you'll see it's just above that indicating spending is close to actual funding and in that yellow line and these are showing again total expenditures from Pd categorical funds. So this
remains roughly 2 to3 million dollars above total funding again indicating use of fund transfers and fundals excuse me both of these spending amounts increased slightly in 2024 before decreasing by approximately $2 million in 2025. then you'll see that top line in blue here and this shows total spending on Pd related expenses using all fund sources almost $145 million in 2025 approximately 88% higher than total funding.
the largest portion of that spending comes from federal fund sources and you'll see total spending steadily decrease from all across all 33 school years as well. So we'll look at that in per student form so beginning with the funded per student amount and then showing what they spent from those funds so they spent37 dollars per student from categorical funds for purposes of pd a decrease of almost4 dollars per student from the previous school year
and then finally total per student Pd related spending from all fund sources came to306 dollars in2025, a decrease of $15 per student from 2023 and more than $260 more than per student funding. So this next chart we're going to look at or this next chart using this next slide we're going to look at funds how funds from the professional learning grant program were spent so this
grant provided $16.2 million in funds 245 districts based on a per student calculation and this was as of using and this was available for all districts to receive up the total 259 districts 10 did not apply and one was not approved so the grant program is designed to enhance student learning outcomes by fostering learning excuse me fostering continuous job in bed at professional development for educators
and then Act795 of2025 removed the they changed how additional pd categorical finds were to be used. so this law removed the $16.5 million appropriation for additional Pdstead that funding provided above the per student Pd amount she'll be used by desi for implementation of the Learns Act to improve student academic outcomes. So in their most recent 2019 evidencebased model Audumiass often referred to as OmP and
these are education consultants the committees have used in the past they estimated the cost for effective pd as $125 per student for the cost of trainers. So this includes paying for central office pd staff outside consultants as well as reimbursements for teacher conference registrations or tuition for teachers who enroll in appropriate coursework at approved colleges and universities. coststs may also include miscellaneous administrative materials supplies and travel expenses.
OmP also recommend that teachers have 10 days of their work year dedicated to Pd and the full evidencebas model can be found in appendixity of your report. so looking at some survey results regarding pd we asked teachers about their profession development they received in the 25 school year results results show collaboration with other educators and staff as received by most by the most of teachers
followed by district provided PD not using Arkansas ideas which is the online professional development program through AETN and then when asked which forms of pd were most useful collaboration with other educators and staff was rated highest followed by conferences and workshops. so that's going to conclude our categorical fund section. I'm happy to take questions before I move on. let me see umpresentative Duke
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:31:00
thank you madam chairir. same this is the same questions before on page six I guess slide32 if I'm understanding correctly there they have 31 $7 they're spending306. is that correct? OK it's correct where is
that additional funding coming from federal funds are making
Speaker 292
2:31:17
up the largest portion let me pull this information earlier to get a little bit more detail so let me see if I have that
broken out if I remember correct I can get that more
Speaker 287
2:31:34
detail for you but I do remember looking at that that aser finds some of the COVID funds did make up some of that but of course that is falling away so that may change but there are some multiple other funds federal fund sources and other state and local funds that are being used that I'm happy to desegregate for you thank you and that would be
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:31:51
great and also on that federal funding when you're looking at it and you find those different streams that are coming in if they are
um, restricted in how they use them or to what maybe vendor or whoever they use them have to use them for. I would like to know that too if they have flexibility with it
or if it is said you're going to go spend it here with this if you accept
Speaker 298
2:32:16
this money. Absolutely I can pull that for you and and include that context
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:32:24
for you. Thank you appreciate it. Representative beatty thank you madam chairir. go back to the the last slide where you were showing you know, on the pd
I guess what they found most useful with the 50 the 21% I I guess my question is did they also provide information on what they found the least helpful and did they provide that information do you have that that you could share because I get a lot of of complaints from my educators on Pd and that that some of it's a waste of time they don't see the benefit that they feel like they're just going through the motion to get those those days
in so that were did you have some honest educators that provided that information
Speaker 287
2:33:08
that you can share yes so in the survey report so in the in the binder if you have that if not we can provide that for you but there are the full results from our survey which includes the all of the responses provided and then we have additional comments they may have provided regarding some of that pd so we can absolutely get more information to you on that. Was, was there anything that
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:33:27
really stood out to to you guys when you looked over that information it's something that
they they universally saw statewide as being maybe not helpful at the top of my
Speaker 287
2:33:40
head I don't remember anything standing out to that degree but I'll certainly go back and see if if that's still
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:33:47
the case was just you know seeing it 21% on on conferences and workshops that that only 21% of those surveyed thought those were helpful were essentially I think
Speaker 287
2:33:58
we have that specifically essential we have I think4 breakup I had to double check myself but we have
a few different breakouts but those are the that's the highest
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:34:08
rating available. right and probably the most expensive as far as the cost of a Pd conferences and workshops would you agree? I don't know anecdotally you might be right
Speaker 287
2:34:18
I don't have the data in front of me to show exactly how districts were spending related to conferences I can't get to that level of detail but anecdotally you might be correct on that. right thank you. I'll be
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:34:30
quiet now. thank you madam chair for allowing me to ask questions. that's fine, thank
Speaker 287
2:34:36
you. let's move ahead Great. so we're gonna move into our supplemental funds and these refer to an assortment of additional funding streams that have been added over the years to assist districts and charters with various needs so we have multiple of these beginning with isolated funding declining enrollment, student growth, ESA grants are enhanced student achievement grants special education high cost occurrences enhanced transportation, teacher salary
equalization and then learns minimum teacher salaries each of these funds address specific needs that districts may have to provide an adequate education they are each distributed differently to different excuse me to districts and charters and overall account for5% of total district and charter spending so our first one that we'll review is for isolated and special needs isolated funds so broadly oscillated funding
refers to districts with its to districts with low enrollment or geographic challenges in that term isolated funding typically encompasses four distinct forms of isolated funding that each have their own eligibility and distribution criteria isolation so these are isolated special needs isolated I'll say S andI for short going forward and then small district and then isolate or me SI for transportation specifically. so this table is gonna show us funding amounts for each of
these funds for the 25 school year as compared to spending for each of those funds so you'll see that almost $11 million was funded in total to these four funds with special needs isolated or SI receiving the largest portion almost4 million dollars and you'll see that spending for the first two isolated and special needs isolated again S andI is combined and this is because of the appscan coding structure and Apscan refers to the Arkansas public schoolputertwork and this is the
system that districts use to input all of their expenditure data and because of the way these are coded we are not able to desegregate spending for each of these funds so they are combined there for that total6.3 mount on your right but you'll see that total oscillated ands andI spending was almost half a million more than total funding meaning districts use some remaining fund balances and that applies for the other S andI funds there as well
So this next chart is going to show how spending from each of these funds has varied for the last three school years beginning with the combined isolated and special needs isolated followed by the small school fund in the light blue and then total spending at the top while total spending in 25 is higher than it was in 23. it's an overall decrease from the 24 school year. Spending from isolated and S andI funds increased by $1 million between 24 and25 while spending from these small school
fund decrease by more than $2 million in that time. So this next chart is going to take that total spending and compare it to total funding for the last three school years you'll see that funding has remained flat at 10.9 million while spending has fluctuated between 11.1 and $11.9 million. As mentioned, each of these isolatedlands have different eligibility criteria and
distribution methods as well as different spending restrictions excluding these small school fund which has no spending restrictions so for all of these restrictions these are strictly for the specific isolated school area for which they are receiving those isolated funds and for some districts these make up the majority if not all of the district so these are the corresponding top uses of these each of these funds and again you'll see the top expenditures combined for
isolated and S andI funds again due to that coding structure despite each of those having separate spending restrictions. Overall you'll see regular instruction related expenses were the largest use of isolated at an SI funds excluding transportation where transportation was the largest use of those funds. so going back to the research from onimius they recommend adjustments for school districts that have smaller enrollment numbers and they also state that
districts below 975 students require additional support staff for an adequate program for districts with 975 students or fewer they recommend staffing one assistant principal and then one full time teacher for every7 students to provide staffing in a way that a district can deploy at their own need. and in 2025h42 districts have fewer than 975 students or55% of all school districts
Speaker 305
2:39:46
our next supplemental fund is declining enrollment funding declining enrollment funding is unrestricted funding it's awarded based on a formula the formula awards about half the foundation funding amount for each student the district is losing the formula full formula and and an example calculation are in appendix B of your report and your report is exhibit two in your materials because of reporting requirements related to
declining enrollment districts cannot transfer funds out of declining enrollment and so you can see looking at the funding and spending that for all three years districts are spending more money than they are actually being Looking at the top expenditure categories for declining enrollment certified staff vehicles and classified Then looking at the number of districts receiving declining enrollment that number is
increasing about 16% between 23 and24 and33% from 24 to25 and then you can see the five districts that received the highest amounts of declining enrollment funding in 2025 and that top amount was about $2 million. looking at best practices there are a number of ways that states address declining enrollment funding Arkansas youi utilizes that first option to fund based on a formula that states do sometimes provide minimum
amounts of funding or look at averages over a different period of years. our next supplemental is student growth funding Student growth funding is also unrestricted funding that formula is also in your report in appendix C. it provides about the full foundation amount for each district each student that a district is gaining because of a difference in the formula declining enrollment is based on yearly average daily membership and student growth is
based on quarterly average daily membership. it is possible for a district to be eligible for both but they receive which ever funing amount is greater. they do not receive both. like declining enrollment funding at student growth funding cannot be transferred out of the student growth fund and so you see in 24 and25 that districts are spending more than they were offended those years. looking at the top expenditure categories for student growth. uh, I do want to provide the
definition from the financial handbook for that first one managing service consulting is professional services provided in order to assist management in board policy or the operation of the districts and then looking at the districts and charters receiving funding that number is going down 13% from 23 to24,18% between 24 and25 and then you can see the five districts receiving the highest amounts of funding in 2025. I do want to
note that Arkansas Virtual Academy in Arkansas nections Academy together are receiving more than 15 million and then two of those account for almost40% of total student growth funding in 2 025 Lastly on student growth best practices one method is simply to fund based on current year enrollment in Arkansas we fund based on prior year enrollment states are all do also
adjustmentear there are states that require a minimum percentage so growth over a certain percentage to receive student growth funding, and there are a number of states that are adjusting funding midear based on growth. our next supplemental are EA grants this is despite the similar name this is completely separate from the enhanced student achievement categorical funding this is a different stream of funding this is a reimbursement system schools spend the money in one year and
then receive reimbursement from Desie reimbursement for one of the three programs that you see in 2527 districts received funding and here you can see how much we'll go to the next slide you can see how much districts spent on each of those three purposes in 2025.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
2:44:27
it stop just one second here Representative Duke thank you madam
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:44:32
chairir. my question's going to go back to I think it's slide53 page27 on the student growth expenditures a little intrigued on the managing service
and consulting. I wrote down professional service I think your definition board policy or operational can you expand a little bit more on what that all that entails
Speaker 305
2:44:58
I can I can look further that'd probably be that may be a better question for the department I do know there are a number of charter districts as we saw the two charter districts are receiving the top two amounts of money and so and they of course don't have a school board as in the same way that a traditional district would so most
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:45:16
of that is going to those charter districts to managing service and consulting I would have to look and and check it
Speaker 307
2:45:23
and I can get you those numbers that would that would
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:45:26
be great and then we can can follow
up with the department I guess a little bit
more on what that is but that that is a very broad category I think that's all
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:45:46
I had on that one thank you p re s ent ative garner thank you madam chairir. I've got a quick question on slide49 page25 when we're talking about de declining enrollment 15%
and23 and then33% or or 2324242533% do we know why I mean I'm assuming that it's charter I mean that it's if EA accounts but since the since the list is looks like our largest cities that probably have more private schools but do you know that or do we know why or do you have to go back to the district and find out do not
Speaker 305
2:46:26
have a way we we don't we don't know where the students
are going as they're leaving the overall enrollment for this state over those two years is not declining by that much it's declining less than 1% between 23 to24 and24 to25. so it appears that it's a lot of movement within districts charter districts and traditional districts one note in 2023 the legislature removed previously there had been a cap on school choice and districts
were only school choice was capped at3% of students transferring out that was removed in 2023 and so some of that may be contributing to that that district that students are moving from one district to another so it could be
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:47:18
from one district to another it could be it can be from a traditional
Speaker 305
2:47:23
district to another traditional district it can be from a district to a charter and it can be someone leaving the public school system altogether great but we
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
2:47:31
we don't have any way of knowing that
Speaker 148
2:47:36
not that I'm aware of. OK great thank you Representative Gonzalez thank
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
2:47:44
you madam chairir. slide57 Um, I would like to know how the the breakdown of that7.9 million what that was what that was spent on. I know you have the three categories here preschool, early childhood, would that be
mainly like preschool preschool settings and then and then just the overall7.9 being spent and how how they're able to spend those dollars and and and for what purpose I can pull that for you thank
Speaker 287
2:48:28
you ok moving right down that's going to bring us to our special education high high cost occurrences fund and this is provided to districts when an individual student in special education and
related services that's required in their individualized education plan or IEP are unduly expensive, extraordinary or beyond the routine and normal costs associated with special education related services these are distributed via a reimbursement system in which districts submit claims to desi and they're then reimbursed based on claim amounts and available funding. so under this system districts are responsible for the 1st $15,000 per eligible student after adjusted for offsets after
that 100% of claims between 15 and65,000 dollars can be reimbursed and 80% of claims between65 and $100,000 per eligible student and then that final amount is then prorated based on available funds as we'll see in the next slides so this next chart is going to show total funding alongside total spending for the last three school years in 25,17.5 million was distributed to this fund which is an increase of3.5
million from 23 comparatively spending increased by more than5 million other than restrictions on the types of claims that are eligible to be reimbursed. there are no restrictions on how these funds can be spent in a 25 district spent 17 million of their of these funds with71% of that going towards teacher salaries and benefits primarily for classified positions. the next table provides more details on a claim submitted by districts and charters for the
last three school years so in 25181 districts and charters made eligible claims for almost 2200 students which is an increase of 24 additional districts and charters submitting these claims and then since 2023 and then575 additional students generating these claims. Conversely, the percentage of reimbursable funds received by districts decreased from66% and23 to58% in25.
so in dollar amounts there were48 million dollars worth of eligible claims made my districts that weren't funded this next chart is going to show some more dollar amounts for these claims. So total highcost funding in that bottomgre column with a total amount of eligible claims in the top blue line and then the maxx reimbursable amount below that in the yellow line. so in other words districts and charters submitted almost66 million dollars in
eligible claims in 25. Using that distribution formula then is applied and that results in30 million dollars being the maximum reimbursable amount that this was can receive and then in then that available funding was $17.5 million and so that's what they actually received and that's where we get that48 million dollars in unfunded amount from the previous slide. then that's going to bring us an enhanced transportation but I'm
happy to take questions if there alreadyie So our next supplemental fund is for enhanced transportation and this is funding that's provided to districts and charters with high transportation cost districts and charters receive $8 million.25 and spent 9 million in that year indicating district use of fund balances expenditures from this fund exceeded funding by 13% and funding for enhanced
transportation increased by lo using by around 11% over this three year span while district spending increased by31%. So as noted this is provided to districts with high transportation cost. this is in addition to the amount districts and charters receive through foundation funding for transportation purposes as well as a S andI transportation fund that some districts receive. in 25148 districts and one charter received this funding
ranging from $1 up to $198,000. this is not restricted funding and therefore it can be used on items other than transportation of that $9 million spent from enhanced transportation funds in 2575% went towards student transportation related expenses primarily vehicle operations servicing and maintenance. and So the loss of a
Speaker 266
2:53:16
supplemental group are two funds created to
raise teacher salaries both enacted in the
Speaker 270
2:53:22
last five years. So first in 2021 is teacher salary equalization funding so in addition to its restricted use for teacher salaries and benefits teacher salary equalization funds must be transferred to and spent from the teacher salary fund both regular school districts and opening reb open enrollment public charters can become eligible for this funding since it was first provided in 2022, the statewide target annual salary has been51,822
dollars in that same time period, Dezzie has not identified an average teacher salary that was lower than this target in24 districts so they've never been eligible for this funding and have not received it. for the districts that have received this funding Dezzi calculates eligibility using the average teacher salary for the previous two school years so the allocation for 2025 was based on these salaries for the 2023 school year. districts will continue to receive this amount once eligible
receive the amount provided by the formula which is $185 times their prior ADM. the funding amount can only increase with an increase of number of students and per statue in as measured by the district's ADM the funding will not ever decrease below the amount they received in their initial school year and so in their first year of funding for districts that have received it, they'll continue to either increase its student body count if the student population increases or they'll continue to use remain contaminated that we
continue to perceive the same funding amount that they received in that first school year and so there were54 districts in the first year and that has increased to a total of 210 districts and all 25 charters that total was provided in54 million dollars for teacher salary equalization However, pursuant to actct905 of the regular session in 202092025 regular session. This amount
will start to decrease beginning in the 28 school year to $100 from $185 and then down to50 in the following school year. Another change made in this law was that the salaries no longer going to be set as part of the adequacy study review process and to address the committee question earlier from the presentations in March, the districts that have been identified will continue to
Speaker 267
2:55:48
use that however the districts that report or have been identified with the target salary or an annual salary that's above
that51,000, they will continue to use those funding those funds and are have been using those funds from the teacher's salary fund for the last three school years as this report was written and prepared the districts will but since this report was written and prepared the districts will stop receiving that funding and that will be addressed in the teacher salaries report in June. and our last supplemental category is the learns minimum teacher salary and raises fund or guest fund. so according to
Speaker 270
2:56:28
the 23 legislation each school district in the state shall pay classroom teachers upon a minimum base salary of50,000 dollars and so these funds are directed to the minimum teacher salary and raises fund and are provided to both districts and charters like the last fund and this is the secondnd year that this funding has been provided and it was the state provided a total of $181.5 million to all traditional districts and 18 charters. that'll that wraps up our
Speaker 287
2:56:58
supplemental section so we're gonna move into our final section which is just a review of additional funds spending and this table here provides total expenditures for the 25 school year from districts using fund sources that are categorized as additional. This came up to just over $3 billion or42% of total district spending this charters excuse me additional funding for this year includes numerous other fines received by districts and charters that are described in more detail in this annual
statistical report ASR and which includes federal restricted and unre federal as well as restricted and unrestricted state and local fund sources. so we'll wrap this all up with some key findings as we have in the past in the part one report. these are listed in your report as well on page 27 and your report again is exhibit two and you're meeting materials So for the categorical funds first the population of students
that require funding increased for English learner students but declined within enhanced student achievement or ESA per student funding remained flat for all three years with the exception of ALE funding excluding ESA spending program spending and total spending both exceeded funding for all three school years aselizabeth noted there's a regulatory conflict on the ESA funding requirements d d ition ally Pd funding is uniquely based on total students instead of specific student
populations in the other three categorical fundsdditionally they do not receive all of they receive only a portion of the total allotted per student categorical amount and then finally Pd spending from all fund sources is significantly higher than funding about 88% higher in the 25 school year. For supplemental funds declining enrollment had the largest increase of funding in 25 with
the exception of teacher salary allocations supplemental spending increase on average for all three school years d d ition ally spending increase for every supplemental fund with the exception of special education high cost occurrences and the teacher salaries fund also for the high cost occurrences eligible unfunded claims increased by46 percentage points between 23 and25. and finally enhanced transportation spending exceeded
funding in 25 the first time in those three school years. and then a few more overall additional findings as Elizabeth explained as of mark excuse me as of March 262025 Ju26 Act807 repealed the mandate requiring districts to submit a threeyear ESA plan which should that the requirement to integrate ESA prioritization and use within overall strategic plans existing dei roles contradict Act807 by
continuing to require the submission of those plans and they went regards to data limitations or data analysis limitations expenditures from isolated and special needs isolated funding that cannot be analyzed separately because they share the same fund code within the appscan data system. and with that we conclude this report we're happy to take any more questions you may have Oh my goodness that's a
Senator Jane English
Unverified
3:00:28
lot of information thank you very much do I see any questions here
Thank you ladies. I appreciate your efforts and this is a lot of good information lots of us for us to think about and so without any further ado meeting is adjourned
Agenda
No agenda available.
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Speaker 8
Lindsey Laster
Unverified
Lindsey Lester
Unverified
Speaker 12
Speaker 15
Speaker 19
Speaker 21
Speaker 22
Speaker 14
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Speaker 31
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
Speaker 30
Speaker 32
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 18
Speaker 77
Speaker 80
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
Speaker 101
Speaker 43
Speaker 33
Speaker 106
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Speaker 116
Speaker 118
Speaker 53
Speaker 34
Speaker 124
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
Speaker 148
Speaker 52
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Speaker 159
Speaker 154
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 67
Speaker 38
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
Speaker 178
Speaker 181
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
Speaker 202
Speaker 69
Speaker 196
Speaker 137
Speaker 126
Speaker 200
Speaker 216
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
Speaker 226
Speaker 234
Speaker 227
Speaker 240
Speaker 252
Speaker 173
Speaker 261
Speaker 266
Speaker 267
Speaker 270
Speaker 287
Speaker 293
Speaker 175
Speaker 292
Speaker 305
Speaker 146
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
Speaker 283
Speaker 144
Speaker 286
Speaker 298
Speaker 307