Legislators foil hiring of school consultant
Proposals refused for funding study
A legislative oversight panel declined Friday to give the House and Senate education committees permission to hire either of two consultants to study Arkansas’ school funding formula.
The Arkansas Legislative Council’s denial is the latest twist in a contentious process that has split lawmakers of both parties.
The education committees, after a lengthy, controversial review, voted earlier this month to hire Augenblick, Palaich and Associates of Denver to study the way the committees allocate more than $2.2 billion a year for public school funding.
However, the policymaking subcommittee of the Legislative Council rebuffed that contract, voting instead to require the committee to hire another group that some members favored — Shuls and Associates of St. Louis — in addition to Augenblick, Palaich and Associates or no firm at all.
The Legislative Council on Friday voted against both proposals, sending the process back to square one if not killing it altogether.
Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, said during Friday’s meeting that he thought the fight over the choice of a consultant
would mar the work of any consultant that is hired.
“There is a lot of contention surrounding these consultants,” Dismang said. “I have a lot of concern that even if we do hire a consultant, if we’ve hired one with this much distrust, this much concern, this much inner-fighting for lack of a better way to put it, it’s going to be very difficult for us to wholly accept the outcome that that consultant brings before us or even parts of it because I think it’s always going to be looked at with a view of concern.”
Senate Education Committee chairwoman Sen. Jane English, R-North Little Rock, said in an interview after Friday’s meeting that she planned to call an education committee meeting next week to discuss how to proceed.
Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee have agreed in recent years that a comprehensive study of education funding is needed.
Every two years, the committees make education spending recommendations to the governor and Legislature. The process was developed in 2003 in cooperation with two college professors who conducted a study in the wake of the Arkansas Supreme Court’s Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee decision that deemed the state’s school funding model unconstitutional.
The committees review that formula biennially, typically making small tweaks, but it remains largely the same as it was 16 years ago.
For an updated study, the education committees voted to hire Augenblick, Palaich and Associates for $659,580.
Shuls and Associates had submitted a $499,236 bid, but members of the committees questioned the group’s background in studying public school funding.
Representatives from both companies expressed some
“You have usurped the authority of a standing committee, and I think it is wrong.” — Policymaking subcommittee chairwoman Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, said that her panel had done something she hadn’t seen in her numerous terms as subcommittee leader
befuddlement with the Legislature’s process this week, and neither would commit to doing the work simultaneously.
Both firms had proposed meeting with educators across the state, reviewing research, studying successful schools and conducting school district surveys to complete the studies, which would be due by the end of 2020.
Several Democrats said that the policymaking subcommittee had overstepped its bounds by substituting its own recommendations for hiring a consulting company instead of simply voting yes or no on the education committee’s proposal.
Policymaking subcommittee chairwoman Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, said that her panel had done something she hadn’t seen in her numerous terms as subcommittee leader.
“You have usurped the authority of a standing committee, and I think it is wrong,” Chesterfield said. “I think it sends a dangerous message throughout this Legislature that a group of people who have not even heard the recommendations would substitute their will for individuals who have sat through hours of testimony and made a decision and sent to the policy committee to either vote it up or vote it down.”
Sen. Bob Ballinger, R-Berryville, said that the policymaking committee was not a “rubber-stamp” committee, and he expressed concerns about Augenblick, Palaich and Associates’ history of recommending large spending increases.
Ballinger echoed the sentiments of many Republicans, saying that recommendations of large funding increases could put the Legislature at risk of finding itself in redo of Lake View.
The proposal to hire both consultants was a compromise, Ballinger said. He said he thought that Shuls and Associates’ reformist approach would offer a unique perspective to the process.
“Do we want more information or do we want less information?” Ballinger said. “Do we want two ideas or do we want one idea presented when it comes to spending over $2 billion of the state’s money, of taxpayers’ money?”
Shuls and Associates is a newly formed firm, and it proposed partnering with the University of Arkansas’ Office for Education Policy and a handful of other individuals to study the state’s education funding methods.
Shuls and Associates and its partners’ published views on school choice and teacher pensions had caused some concern among members of the education committees.
Rep. Bruce Cozart, the Hot Springs Republican who chairs the House Education Committee, said at Friday’s meeting that he preferred Augenblick, Palaich and Associates because the company was more experienced.
The consulting firm has worked in all 50 states over the better part of the past four decades, and it has conducted adequacy studies in more than 20 states.
Cozart, who has been one of the most vocal supporters of hiring a consultant, said that he didn’t like spending more than $1.1 million to hire two firms for the same job, which would require the education committee to pick and choose.
But he really wants to see a study done, he said.
“This was not my idea,” he said of hiring two consulting groups.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, has said that he defers to the General Assembly on whether a consulting firm should study education spending.