Seeking reason
Take hope to ballot box on LEARNS
Where is the voice of reason? Some days it seems that we are drowning in a sea of extremism where the biggest, wealthiest shark wins. The deadliest of the sharks are in the political tide pool, feeding on the smaller fish.
Lawmakers are elected with the expectation that they represent their constituents’ ideas and concerns in government. What happens when those who have been elected do not fulfill that job description, allowing pre-written bill packages to be brought in by out-of-state carpetbaggers? Small wonder that people are disillusioned about voting.
As recently as a few months ago, it was reported by the Arkansas Civic Health Index, a coalition of research and educational institutions, that our state is dead last in the nation for voter engagement and participation. Half of all eligible adults usually do not vote. Elections are won with relatively low numbers of people casting ballots.
Maybe the voice of reason lies dormant in the minds of those who have given up and no longer believe their votes matter.
Some of the kindest, most intelligent and rational people I know are not registered to vote. They do not feel represented by any party or individual. They routinely shake their heads at the idiocracy growing around them, complaining that most politicians run the same campaign ads, repeating whatever is dictated by the rhetoric-of-the-month club. After being elected, they go to Little Rock or Washington and do as instructed by their party leaders.
Nowhere has that sentiment been more evident than during the implementation of the LEARNS Act, the flagship of the Sarah Sanders administration, which sailed through the Legislature as if it were a done deal long before its official launch. Public opinion in most parts of Arkansas is firmly against the use of state tax revenue for private educational institutions. Yet here we are in the first year of implementation of Educational Freedom Accounts, aka school vouchers, which will be expanded next school year. Many public school administrators are certain that this will place tremendous financial stress on smaller districts. This will not benefit families in those communities at all.
There is a solution. Direct democracy bypasses unresponsive politicians and places some control in the hands of citizens.
The Arkansas Educational Rights Amendment will amend the education section of the Arkansas Constitution. In order to be placed on the ballot in November 2024, this citizen-led initiative must receive 90,707 petition signatures statewide. Unlike last year’s effort to put the entire LEARNS Act on the ballot, this amendment will guarantee the following:
⏹︎ Any school receiving any amount of public funds must follow the same rules and standards as traditional public schools;
⏹︎ Establishes the minimum quality standards ordered by the Arkansas Supreme Court in the 2002 Lakeview District v. Huckabee decision;
⏹︎ Provides universal access to pre-K for 3- to 4-year-olds, after-school and summertime programming, quality special education; and wrap-around services for low-income children.
Iwould be remiss if I neglected to mention Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva’s comments on educational cooperatives: “I want to be perfectly clear, whether it is co-ops, school districts or anybody in the state thinks that we are just going to do business as usual and fund positions because that is what we have always funded and we don’t have a return on that investment, they need to know we are going to have a deeper conversation.”
OK. Let’s have that deeper conversation … right after my eye stops twitching over that horrendous run-on sentence.
Apparently, he believes that the $55.2 million in question may not be a worthy investment. Only someone who knows very little about the importance of co-ops would make such a statement. The list of services is long and includes highly qualified experts in literacy. They are available to many districts who do not have the funds to employ specialists. Reducing these positions on one hand, while advertising positions for less-qualified literacy coaches on the other, makes no sense.
Since we are discussing how much bang we get for our tax bucks, I must point out that third on the list of contracts held by the Arkansas Department of Education, after almost $150 million with Solution Tree, and about $76 million with Cambium Assessment, sits Class Wallet. It seems $55.3 million is paid to this company to manage the Educational Freedom Accounts. One cannot help but notice the strikingly similar price tag to that of the co-ops. What return on investment do public school students receive from Class Wallet? Zero.
As always, priorities guide our fiscal decisions. If our priority in Arkansas is to support all children regardless of ZIP code, then we should be bolstering public schools, not cutting them off at the knees.
For as long as I can remember, the prevailing wisdom in education has been to keep your head down and hope for the best. That is not going to cut it anymore because as we have seen, bad things happen when our heads are down. Raise your head. Take your hope to the ballot box. Be the voice of reason.