Spotting a problem with page 12, lines 1-11

It would be easy to miss page 12, lines 1-11 in Senate Bill 294, otherwise known as Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ LEARNS Act. Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-little Rock, didn’t.

As you might have heard, the LEARNS Act is one of the most consequential bills considered by lawmakers in the past decade. It will increase minimum teacher salaries to $50,000 plus performance bonuses, create accounts for families to use state funding for private or home schooling, hold back third graders who don’t score proficient in reading, create a career pathway high school diploma, ban teaching about sex issues and gender identity until the fifth grade (not sixth grade, as I incorrectly reported in my previous column), and make other major changes to Arkansas schools.

The 144-page bill was filed Monday evening. The Senate Education Committee met Wednesday morning and advanced it that afternoon. The full Senate was scheduled to vote on it – and no doubt pass it – Thursday.

Let’s go back to the first paragraph. Those 11 lines say an annual comprehensive school safety assessment will be reviewed by school board members and also not be a public record subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

That makes sense. We want schools to plan for people with bad intentions. We don’t want people with bad intentions to have access to those plans.

And it’s not like the provision came from nowhere. The LEARNS Act’s entire section on school safety largely came from months of meetings followed by a final report last year by the Arkansas School Safety Commission.

The problem, as Chesterfield pointed out in the Senate Education Committee meeting Wednesday, is that the Freedom of Information Act requires school boards to do almost everything in public. School board members can’t talk about anything pertaining to school business unless they are in a meeting with the media already notified. If they run into each other in the grocery store, they must talk about something else. The only exception is that they can meet in executive session to talk about specific personnel.

How’s the school board supposed to talk about the comprehensive school safety assessment in public if we want the assessment to be private? That’s basically the question Chesterfield asked the bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Breanne Davis, R-russellville, and new Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva during the committee meeting.

It was clear from their reactions that it was a “we didn’t think of that” moment. Something may have to be changed.

Chesterfield has bigger problems with the LEARNS Act than that one provision. She likes part of it but can’t vote for the whole package.

At least one Republican on the Senate Education Committee also has concerns. Sen. Kim Hammer, R-benton, one of 25 Senate sponsors of the bill, listed numerous issues he wanted addressed, including adding a fiscal analysis, spelling out the financial impacts to the teacher retirement system, and other concerns. Davis was taking notes as he spoke.

Republicans on the Senate Education Committee, including Hammer, advanced the bill with the understanding that, after it passes the full Senate, changes would be made in the House through one big amendment, and then the amended version would return to the Senate. Instead of the bill being on Sanders’ desk by late this upcoming week, it could arrive by the beginning of the next.

In other words, Sanders could sign into law a bill completely overhauling Arkansas’ schools two weeks after almost all Arkansans – including school administrators, teachers and Democratic lawmakers – have seen it, with even many Republican lawmakers having only a few days longer.

While the discussion has been ongoing for months and the bill’s general concepts have been public for weeks, it was only Monday that the bill was filed and the details made public.

The legislative process is happening fast on this one. That’s politically easier but generally not the best way to do things, especially with something so consequential. Letting legislation cook instead of nuking it in the microwave is less efficient, but there’s value in taking one’s time.

Hearing from people with varying perspectives after the details are known might make the legislation better. At the very least, it increases the chance that somebody notices a problem with Page X, Line X.