Bill calls for test run of voucher program

Lawmakers late Wednesday filed governor-backed legislation to create a pilot private school voucher program in Pulaski County.

Senate Bill 620 by Sen. Blake Johnson, R-Corning, would create a five-year pilot program in Arkansas’ most populous county that would use $3.5 million a year in public funds to send about 500 students to private schools.

The “Capital Promise Scholarship” could also follow those students into college if they continue their educations at higher education institutions in the county.

The bill proposes evaluating the program’s effectiveness to determine whether it should be expanded beyond Pulaski County in the future.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson pledged in a news release to allocate his office’s discretionary funds to cover the $3.5 million-a-year price tag.

“This is an important and meaningful step in providing low-income families with a choice in the education their children receive,” the Republican governor said in the release. “Pulaski County offers a unique opportunity for us to effectively evaluate a school choice scholarship program and measure student achievement. … Every student deserves the opportunity to reach his or her potential, and this bill will help them do just that.”

If approved by the General Assembly, the Capital Promise Scholarship would be the state’s largest schoolchoice program. Currently, the state offers similar private-school scholarships to about 250 students with disabilities under the Succeed Scholarship Program.

Voucher programs have been debated nationwide. Proponents believe that

parents should be able to use public funds to send their children to the most appropriate schools, whether private or public, while opponents feel that such programs take resources away and undermine public schools.

Capital Promise Scholarships, according to SB620, would be available to Pulaski County students entering kindergarten at a private school or transferring from a public school after attending for at least one semester. It also would be available to students whose family incomes are below 185 percent of the federal poverty level ($47,637 for a family of four in Arkansas).

It would begin in the 2020-21 school year and end in 2025.

J.R. Davis, a Hutchinson spokesman, said the bill is intended to benefit only students who qualify for federal lunch-buying assistance, which is available to families with incomes up to 185 percent of the poverty line.

Capital Promise Scholarships would equal 80 percent of the per student funding rate the state distributes to public schools for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The scholarships would equal the full per-pupil amount ($6,781 this school year) for high-school students.

The program would offer $5,000 scholarships for students who continue in the program through college. Those students would have to graduate from high school with at least 2.5 GPAs, and they may attend Arkansas Baptist College, Philander Smith College, University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College, University of Arkansas at Little Rock or Shorter College. (Pulaski Tech and UALR are public; the others are private.)

The funds, under the proposal,

must first be spent on tuition, fees, uniforms and textbooks; but remaining funds may be used on tutoring, college-placement exams, transportation, after-school programs, industry-certification exams, speech-language pathology, physical therapy, dyslexia and other support services.

Rep. Ken Bragg, R-Sheridan, the bill’s House sponsor, said he was optimistic about the bill’s chances in the House, particularly because it’s a pilot program with a sunset, or expiration, date.

“I think the pilot project is a good concept because it gives us a good period of time to evaluate,” Bragg said.

Bragg added that there are several accountability measures included in the bill, which would require annual oversight and academic progress reports to lawmakers and the governor, as well as feedback from parents involved in the program.

Bragg, like Davis, said the scholarships are intended strictly for students who qualify for federal lunch assistance, and he said the bill’s language may need to be tweaked to make that clear. As of now, the bill’s language sets income as a possible condition.

Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, sharply criticized SB620, saying it was “insensitive,” “divisive,” and “hurtful” because it targets a particular group of children, primarily “black and brown kids.”

Elliott said an experiment with vouchers in Arkansas is unnecessary and that state leaders could look to other places where vouchers have been around for decades, like Milwaukee, to gauge their effects.

“We’re going to do something special for these few kids?” Elliott said. “That goes against everything the state is supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be responsible for the education of all our kids, not just some.”

The bill states that Pulaski

County is selected for the 5-year pilot program because of the concentration of eligible students, a competitive non-public school market, and the location of various public and private higher-education institutions.

Pulaski County is home to four traditional public school districts: Little Rock, North Little Rock, Pulaski County Special and the Jacksonville/ North Pulaski, as well as about a dozen publicly funded open-enrollment charter school campuses.

Typically, when a student leaves a traditional school district, the district becomes ineligible for receipt of state aid for that student.

The bill includes a provision that a school district that is operating under full state authority shall not have its state funding reduced as a result of any loss of public school students to the Capital Promise Scholarship pilot program.

Of the four districts in Pulaski County, three would stand to lose state funding for any students opting for the proposed tuition program. The Little Rock district has been operating under state control — without an elected school board and under the direction of the state education commissioner — since January 2015.

While the district would be exempt from losing state aid now as the result of the tuition scholarship program, the district’s state-controlled status is likely to change by the time the proposed scholarship program might be operational.

Current state law directs the state Board of Education to return to local control within five years any school district that has corrected the problems that led to state takeover. The Education Board also has the authority to take other actions against a state-controlled district that is not considered eligible for release to a locally elected board.