Legislators again seek school fund plans

State lawmakers on Tuesday voted for the second time to request proposals from education policy consultants to review Arkansas’ public school funding process.

The House and Senate education committees in May rejected a proposal from a Colorado group after several members expressed concern about the price and scope of the company’s bid.

Legislators approved a scaled-back “request for proposals” on Tuesday that removed from the bid solicitation language that might prompt a consultant to provide specific dollar amounts for base-education funding levels.

The panel must vote to accept the bid of an outside consultant before any study begins.

House Education Committee chairman Rep. Bruce Cozart, R-Hot Springs, discouraged the committee from continuing to “kick the can down the road.” He has been a vocal advocate for an outside study of the committee’s biennial education adequacy review.

“We’ve been talking about doing this for the last four years,” Cozart said.

A consultant, under the proposal, would examine and recommend possible changes to the process that the General Assembly uses every two years to fund public education.

The joint Education Committee’s in-house review looks at whether the public school funding formula needs any adjustments, typically making small tweaks and adjustments for inflation.

In Arkansas, public education accounts for the largest single category of state spending, comprising about 41 percent of the general revenue budget. This school year, the state will spend about $2.25 billion of the $5.75 billion general-revenue budget on the Public School Fund.

The education committee’s biennial report makes recommendations to the governor and General Assembly on how to distribute those dollars.

The recommendations are determined using a matrix that allocates money to school districts on a per-student basis. That process started in 2003, when legislation was passed after the Arkansas Supreme Court’s Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee decision that found the state’s education funding system was inadequate and unconstitutional.

The funding formula was developed by a pair of college professors who were retained by the state as consultants — Larry Picus of the University of Southern California and Allan Odden of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Odden and Picus have reviewed the funding mechanisms several times since 2003, and legislators have slightly tweaked the adequacy review process and funding formula. But most of the professors’ initial recommendations remain the foundation of the biennial adequacy reports.

Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, noted that 16 years have passed since the high court’s landmark decision. Chesterfield made the motion on Tuesday to issue the new request for proposals.

“It’s time to look at what constitutes an adequate education now,” she said. “Education has drastically changed since then.”

Some members remained skeptical. Rep. Jim Dotson, R-Bentonville, said that the Bureau of Legislative Research was capable of conducting the necessary review without additional cost to the state.

When the committee first solicited bids from outside consultants earlier this year, only one group submitted a proposal. Augenblick, Palaich and Associates said it would perform the study for $943,605, but it was rebuffed primarily due to cost concerns.

Senate President Pro Tempore Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, was one of the chief opponents of accepting the Colorado-based firm’s bid. On Tuesday, he said he’d keep a critical eye on any future bids, but said he supported at least requesting them.

Hendren’s main concern has been that a consultant will tell the state that it should spend a specific dollar amount more on education than it currently does, and that that could be used against the state in a lawsuit similar to Lake View.

“I hear two clearly different visions about what the purpose of this is,” he said. “Is it about fixing the methodology and refining the way we do it? Or is it about using this as a tool to leverage more dollars with the court’s assistance. Again, I’ll support the first, but not the second.”

Rep. Stephen Meeks, R-Greenbrier, said an outside look would be helpful because sometimes “you can’t see the forest [for] the trees.” He noted that Arkansas students’ performance in math and science ranks in the bottom third when compared against the rest of the U.S.

“Sometimes it’s beneficial to have someone come take an outside look,” Meeks said. “I think it’s worth it to make that small investment.”